Promise Fasttrak66

[EM 0]

First my hardware.

 

ABIT BP6

Celeron 366 x 2

IBM 5400 rpm 15.2g UDMA66 x2

ASUS 40x IDE CDrom

SBLive Value

Linksys II NIC

 

Not overclocked.

 

Problem is with the Promise Fasttrak66. It is that I can install Win98 SE, WinNT 4.0, or Win2000 RC1 without too much trouble (edit boot.ini for RC1). However I cannot load RC2 or Final Release. RC2 install gives me an "Inaccessible Boot Device" after loading the drivers that work fine in RC1. 2195 gives me an error that "Setup cannot find any hard drives and connot continue" at the same point as RC2. I do not have RC3 to try.

 

Any one managed to install 2195 or even RC2 with this controller? Any suggestions?

[Igor 0]

why did u buy Promise Fasttrak66 for ya board when it comes with Highpoint ATA66 ???

Isn't it like a waist of cash? With Highpoint I had no problem gettign RC2/3 to install with new bios(v1.21) and drivers (v1.21)

[Skywise 0]

It's quite simply Igor... The fasttrak66 is a RAID controller..the hpt isn't.

 

The only way to get the fasttrak working on a fasttrak66 is to first install win2k on a drive on the mb.

Then you install the latest and greates fasttrak66 drivers from promise.

Then you ghost over the partition over to the array.

Edit boot.ini so it properly reflects the position of win2k.

Boot win2k on the fasttrak66 and be happy!

[Gerbu 0]

Okie Dokie, I have the same card and installing drove me NUTS! However, digging and digging through promise's website, I finally found the solution, YAY!

 

1. Install RC2 or above from a dos prompt.

2. After the first 'rebooting now' plop in a dos disk

3. from the dos prompt, edit txtsetup.sif

4. remove all instances of the text 'ultra66' (no quotes)

5. reboot

6. when you *first* see 2000 booting whack the f6 key a bunch of times to force it to let you install scsi drivers(it doesn't tell you this is possible at the point you need to do it)

7. use the latestest drivers from promise on a floppy and tada it works =)

[Skywise 0]

Then Gerbu you're one of the luckiest people I know cause I certainly can't get it to work that way... and no one I know has got it working that way either...seems the fasttrak66 driver refuses to load properly during textsetup for some reason.

[EM 0]

Actually I have it working now. Geru pointed me in the right direction but I did find buried on the Promise website the directions that I followed. The URL is www.promise.com/techsupport/Notes/windows_2000_rc2_installation_FT66.htm

 

I have one large partition of 30 gig and other than that followed the directions exactly. Many thanks to Geru for his help.

 

Ed