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Trouble installing Vista on my Alienware

Alright, after the PDC I finally decided that it was time to take the plunge and install Vista on my laptop, rather than in VMWare. (That, and the fact that my laptop, like all good dev boxes, is in need of it's quarterly repave.) The problem I'm having, though, is that my laptop is an Alienware Area 51m 7700 series with a Promise FastTrack 378 SCSI RAID controller. That wouldn't be such a big deal except for, when I go to install it (not through XP, but from boot), Vista doesn't recognize my hard drive. So I got the drivers from the Alienware site, unpacked them onto a CD, and used the new Load Driver button in the hard drive selection screen to load up the drivers. Vista install finds the INF file, parses it, shows the available drivers, but when I click on one, it tells me that the driver is either incorrect or that it's missing. Now I know for a fact that it's there, but it won't install no matter what I do.

Has anybody else had the same issue?
Posted: Sep 19 2005, 10:42 PM by David Stone | with 34 comment(s)

Comments

AW said:

I have the exact same laptop with the exact same results. I found how to load the driver using the command line here: http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t375782.html

This allows you to install the driver (apparently) but I still can't see the drives after doing so. I've heard rumors that 3rd party drivers support is 'broken' in this build, but have seen no reliable sources confirm this.
# October 4, 2005 5:26 PM

DeLaguna said:

Hey you guys really need to be more specific about the builds your using I installed Vista on my Alienware fine in beta2 I am downloading th latest build so I will update you when I have it installed also if you fixed it post so people know it looks like your posts are way old! lol anyways hope your doing well ciao.

# August 29, 2006 8:10 AM

Crion said:

Yeah, I'm actually having the same issue with my Alienware Area-51 m5700.  Can you give more specific details as to the solution?

# January 9, 2007 9:36 PM

MajorYoshi said:

I just installed Vista on my 7700 tonight.  I downloaded the Promise XP driver from here: http://www.soft32.com/download_170761.html and it worked fine for the install.  It, for some reason, won't even allow me to use my Alienware XP driver for it.  All seems to be going fine tho.  

Now if I could find the Vista drivers for everything else.  When I do a search on Alienware's site it just pulls up a blank.  Tried mobile systems as well as specific drivers... <sigh>...  

Hope you get it goin!

MajorYoshi

cradh43 at yahoo

# January 31, 2007 12:52 AM

Pyrrhus21 said:

I found an easy way to use the SATA RAID0 controller (FastTrack 378/376) from Promise during Vista install. The driver that worked for me was the version 1.00.0.37. I found it on that page http://www.station-drivers.com/page/promise.htm (no registration or such things required). Direct link is ftp://ftp.asus.com.tw/pub/ASUS/misc/ide/pdc20378/378raid_100137.zip.

Note that only the WHQL certified driver works during Vista install.

# February 8, 2007 6:07 PM

RAIDer said:

I have the same problem but your hints didn't work for me. When I install the driver in the early setup process I see the RAID disks, can format them etc. But Vista warns me that it cant' boot from those drives. When I try to select a RAID partition to install vista it tells me "invalid installation disk". Anyone had the same problem?

# April 23, 2007 11:25 AM

Joe said:

I had the same issue with my Alienware M5700.  This is for CRION who said he has the same PC and issue.  I found the correct driver that allowed me to install Vista last night.  Once I found the driver, everything went smoothly and I have had no issues yet.  The VIA VT6421 RAID controller driver can be found here:  www.viaarena.com/default.aspx

Just download the first driver listed (VIA V-RAID) and it's a zipped file, install VISTA and when it says it can't find the hard drives, point it to the the following location: V-RAID_V560A/VRAIDDrv/drvdisk/VISTA/x86

It'll find the hard drive right away and you can proceed.  I'm happy with it, it located all of my hardware without the nightmare of missing or bad drivers so far.  The video driver is much better than the one provided by alienware for XP.

# January 22, 2008 10:27 AM

Jermaine said:

I installed vista and used the promise fast track driver for xp and it installed fine. The problem i'm going through now is it freezes on me constantly and i recieve the blue screen of death saying theres a hardware issue. Does anyone know a fix for this? Could it be the promise fast track for xp i installed?

# April 28, 2008 4:10 PM

Kirill said:

I also have an alienware m5700 and when I tried installing vista (32 bit) it asked me to load drivers for my SATA hard drive. This is a regular alienware laptop that supports one hard drive (not two). Any idea on where I could get a driver that would let me install vista??? I have a seagate momentus 5400 hard drive. Thanks in advance.

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I have the same problem but your hints didn't work for me. When I install the driver in the early setup process I see the RAID disks, can format them etc. But Vista warns me that it cant' boot from those drives. When I try to select a RAID partition to install vista it tells me "invalid installation disk". Anyone had the same problem? http://www.lyx-stone.com

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