Chipset Drivers on Gigabyte board = Blue Screen

Hi there,

First of all...thanks for answering this if you have time. It's driving me crazy.

I'm trying to do a clean install of XP on a WD Raptor drive. I've already done a test install on a IDE drive I had, but then that one is bigger than the Raptor so I couldn't clone it over.

Anyway, the IDE drive worked fine. I've installed the OS and updates on the Raptor drive, and each time I install the Gigabyte chipset drivers, I get the blue screen of death, and repeated restarts that don't fix anything.

Now I'm getting this:
"windows could not start because the following file is missing or or corrupt system32\drivers\pci.sys"

So I'm not sure what to do. Something is up with the drivers I think? I don't think it's my ram...I had no problems with them with the IDE drive.

Can I just not install the drivers? The computer seems to run good without them.

Can I repair this install?

Do you think the drive is bad? Everything was good until the driver install.

Is there an easy way to clone the larger IDE drive to the Raptor drive?

Thanks for your help with this!!!!

 

More details

Gigabyte GA-965P-S3.
NVIDIA 7900GT Card
4 gigs of Samsung PC2-5300U Ram
Intel Core 2 Duo E6320 Conroe 1.86GHz

 

Would it make sense to flash the bios?

I vaguely recall having trouble with one of the chipset drivers before but not like this. USB seems to work, I installed audio and video drivers.

I want to get this totally solid before I move on. So I don't want to skip the chipset drivers if it's going to cause a problem in the long run.

 

Your drivers are available at this link. If you scroll down a bit, you'll see 2 drivers for the SATA RAID. After Windows is installed, and you're at the desktop, BEFORE installing any other drivers, install the first driver in the SATA RAID section at the link I just posted. Restart the PC afterward even if you're not prompted. Since the OS seems to be OK with an IDE drive, it makes sense that the issue is with the SATA drivers.... flash the BIOS only if you're comfortable with doing so; be sure to follow the steps outlined by the manufacturer. It looks like they have a recovery utility for download; I'm assuming you'd create this before flashing the BIOS in case things go bad...

 

Ok that makes sense...the only thing is, I don't use RAID. Do you think those drivers are necessary for regular SATA?

Would it be wise to install the LAN drivers too? Another thing I haven't used inthe past.

Thanks!
Paul

 

You can get by just fine without the chipset grivers.
Chipset drivers" are usually nothing more the extra .inf files that help "plug and play" detect newer hardware.
If you install the drivers you need you will get the .inf files for the device during the driver installation.

As for RAID if you don't use it go in the BIOS & disable the RAID.
You do not need drivers for something you don't use !

As for "SATA drivers" there is no such thing as specific add in drivers for SATA.
The SATA is usually set to treat SATA drives as IDE anyhow.

If you use XP SP2 or above "SATA drivers" aren't a issue as they are automatically installed.

If you have XP with no service packs or SP1 update to at least SP2 & you should be good to go.

 

Thanks! So I'm using Service Pack 3, where does that leave me?

 

Can someone confirm that I don't need the chipset drivers? Will I be losing anything in speed with the SATA drives? The SATA system drive definitely runs, as does the SATA DVD Burner I have. But I don't want to be losing speed.

However, if I can just avoid installing the drivers, that would be an easy solution.

Thanks!

 

Fingers crossed but it appears that it was a bios issue. Possibly installing the RAID drivers. The bios was 10 updates behind, and one of the new ones offered support for the processor I'm using. I flashed that, installed the RAID and LAN drivers I didn't put in before, and then the chipset drivers. Something seems to have worked, at least I can boot up without the BSOD.

Thanks for the help!

 

You mentioned the hard drive but never said a word about the CPU !

If you had to flash the BIOS to get support for a CPU it's a wonder the unit started past POST !

Glad you figured it out.

 

Haha it ran for several years that way. I'm really looking forward to this thing being smoking...fully updated, ready to roll.