Struggling to format

[torino]

Hi all, hoping you can help me. A friend of mine built up a pc for me from surplus stock he had from a job, its an intel 845P, 2.8GHz with an acer branding(G310). It has been given to me with a 36GB SCSI hard drive(Seagate ST336607LW). Where I need the help..........never having dealt with SCSI's before, I find myself having trouble formatting. I believe you need to have the SCSI driver as windows will not find the drive without it??
So, im struggling. Ive been on to seagate's site and looked for a driver for the specific drive stated above but have yet to solve the problem, cant seem to locate it. I do have a driver floppy that my friend left with me however, none of these drivers seems to be the correct one! Im confused and frustrated with the pc now to say the least, dont know what to do next!
Can anyone advise me please, please reply and if I have not included any important information needed for a solution then please say so and I will submit it in my next response.

 

[cmichael258]

Check out the column on the left for installing drives on a new build.
Good luck.
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/drivers/discwiz.html

 

[jimw428]

I don't think you will find the driver on the Seagate web site and I don't think the Seagate utilities referenced in the previous post will support SCSI (but I could be wrong)

Do you know the brand name of the SCSI controller card?

If, not you need to open the case and find the card attached to the hard disk.
Locate the brand and model number, log on to their web site and down load the latest driver.

Generally you will need to create a bootable DOS diskette for loading the resident driver that will enable you to format the disk (you may or may not need to format the drive first, depending on the controller) and load windows.

From that point onward, you should be OK. IIRC, the Windows install will give you the option of loading a SCSI driver during the install.

 

[torino]

Will try both those options for starters, many thanks to you both

 

[shadowduck]

From that point onward, you should be OK. IIRC, the Windows install will give you the option of loading a SCSI driver during the install.

As Windows Installer blue screen comes up.. you have about a 2 second time window to start banging F6. After a while, it will ask for the driver.

 

[yourmothersanastronaut]

Correct.

Although, you don't need to driver for the drive, per say, you need it for the controller, which will then do the drive stuff.

 

[torino]

Im glad I have roused up debate regards this problem of mine
However, I took your advice jimw and looked at my SCSI controller card......its an LSI LOGIC 22320-R. I went to their site and searched the driver for the that model, I have to say it confused me a little because it offered me a variety of downloads. http://www.lsilogic.com/cm/LookupDownloads.do
I chose to download the driver which was toward the bottom of the available driver downloads( the one for windows xp 32 bit Scsi port ) http://www.lsilogic.com/cm/License.do?url=/files/support/ssp/fusionmpt/sas/winxp/symmpi_xp_i386_1.21.15.zip&prodName=&subType=Driver and yet once again, after putting it to a floppy and trying it upon loading windows(F6 and blue screen instructions) it came up with a message saying ' readmetxt.oem not found ' or something very near that! Thus, unable to format still!!!!!!!
Is there something else I need to download also, could I have downloaded the incorrect driver? I really would appreciate some experience in this problem of mine.
Many thanks for your help

 

[devilhorns]

The G310 is the low end server of the Acer server range, from my experience of Acer you can find all the drivers you require at www.acer.co.uk under service and support

 

[torino]

Thanks devil, I have indeed been on the acer website and have been unsuccessful in finding the driver to do the job!

 

[devilhorns]

Is your card a U320 2 channel raid card, Recommended by acer as Acers are finicky when it comes to what they wil allow to work on them (you can tell this by the card having a round acer sticker on it) if not im stuck sorry. Limited experience of Acers but i have been told by there solutions centre a guy called colm that this is the case. (Hope this helps more than my last dopey comment )

 

[nobly]

yet once again, after putting it to a floppy and trying it upon loading windows(F6 and blue screen instructions) it came up with a message saying ' readmetxt.oem not found ' or something very near that! Thus, unable to format still!!!!!!!
Is there something else I need to download also, could I have downloaded the incorrect driver? I really would appreciate some experience in this problem of mine.
Many thanks for your help

This kind of happened to me but with a SATA drive. The problem was that its expecting that file to be in a certain directory structure. Luckily it dumped me into a dos prompt where I had to remember old dos commands to create the directory structure and copy the file.

I think for me, it said "Could not find <directory/file.extension>" so I just recreated the path there.

I hope that helps... Not sure if that's exactly your problem though. :?

 

[torino]

Hi Devil, im trying to be as specific as I can here for all so you can advise me more acurately so apologies if I have left parts out that are important in resolving this dilemna of mine!

From the top, from what has been established here since the start.........my unit is indeed an Acer G310 Altos, 2.8 Ghz Pentium 4 CPU, Intel 845P socket 478. There is as stated previously, a Seagate ST336607LW Scsi hard drive(36gb) connected to motherboard with a LSI Logic 22320-R connector card going to Mboard. Yes, the connector card does have the circular 'Acer' brand sticker on it also!

I have used all the drivers that were last provided by my friend, however none were the correct one and I am at a dead end with him now! I have also been to Seagate to search a driver for the ST336607LW hard drive but again no joy! I have also been to LSI site and tried a driver from there, I will accept that there is a possibility that I may have downloaded the wrong driver, as I said there was a multitude of drivers available. I went with my basic info that I had when making the decision to download what driver I did eventually download. Seeing as I have windows XP OS on the system, I took the decision to download the driver for the Windows 32 bit, Scsi port?????????? right or wrong Im not sure anymore!

Am I doing something fundamentally wrong here? I dont know why this is proving so difficult. Im getting to the point where I want to put a heavy object straight through this blasted thing!

Any help is greatly appreciated, many thanks once again for all responses ...


Robert (torino)

 

[torino]

Thanks for your input nobly, although I have to be honest and tell you that once you started talking about dos prompts and creating paths I was lost lol :lol:

Thanks for your help

Robert(torino)

 

[devilhorns]

Hi i believe now from your last post that your problem lies with your operating system choice as these drivers are set up for individual operating systems and there is no driver (as of yet) for Windows XP. If you have access to a copy of server 2k or 2003 then you should be fine.

 

[devilhorns]

Hi i believe now from your last post that your problem lies with your operating system choice as these drivers are set up for individual operating systems and there is no driver (as of yet) for Windows XP. If you have access to a copy of server 2k or 2003 then you should be fine.

 

[torino]

Well how is it that my pc has a copy of windows XP running on it currently(although with certain gliches, hence wanting to format it), how was it put onto the unit?
Hope you can start to understand and appreciate why it is frustrating me somewhat, I dont for one minute intend to keep going on about it to you all but im sure there must be some way round it surely.....otherwise how was it that Windows XP is on it right at this very minute and im using it to type this and communicate with all of you!
It just seems wrong, wrong in the sense of if I want to use this system then I have to as it is now with its gliches otherwise there is no way of formatting and reinstalling Windows XP?????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[jimw428]

I think you've downloaded the wrong driver. Go to this page-

http://www.lsilogic.com/cm/DownloadSearch.do

Enter your model # 22320-R from the list, click on GO, scroll to the bottom and look for the Windows XP listing. There are 2 versions listed, 32 and 64 bit. Choose the one matching your OS (I assume 32 bit).

 

[torino]

I think you've downloaded the wrong driver. Go to this page-

http://www.lsilogic.com/cm/DownloadSearch.do

Enter your model # 22320-R from the list, click on GO, scroll to the bottom and look for the Windows XP listing. There are 2 versions listed, 32 and 64 bit. Choose the one matching your OS (I assume 32 bit).

As stated above jim, a couple of posts back, the driver that I downloaded was the windows xp 32 bit driver for scsi port!

 

[jimw428]

I think you've downloaded the wrong driver. Go to this page-

http://www.lsilogic.com/cm/DownloadSearch.do

Enter your model # 22320-R from the list, click on GO, scroll to the bottom and look for the Windows XP listing. There are 2 versions listed, 32 and 64 bit. Choose the one matching your OS (I assume 32 bit).

As stated above jim, a couple of posts back, the driver that I downloaded was the windows xp 32 bit driver for scsi port!

"( the one for windows xp 32 bit Scsi port )"

Yes I know, but I think what's called "32 bit SCSI PORT" may be a different product than the 22320-R. If you followed the directions listed above, then you must have the correct one.

BTW, you said your system still runs, but is flakey. Have you gone to My Computer, view system information, hardware, device manager and checked the current driver info?

Also have you tried to repair the current Windows install as opposed to a new install?

Can you think of anything unusual you were doing prior to it becoming unstable, or was it like that when you got it?

 

[b_diddy_t]

I believe that you have the correct driver and are doing pretty well.

One thing I would like to ask...

When you said you put the driver on a floppy, did you just copy the single file that you downloaded straight onto the floppy?

The file that you downloaded is a compressed file, which contains a bunch of files that windows needs to do your bidding.

Once you have downloaded the file, you need to extract all the files to a blank floppy disk.

Once that is done, look at the floppy disk, it should have 1 folder and 6 files on it, and some more files inside the folder. The folder is called i386 and the files are txtsetup.oem, etc.

If that is all good do what you did before by pressing F6 during the first few seconds of windows setup, and this time it should list a driver or 2 to use. Choose the most appropriate one and if that doesn't work, reboot and try all the others instead.

If it gets to the stage of showing you the drivers to choose then you know you have made the floppy disk correctly!!

P.S. Sorry if you already made the floppy disk correctly and I spewed forth all this crap for nothing.

 

[torino]

Thank you all so very much, you have all played a part in my working out this mess here! Eventually got the driver to be accepted by Windows Xp and ive been successful in formatting and installing a fresh copy of Xp, all seems well upto now so im keeping my fingers crossed!!!!!!

To all of you who have given input in my post, many many thanks people.


Robert (Torino)

 

[b_diddy_t]

hurrah!