Installing Windows 2k Server on LX Pro

[Bryce Farmilo]

Has anyone been successful in doing this.

I have an old LX Pro 6/200 (Dual Proc) that was running Windows NT 4.0 and have just tried to do a clean install of Win 2K. The CD boots but freezes at the "Setup is inspecting your computer's hardware configuration" black screen. So doesn't get very far.

Any ideas? I've tried disabling the IDE controller etc. The server currently has two HP NICs, a NetRAID controller (3 channel). The RAID array consists of 3x 18Gig drives in a RAID 5 array, no volumes have been created yet.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Bryce.

[CA719043]

The original Netraid cards (D4943A and D4992A) do not work well with Win2k. Try removing the netraid card from the server, boot to the cd and see if it has the same problem.
http://netserver.hp.com/support/hot_news/bpn04025.asp

You may also want to strip the server of all accessories, see if it will boot, then start adding them one at a time to see if Windows has a problem with one of them.

Also, Windows requires MPS 1.4. This can be set in the bios by booting to the ECU diskette. Make sure you BIOS is up-to-date too.
http://www.hp.com/cgi-bin/cposupport/swindex.pl?p=nslxep&l=en&c=BIOS

[Brian Wildman · Accepted solution]

I have installed win 2k on an LX pro with a Netraid D4943A we had to do the 4 floppy install and manualy add the drivers. The D4943A is not supported in windows 2000 mainly because the Netraid assistant application doesn't work with 2000 and this card otherwise it seems to work fine.

[Bryce Farmilo]

Thanks for the replies, it did turn out that the LX Pro doesn't like booting from the Windows 2000 Server CD.

Using the boot floppies solved the problem and installation was successful and all runs fine now.

[CA772134]

What exact drivers did you load during the floppy boot process? I would like to install 2000 Server on my LX Pro also.

Thank you

Mark

[Bryce Farmilo]

No additional drivers were required. Just boot from the floppy disks. Make sure you take the Windows 2000 CDRom out of the drive though as the LXPro tends to crash even if the CD boots through (ie, don't press any key).

As I understand it there is no specific NetRAID driver for Windows 2000 but the driver Windows installs during installation seems to work fine.

Hope this helps.

Bryce.

[CA783054]

Upon the second reboot of the Win 2000 installation I get a "DISK I/O Error". Has anyone ever had this error and worked through it?

[CA660377]

What Netraid controller is in the system?

[CA783054]

Actually I answered my own question just trying different things. I tried setting the boot partition at 995 mb. I didn't get the error messages after this. It found the other 40gb on the Raid controller and installed the operating system on that.

I had read somewhere that you can't have a boot partition over a Gig on a raid controller with Windows 2000. Don't know but it worked.

[CA660377]

You should be able to use up to an 8GB partition in win2k running NTFS for the OS. The Netraid controller has nothing to do with it. If you are using the current drivers and firmware everything should be smooth.