JS PACS

This troubleshooting tip relates to rebuilding PACS workstations on the HP xw series platforms. A lot of PACS workstations these days are running on this particular platform, many being the HP xw 4300 or xw8600. There are many models in the series but their price and performance have been very attractive and are one of our preferred platforms.

This issue doesn’t occur all the time but there are some of those workstations that hit you with the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death with an error of 0x0000000007B – which is a device inaccessible error) when trying to install Windows XP Pro from the install disk.

The particular issue is related to the onboard RAID controller that some of these devices come with or the lack of LSI drivers for the hard drive controller. Either will cause the Windows install to fail but here are some steps to take to get through that issue.

First, if you get the BSOD on windows install, check the BIOS and under ‘Storage Options’, disable the RAID controller, setting it to IDE Independent. This will allow the windows installer to see the boot sector of the drive and prevent the install from failing. If you still get the error, you may need to add the LSI drivers during the Windows install.

There are two ways to do this. First, download the correct LSI drivers for your model from the HP website and extract those drivers onto a workstation you have access to. You can then put those onto a floppy drive and during the windows install; there is a point where you will see the message “Press F6 to install third party SCSI drivers” at the bottom of the screen. When you see this, press F6 and then you will be presented with a section that allows you to load those drivers into the install process. Given that not too many workstations ship with floppy drives these days, the second method might be a much better solution.

That second solution involves created a new install disk that that contains those LSI drivers. To do this, there is a great FREE product called nLite that will allow you to do this. This software can be downloaded at http://www.nliteos.com/ . There is good documentation on that site so I won’t go into the details of using that software but suffice it to say that this tool allows you to rebuild your install disc and include the drivers you need (such as the LSI drivers). As a side note, there are a lot of other things you can add to the install disk such as service packs, additional programs, registry edits etc, that will all be included in the install.

Once you have the disk built, pop it in your CD drive, fire up the workstation and the install should go smoothly. If you have any related experiences install Windows XP Pro onto the HP xw series workstations, post them here and how you solved those issues.

Hi, this is Michael

i have a "simple" solution for installing windows xp pro on HP xw series with RAID1 (with Intel Matrix Storage Controller).

at first, please excuse my bad english. But i hope to help anyone with this message.

I have installed successfully windows xp pro (from original windows cd) on HP Workstation xw6600. Two Harddrives (2x 160GB) configurerd as RAID1 with Intel Matrix Storage Controller (onboard).

Short: Boot from CD, press F6 to load drivers from floppy disk, and continue (without bluescreen)

You can try to install with my own created floppy files. but read following to understand how to do.

Details:
IMPORTANT: You need two drivers to download from hp website.
- Intel Matrix Storage Manager (package include floppy drivers)
- LSI SAS driver

for xw6600 i have exactly downloaded
- Intel Matrix Storage Manager Utility and Driver
- LSI SAS 8888ELP Driver for Microsoft Windows XP Professional

extract these both files. intel storage has a floppy creator. LSI SAS has only the files these you must copy to floppy disc.

attention: the problem is, that after you press F6, you only can use one floppy disc to install drivers. you can't install a driver and then change the floppy disc and install an other driver. You can install several drivers, but these must be on the same floppy disc.

also you must copy both driver to same floppy disk. but a problem is the file "txtsetup.oem". this file existing in both drivers.

you must these files to bring together. you can edit this files with windows editor.
attention: compare and copy in the right sections.

my xw6600 does not have a floppy drive assembly. I used an external usb floppy disk. After boot from cd, i pressed F6 and choose drivers to load from floppy drive.

ATTENTION: You must install two drivers. A Intel driver and the LSI Driver. There are many Intel Drivers for choice, but not everyone it's working.

I have used successfully following drivers:
- Intel(R) 631xESB/632xESB SATA RAID Controller (Server/Workstation ESB2)
- LSI MegaRAID SAS RAID Controller Driver (Windows XP)

with other combinations i have get a bluescreen.

After these steps i could continue with the installation.

you can download a exactly copy of my floppy disc by clicking the following link (extract with winzip).
it's works with HP Workstation xw6600 configured as RAID1 (maybe with different models).

www.mksupport.ch/publisher/miscellaneous...600_raid_drivers.zip no spyware

i hope you have understand my words. I'm sorry again.

best regards from switzerland

michael

That for that info! That was helpful. I tried installign the drivers from a USB floppy like you described but ran into that .oem file that you described. That is when I quit and jsut used nLite to create a bootable Windows XP iso with the corrcet drivers.

Thanks for your feedback and especially for that info on combining the two oem files, very helpful.