Raid controller and Vista ??

Hi, I have Dell Dimension 8400 that uses Intel 82801FR Sata Raid
controller. I wanted to do a clean install of Vista Ultimate Upgrade.
The screen showed that it detected harddrive just fine. I did a delete
partition then create new partition and formatted it. (320gb). But when
I click 'next' to begin the installation, I get message saying --

Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for
installations.

That sort of sounds like it is Raid controller issue. So, I got the
raid driver from intel website and it detected the specific driver and I
clicked 'Next' and it copied the file (iastor.sys). Then clicked 'next'
to begin installation and yet again, I got same msg as above.

What am I missing here ? I googled and saw alot of ppl experienced
problems trying to install vista on dimension 8400 with 82801FR raid but
I haven't found any answers and most were posted last year. So, I'm
posting it this year and hope someone can help provide some answers...

Thanks


--
fazibit

Is there anything on Dell FAQ's for your model?

"fazibit" <guest@unknown-email.com> wrote in message
news:63c728e1f4fca8036f3adc2e185e4ee2@nntp-gateway.com...
>
> Hi, I have Dell Dimension 8400 that uses Intel 82801FR Sata Raid
> controller. I wanted to do a clean install of Vista Ultimate Upgrade.
> The screen showed that it detected harddrive just fine. I did a delete
> partition then create new partition and formatted it. (320gb). But when
> I click 'next' to begin the installation, I get message saying --
>
> Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for
> installations.
>
> That sort of sounds like it is Raid controller issue. So, I got the
> raid driver from intel website and it detected the specific driver and I
> clicked 'Next' and it copied the file (iastor.sys). Then clicked 'next'
> to begin installation and yet again, I got same msg as above.
>
> What am I missing here ? I googled and saw alot of ppl experienced
> problems trying to install vista on dimension 8400 with 82801FR raid but
> I haven't found any answers and most were posted last year. So, I'm
> posting it this year and hope someone can help provide some answers...
>
> Thanks
>
>
> --
> fazibit

I talked to Dell tech online in chatroom at their website. They said
that they do not support it. They said that at the time Dimension 8400
came out couple yrs ago was designed for XP, not Vista. I explained to
them that I only needed simple guidance to get started and that I'd take
care of the rest. They said that they can't help at all as they don't
have drivers for the raid controller nor documentation on how to install
Vista on Dimension 8400 MCE 2005 edition.


--
fazibit