IT7 RAID-1 losing mouse/KB during WinXP install

I hope you can help me with this. It may just be "finger trouble" on my
part.
This IT7 is Abit's "non-legacy" board: USB mouse & keyboard - no PS/2
connectors.

The board is at the latest BIOS level: E8

Processor is 2.53gHz P4, 2 sticks of 512mb RAM, matched pair of Seagate
160GB HDD, Logitech USB optical wheelmouse, Fujitsu FKB 4725 keyboard
(connected to USB port through PS/2-USB adapter), Benq FP92G+ LCD monitor.

The manual doesn't seem to be available on Abit's site any longer. I've
posted it here:

http://members.shaw.ca/haruspex/IT7/IT7.pdf (That's 3MB.)

I'd configured the RAID-1 Array.

Then partitioned the drive to give me a 30GB C: drive, and formatted it
FAT-32 with a Win98 bootdisk.

Booted to the WinXP Pro Installation CD, pressed F6 when called for, and
fed it the HPT374 drivers on a floppy.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314859

It ran through the process of copying installation files, etc., asked to
remove any floppies, and rebooted into WinXP to continue the install.

With 37 minutes remaining, it stopped at this screen:

http://members.shaw.ca/haruspex/IT7/screen1.jpg

You can see the mouse-pointer center-screen. I just clicked "YES" to
continue. (This appears to be only cosmetic, as I'd gone through this same
procedure before, successfully, while playing with this, and a couple of
different mobos.)

During all this installation, the mouse LED would be on solid for some
time, off at others. (I also remember this as being "normal.")

With 34 minutes remaining, I was greeted with this screen:

http://members.shaw.ca/haruspex/IT7/screen2.jpg

And no mouse. And no keyboard. No way to interact with the program at
all. Power off.

I thought I'd try to get either the mouse or KB to remain powered during
all this rigmarole, by changing their settings in the BIOS. The options
(page 3-14, PDF page #40) are OS or BIOS. They were both set to BIOS, so I
changed the mouse to OS, and left KB set to BIOS, thinking I could nail
this one way or the other. No dice. Same as before - no mouse, no KB.

I'm stymied.

I had had this same board up & running Win98, WinXP Pro and Linux, in a
multi-boot RAID-1 configuration, back in January 2006, without this
intallation impasse. At that time, I was using a 2.0gHz Celeron, and I'm
not sure if I was using these same drives - might have been a pair of
Seagate 80GBs. And I had played around with these 2 160GB drives on a FIC
VC19 RAID-1 board - no problem with that install, as the KB/mouse are PS/2.

Congratulations, if you've read this far and your eyes haven't glazed over.

Any suggestions?

Many thanks in advance,

- Ralph

Ralph Innes wrote:
> I hope you can help me with this. It may just be "finger trouble" on my
> part.
> This IT7 is Abit's "non-legacy" board: USB mouse & keyboard - no PS/2
> connectors.
>
> The board is at the latest BIOS level: E8
>
> Processor is 2.53gHz P4, 2 sticks of 512mb RAM, matched pair of Seagate
> 160GB HDD, Logitech USB optical wheelmouse, Fujitsu FKB 4725 keyboard
> (connected to USB port through PS/2-USB adapter), Benq FP92G+ LCD monitor.
>
> The manual doesn't seem to be available on Abit's site any longer. I've
> posted it here:
>
> http://members.shaw.ca/haruspex/IT7/IT7.pdf (That's 3MB.)
>
> I'd configured the RAID-1 Array.
>
> Then partitioned the drive to give me a 30GB C: drive, and formatted it
> FAT-32 with a Win98 bootdisk.
>
> Booted to the WinXP Pro Installation CD, pressed F6 when called for, and
> fed it the HPT374 drivers on a floppy.
>
> http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314859
>
> It ran through the process of copying installation files, etc., asked to
> remove any floppies, and rebooted into WinXP to continue the install.
>
> With 37 minutes remaining, it stopped at this screen:
>
> http://members.shaw.ca/haruspex/IT7/screen1.jpg
>
> You can see the mouse-pointer center-screen. I just clicked "YES" to
> continue. (This appears to be only cosmetic, as I'd gone through this same
> procedure before, successfully, while playing with this, and a couple of
> different mobos.)
>
> During all this installation, the mouse LED would be on solid for some
> time, off at others. (I also remember this as being "normal.")
>
> With 34 minutes remaining, I was greeted with this screen:
>
> http://members.shaw.ca/haruspex/IT7/screen2.jpg
>
> And no mouse. And no keyboard. No way to interact with the program at
> all. Power off.
>
> I thought I'd try to get either the mouse or KB to remain powered during
> all this rigmarole, by changing their settings in the BIOS. The options
> (page 3-14, PDF page #40) are OS or BIOS. They were both set to BIOS, so I
> changed the mouse to OS, and left KB set to BIOS, thinking I could nail
> this one way or the other. No dice. Same as before - no mouse, no KB.
>
> I'm stymied.
>
> I had had this same board up & running Win98, WinXP Pro and Linux, in a
> multi-boot RAID-1 configuration, back in January 2006, without this
> intallation impasse. At that time, I was using a 2.0gHz Celeron, and I'm
> not sure if I was using these same drives - might have been a pair of
> Seagate 80GBs. And I had played around with these 2 160GB drives on a FIC
> VC19 RAID-1 board - no problem with that install, as the KB/mouse are PS/2.
>
> Congratulations, if you've read this far and your eyes haven't glazed over.
>
> Any suggestions?
>
> Many thanks in advance,
>
> - Ralph


I have had similar problems with USB devices during XP installs, but
they seem to have stopped since I started using a CD with Service Pack 2
slipstreamed. The reason I think this works is that before the service
pack (or maybe SP1), there was not USB2.0 support. If you haven't done
this before, it is quite easy.

Here is a site on how to make the CD:
http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase...slipstream.asp

Chris