nVidia raid5 boot disk on Windows 10 – FIX

Hardware

The Gigabyte GA-M68MT-S2 and other boards using the NVIDIA® GeForce 7025/nForce 630a chipset (and probably others too) are well known not to work properly with Windows 10.

Hardware ids causing the problem on my system… Yours may be the same or different

PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03D6&SUBSYS_D0001458&REV_A2
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03D6&SUBSYS_D0001458
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03D6&CC_030000
PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_03D6&CC_0300

The problem

Windows 10 has now introduced a system of validating drivers, the nVidia nvraid drivers get tested mid boot. These fail for some reason (probably because they aren’t designed for windows 10), Windows disconnects the drive it is booting from. It bluescreens, sometimes corrupts the raid, reboots and loops.

The nvraid driver that comes with windows works, the one with the graphics package doesn’t but it is newer (so it automatically upgrades itself into oblivion)

I have a solution (which is way easier than any of the others I’ve seen)

What you need

Most importantly you need a backup of your system, or at least the things that matter. If windows breaks the raid and continues to write data to only one disk then you can get data corruption, loose files etc. I’ll assume you are installing on a new hard drive from hereon in or that you are properly backed up

Download Windows 10 1703 from the Microsoft website – I suspect 1709 works perfectly too as mine has now updated to this. Please post below if this doesn’t work

Download the nVidia drivers from the nVidia site – Download for the most up to date windows drivers for your card that you can, at the time of writing this was Windows 8 (It says you can’t get 8.1 or 10). Have a look in the Device manager if you aren’t sure what you have

7 Zip – You’ll probably want the 64bit version. Download link is at the top

and obviously be prepared for any other drivers for your system, although windows 10 is extremely good at finding things

Getting started

I’m going to assume you know how to install windows and have been battling with this for a while. If this is not the case then you need to take it to someone who knows their stuff… this is a slightly advanced method

Remove access to the internet

Windows will realise it needs drivers and updates, these will kill your system as it will install the nvraid drivers with the graphics driver and will leave the drive inaccessible. As a general rule it’s best to install a system with as much unplugged as possible and install things after anyway. Disconnect any network cables

Install Windows

If you’re on a USB or DVD it doesn’t matter – if you have a WiFi card in the computer it’ll ask to go on the internet. Say no at this point.

Go through all the motions until you have a working desktop. Reboot a couple of times and everything should seem to work… but the graphics are poor.

DO NOT LET IT ON THE INTERNET YET – if it downloads the display drivers then the nvraid driver that doesn’t work is packaged with the display driver. It wants to update to this because it is newer and the computer will not boot again

Install 7-Zip:

This should be straight forward as you have already downloaded it

The clever bit:

Decompress the nVidia package

Now we want to get the display drivers out of the nVidia driver package but NOT the other drivers.

Right click on the driver package and hover on the 7 zip part of the menu.

Click on Extract files…

Put them somewhere useful eg: C:\nVidia – make sure you can remember it for later on

Follow the onscreen instructions to decompress the archive

Open the location that you extracted them and DELETE setup.exe

I’ll say that again, DO NOT RUN IT – DELETE setup.exe

Install only the display drivers

Open device manager by right clicking on the start menu and clicking “Device Manager”

Under Display adapters you’ll find your driverless graphics card

Right click on it

Click Update Driver

Click “Browse for drivers on your computer”

Put in the address from earlier eg: C:\nVidia

Follow the instructions. It takes a while to install.

Finishing off

Reboot and set up the display, once it’s working you can delete the driver package from the computer if you want (I’ve left mine)

Reboot again after it’s all running just to be sure

Connect it to the internet

Let it do all of it’s updates (Press the windows key and type in Update, click “Check for Updates”). This can take a while

See if any device drivers are missing in Device Manager (If so then right click and try to do a driver update from the internet – this will find most things, if anything is left then reboot and try again after the other things have finished installing). This can take a while too

You should now be good to go!

Summary

Install windows 10 without internet access

Install 7-Zip

Decompress the nVidia installer

Delete the setup program and only install the video drivers through the windows system

Connect to the internet and finish off, then install all of the normal ‘rubbish’ that you like on your computer

Make a cup of tea or coffee – you have earned it! (And so have I)