Vista - RAID Drivers? Intel Matrix? Chipset?

I have 2 Formatted Hard-drives in my Laptop, an Alienware m9750. When trying to install Vista on them with my recovery disk, I cannot create a partition in the unallocated space and get an Error: 0x80042453. If
I try to install there it says that there is a problem and I have to enable the drive's controller in BIOS. I have a feeling it has something to do with my RAID drivers or BIOS, as when I boot, ever since the error that made me reformat them in the first place, the Intel Matrix thing never comes up, and I never get an option to press <CTRL+I>.

With RAID disabled, and vista installed, I can access both hard drives fine.

Anybody know what to do? I was thinking of reinstalling the driver, either the Intel Matrix RAID Controller Driver, or the Chipset driver, but i dont know which, or how to install them
How do I even install drivers without installing vista first?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Hi Mooseman,

Welcome to the forums,

Try booting from the dvd in normal mode and deleting both drives and then try your raid again.

Normally you would also have to set up a raid array in the Bios. It is to my knowledge not just a case of selecting raid over sata, but then your laptop could possibly be different

You should normally install the raid drivers, when vista fails to find your harddrives which would be a part of a normal raid install At this point you would be given the option to install 3rd party drivers

I hope this helps Pooch

I deleted both partitions and nothing. Reinstalled vista and the raid driver (Intel Matrix) wont install, saying that my computer "doesn't meet the minimum requirements", which is odd, as this was the driver provided by alienware.
Flashed the Bios, updated the chipset, and it still won't install. Oh well, I don't really notice much of a difference in performance anyway.
Thanks for the advice though.

Remove the drives from the RAID controller setup. Reboot. Readd them as a new array. Make sure both drives are same size and empty.

This might work, if you are still interested.

I understand how annoying it can be when these things don't work Doesn't feel much better if you are to far away to get hands on

Happy holidays

Pooch