Vista - BSOD Raid 0 problems and updating to 64bit

Arrghh! I'm so wound up! I'm constantly getting BSOD whilst trying to set up raid0 in XP 32bit (to start with). Very sorry for the long post. I just wanted to give you guys as much info as possible.

I'll take it from the beginning so you guys have a better understanding of what I'm doing and want to achieve.

Basically I have an 'upgrade to' version of vista64 which requires XP to be installed before it can run. I've had it running perfect whilst using one HDD but this time I want to use Raid0. As you can tell it's not going to well

First off I formatted my second hard drive to have it ready for raid0. I then created a raid driver floppy using the drivers from the motherboard CD. I went into bios and changed the sata config to RAID saved and exited. Pressed Ctrl+I during post to enter Intel Raid manager. I create the raid0 array and exit the manager. Windows XP setup screen pops up to start the XP installation game. I press F6 when prompted. I then press S and tell set up to load ICH8/ICH9 SATA RAID CONTROLLER drivers from the floppy. Set up does it's thing. It then says Windows is starting then bang BSOD every time. If I revert back to one HDD and change back to IDE under sata config XP installs absolutly fine. No problems. As soon as I try setting up raid. . . . .

I've tried all sorts of things. Memtesting, HDD chkdsk, loading AHCI drivers instead of Raid, taking one stick of memory out, updated bios, ect ect.

All I want to do is get XP installed with on raid0. I can then upgrade to vista64 keeping the array i assume??

Any help would be an absolute god send guys. I really am pulling my hair out. I've never been this stressed before in my life!!! I'm begining to wonder if all this raid0 lark is worth it at all.

Thanks, Staith

Hi Staith,

Although you have got an upgrade version of Vista, you don't need to install an earlier OS version before you can install it - see the following Tutorial Clean Install From Upgrade Vista
In addition, I notice that you wish to install Vista 64-bit on top of XP 32-bit. That will not work anyway because you cannot upgrade a 32-bit OS to 64-bit (or vice-versa). In those situations, it has to be a clean install.

Thanks for your reply Dwarf. I've decided to chuck in the towel with the whole raid0 stuff as I've heard it's not really all that great a performance gain for gaming.