Jakamo5's P-7811/7801u/7805u FX Fresh Format Guide

gonna give this dual stripe size a go Jak.. finally going back to RAID - Wondering if I can make 2 OS partitions. One for Vista and one for Win7. Guess I'll find out.

 

you should be able to, let me know how it goes

 

Actually.. I couldn't. And, I have an issue. I have 2 WD HDDs. One is a 320GB, one is 160GB. When I loaded Matrix Manager to create the raid array, it would only let me use a total of 294GB for the RAID arrays. Check out this thread, it has more detail. Im confused. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=345888

EDIT: Lol @ your sig - it told me the same when I tried reppin ya

 

The raid array will take the lowest sum of both drives then double them, I would not do riad with that hd setup 160 +160 = 220ish

 

Ok..I see my erroneous way. Thanks - Guess I need another 320GB to get the most out of it.

 

320ish

Yes, I would just get either another 160gb or another 320gb. Otherwise you're wasting your money, I posted in the thread you started explaining more.

 

Lol, I said 320ish because I don't know the tech reson you lose the diffrence between 320 and 294, I know its a windows thing.

 

nah i was just pointing out that you said 220ish. you probably meant 320ish

 

Thanks again jak - It was the size of the drives that screwed me up, I conveniently picked the worst setup possible for RAID My Read Speeds are excellent though, eh? I gotta get another 320GB

 

I hear ya, hehe, but the smallest HD he had was a 160gb, that times two is 220. I don't get much sleep, so sometimes my math is not the best

 

Wait, what? were you pointing out your mistake or are you making the same mistake again lol. 160x2 = 320, not 220, that's what I was getting at earlier. lol

No problemo, you enabled write-back-cache right? (I'm talking from the Intel Matrix Storage Manager, not the one in the Windows disk properties)

 

I made the same mistake, sorry , lol

 

I a real noob too and have 1 question. Would I be better off just formatting the HD the laptop came with and starting with a new copy of Vista Ultimate after installing the second HD? Thanks!

 

Yes, Ultimate is better than Home Premium if you will actually be using the extra features. You can follow the guide and just use the "Vista Ultimate CD" wherever it tells you to use the "Gateway Recovery CD"


BTW everyone I updated the Dreamscene tweak with a link to some really awesome ones in wmv format.

 

Jakamo5, Awesome, thank you for the backgrounds

 

Wish I had ultimate ;(

 

Well check out the tweaks in the guide! I don't have ultimate, but I have all the features of ultimate

 

Yeah, most of the Ultimate features can be activated in Home Premium and Business, not home basic though

 

Update: after a lot of research I've decided to replace Windows Vista Firewall with Comodo Firewall in its "safe mode" setting, and proactive defense disabled.

 

ok ive been reading this forum for a little while but have never posted. I have found some great info here and for that I say thank you too everyone that is so generous with their time and advice. I purchased a 7801u several months ago and decided to follow this fresh format guide and setup raid on it. I purchased 2 320 gig sata drives,installed them, setup raid, but im not finding where i install the most recent raid drivers. Im using the recover disks I made when first running my system and I see nowhere where windows is allowing me to install the driver. I went ahead and installed anyway without the drivers figuring i would see what would happen. Well all that got me was an os that was installed and shows only one drive C:that is 49.9 gigs. Has anyone else had this problem not finding a place to install drivers? I just havnt seen any place that gives me that option. I am a bit of a noob too all of this so your patience is appreciated.

 

I'm the author of the guide, but I think you're referring to iaTa's suggestion to get the most recent raid drivers and to install them before installing the operating system.

Personally, I didn't do that, so I have no experience with it really. All I did was what you seem to have done, I just went ahead an installed the OS with the already built-in raid drivers. It is normally best to have the most recent drivers, but I've had no problems with the default drivers, which are pretty recent anyway.


You mentioned one more problem that you're having, you only see one drive (C) that is 49.9 GB. This is fine, you haven't made any mistakes so don't worry. The reason that you're not seeing the second much larger drive is simply because it hasn't been formatted yet. Remember when you installed the OS to drive C, you had to format it first. However, I'm guessing you didn't format the second drive at that time, which could be my fault because I'm not sure if I said to format the second drive in the instructions. Either way, the solution is very simple - you can format the drive from Windows.

Click on Start > right-click "Computer" > click "Manage" > Go to Disk Management

You should see what I think will be labeled as "D:" and will be listed as "unallocated space" or something along those lines. It should be about 322.61 GB. Simply right click it, and click "Format" and just use all of the default settings to format it. Afterward, you might have to restart before it shows up as drives normally do in windows explorer, but I'm not sure.

Let me know how it turns out or if you have anymore questions.

 

ok I gave that a try and found the drive as you described. however it didnt give the me option too format, only to initialize which i did, upon rebooting it still isnt listed as a drive when selecting computer.

 

ok got it figured out i had to initialize first then format,thx for the help have everything up and running correctly now.

 

awesome rep+1

 

upgraded avira 6 month free link to a new one that works

 

Hello,
could someone help me please:
I reinstalled Vista 64 on my P 7811 FX.
Everything fine, apart from one thing missing: The "Mass Storage Controller".
Where could I find that driver?
It's not the matrix storage controller, as I installed that one allready, and still get the message in my device manager.
I actually installed a Vertex SSD (which works very fine, no probs). The new Vista is on that Vertex, and as I said, everything works fine, just this damned message in the device manager.

Please some help

 

thanks for the question. the driver you're referring to is the one that enables the SD card slot. it should be found in the link's i've provided to the drivers for this laptop. look for something along the lines of "media reader". please post back if you're still having problems.

 

Aih, thanks, will try it this evening and let you know.

Any idea in regard to the CPU Windows Score and the change from 5.8 to 5.2 after Vista reinstall? Did I miss to enable something in Vista?

regards

 

I'm surprised to hear that you got a score of 5.8 for the CPU initially, are you sure you're not mistaken? My score is 5.9 for everything except cpu, which is 5.2, but it has always been that way...

 

Hmm, I was pretty sure I had....but than again, it's either my memory or windows
5.9 is all my others as well.

Many thanks!

 

Jakamo5,
When you set up the RAID array, does that erase the hidden 10GB recovery partition?
Thanks for a great guide.

 

It would be better to formate both HDDs otherwise you would "lose" 20GB, but I think you can just make a nother partiton to keep your backup ...
edit: or you make "4 partitions" (2 150GB => 1) or let me call them "3", one raid und 2 10gb (one of the two is the recovery-part.)

BUT I DON'T KNOW wheather AlienRespawn will still work^^

Greetings
Julian

 

Hey Jakamo, first of all I would like to thank you a lot for this guide. If you do not mind I would appreciate it so much if you would help me out with my situation. I have had my Gateway 7811 since September 2008 and long story short, I have sent it back to Gateway 3 times with them having to replace some parts on the third time but still the blue screens keep coming in like a plague. The thing is, Ive been looking around the net and a considerable amount of people have the same problem and they said all they needed to do was update some drivers and thats it.

So this is what I did today:

1. Reinstalled my OS using the gateway CD

2. Downloaded the Intel Chipset Software Installation Utility Version 9.1.1.1011 WHQL. Extracted it to a folder and then double clicked the "Setup" file. Then rebooted.

3. Followed your guide on how to update the video card and got the v186.08 for Vista x64.

4. Downloaded the Intel PRO/WiFi Version 12.4.0.21. Extracted it to a folder and went to vista --> Vista --> v64 --> Install --> double clicked the "Setup" file. Then rebooted.

5. Download the P-7800_AUDIO_CONEXANT_8.7.0.1007_64BIT.zip - Conexant Audio Driver Version: 4.57.0.50 from the Gateway website. Extracted it to a folder. Then double clicked the "Setup64" file. Then Rebooted.

6. Downloaded the P-7800_NETWORK_MARVELL_10.60.6.3.zip - Marvell LAN Driver Version: 10.60.6.3 from the gateway website. Extracted it to a folder. Then went to IYMW02WW --> Installer --> small --> then double clicked the setup_v10[1].60.6.3 file.

7. Downloaded Opera, Spotify, Garena, played some games for a while and then it blue screened again.

So did I update the drivers in the correct order or am I downloading the wrong ones or does this mean its a hardware problem?

Many thanks in advance.

 

The best thing for you to do is to keep a piece of paper handy and write down the blue screen codes. Believe it or not the blue screen does give pretty detailed info on what the problem was. I'm guessing you have a faulty GPU, Gateway won't replace that without replacing the entire laptop, so that could be what's giving you problems.

Post the codes back here when you get them and we'll see if we can help.

 

Thanks a lot for replying. I also posted my problem in Iata's definitive guide to the graphics card driver upgrade and he suggested I checked my RAM using MemTest which I left running through the night until 1075% with no errors (I divided the search in two 1636 MB components). But I will use that laptop as much as possible to today to try and get all the Blue Screen codes for you.

 

Right, so after half a day of playing games trying to get a Blue Screen, the laptop hickuped 5 times, but 2 of them were freezes and 3 of them were immediate reboots instead of getting a blue screen error. Just thought I'd share this in case its of any importance but I'll still try to get those stop error codes.

 

Check window's event manager for errors around those times, see if it gives you any info.

 

I got 2 stop errors finally:
- 0x0000001A
- 0x0000003D

And in both the random reboots and blue screen showed this chain of error logs in the event viewer:
- "Audit events have been dropped by the transport. The real time backup file was corrupt due to improper shutdown. The previous system shutdown was unexpected. Unable to initialize the security package Kerberos for server side authentication. The data field contains the error number. Even filer with query "SELECT From_InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not but reactivated in namespace "//./root.CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.

 

The first error code indicates a problem with your memory (RAM). The second code indicates just that an essential service was halted abruptly. So the problem could be your RAM, even if you ran memtest, run it again, and then maybe open the part of the laptop that holds the RAM and just switch the chips around, alternate their slots. Make sure they are seated correctly. Hope that helps.

It is definitely a hardware problem and if this doesn't fix it, I would suggest doing your best to talk gateway into completely replacing the laptop.

 

Ya I think I will just call them and ask for a replacement model. Do you think they will do that though? I dont really know their policy on replacing the whole thing or even maybe a full refund. But in any case I have to wait until Monday 8 AM to call them since the level 2 representative dont work on weekends. Thanks a lot for your help man, I appreciate it. Ill get back to you after I call them.

 

Well, nobody has posted here for quite some time, but I figure it's worth a shot. Especially after reading all these posts, and the fantastic knowledge coming from Jakamo5, E-wrecked, iaTa, and many others, too. I had hoped my question would come up but no such luck, so if anyone stumbles on this, I would sure appreciate some wisdom. I am currently setting up to run RAID 0 on my P7805uFX and I need to know if I will be able to mount a saved image of my current setup to the RAID array. I've never tried this before, so I'm hoping for some expertise. If I set up RAID, install updated drivers, then try to load back in an image of my current configuration, will it work? Or is the clean install the only way? Thanks to anyone who may be able to help. And thanks Jakamo5 for the guide - that's beautiful. I will post my specs below so you know what I'm working with.

P7805uFX 17" 1440x900 P8400 2.27 not overclocked 8Gb DDR3 NVIDIA 9800M-GTS Dual 7200 RPM 320GB HDD's (about to be RAIDed) 64bit Windows 7 Ultimate/Adobe CS4/Office Ultimate

 

I'm pretty sure it would work.

 

I hope this thread is still active, I've tried all of thee above. I simply can't get (winblows) to install - it wont recognize my drive as a valid volume for installation. I haven't tried the restore disks given they were shipped to me with a huge-mongous scratch on one of the disks.

It's funny because I've got ubuntu to install on my Raid0, but windows wont budge even when I install the latest and greatest raid drivers.

I was wondering if it's because I was using .23 so I switched to .20 without any change. It's both a Vista and Win7 x32 versions.

I just can't seem to get it to work at all with microshaft winblows :/


-P.S. -> At the moment I'm deployed in Iraq, so getting new disks is out of the question. I didn't search for a torrent, however; I know if I use the install disks it will install Vista + ungodly amounts of bloatware. I really wanted to avoid that at all costs, then again... Maybe it's just time for me to do away with windoze....

 

Yes of course, it will even find a driver and it's the ICH8M-9M and you press next. Shortly after you press next again and it's a no go, windows can't use that volume.

 

I can't get to 10 :'[
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