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Hmmm, I had a perfectly functioning NT system (SP3) with 2 SCSI drives
and a SCSI CDROM drive all running using an Adaptec 2940UW controller.

I just plugged a SUN external disk pack (12 x 2GB drives) into the
machine. (The drives are standard Seagates with an SCA connector;
nothing fancy about them)

Everything looked happy; the controller detected all 14 drives and the
CDROM drive fine; all SCSI ID's were correct etc. - but NT
blue-screened when booting with an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error.
Uh-oh. No idea why; I mean the boot device is still SCSI ID0 so
there's nothing at all inaccessible about it.

Now for the real killer: if I revert back to how things were, with no
external disk pack and just the original two drives, I'm now *still*
getting the same error! (yes, SCSI BIOS is detecting things just fine
as they were before plugging the disk pack in) Help!

Looks like it may be a bug in NT / aic78xx.sys and it can't cope with
more than x number of hard drives - yet it's gone and also screwed up
my registry or something??

Any ideas a) why it happened and b) how to fix it (I'll try the NT
boot floppies in a moment) and c) if there's a fix so I can use all 15
drives with NT 4 at once?

cheers!

Jules

On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 08:01:31 -0700, Jules wrote:

> Hmmm, I had a perfectly functioning NT system (SP3) with 2 SCSI drives
> and a SCSI CDROM drive all running using an Adaptec 2940UW controller.
>
> I just plugged a SUN external disk pack (12 x 2GB drives) into the
> machine. (The drives are standard Seagates with an SCA connector;
> nothing fancy about them)
>
> Everything looked happy; the controller detected all 14 drives and the
> CDROM drive fine; all SCSI ID's were correct etc. - but NT blue-screened
> when booting with an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error. Uh-oh. No idea why;
> I mean the boot device is still SCSI ID0 so there's nothing at all
> inaccessible about it.
>
> Now for the real killer: if I revert back to how things were, with no
> external disk pack and just the original two drives, I'm now *still*
> getting the same error! (yes, SCSI BIOS is detecting things just fine as
> they were before plugging the disk pack in) Help!
>
> Looks like it may be a bug in NT / aic78xx.sys and it can't cope with
> more than x number of hard drives - yet it's gone and also screwed up my
> registry or something??
>
> Any ideas a) why it happened and b) how to fix it (I'll try the NT boot
> floppies in a moment) and c) if there's a fix so I can use all 15 drives
> with NT 4 at once?
>
> cheers!
>
> Jules

The SCSI driver loads first then the NT bootloader looks in boot.ini for
the predetermined boot partition. If the bootloader can't find the
partition then you get the error message. I can't tell you whether or not
the partition is missing or corrupt, or the drive is offline, or the
boot.ini has been corrupt. You can load the NT4 install utility and see if
it can find the drive. You need to have the SCSI drivers on floppy and hit
F6 when NT4 is detecting hardware. If it sees the drive but not a
partition then something may have corrupted the partition.

Question, does your boot device have the same SCSI ID as it did when NT4
worked?

US Administrator Spilled my beer when they jumped on the table and
proclaimed in <>:

> On Sun, 28 Sep 2003 08:01:31 -0700, Jules wrote:
>
>> Hmmm, I had a perfectly functioning NT system (SP3) with 2 SCSI
>> drives and a SCSI CDROM drive all running using an Adaptec 2940UW
>> controller.
>>
>> I just plugged a SUN external disk pack (12 x 2GB drives) into the
>> machine. (The drives are standard Seagates with an SCA connector;
>> nothing fancy about them)
>>
>> Everything looked happy; the controller detected all 14 drives and
>> the CDROM drive fine; all SCSI ID's were correct etc. - but NT
>> blue-screened when booting with an INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE error.
>> Uh-oh. No idea why; I mean the boot device is still SCSI ID0 so
>> there's nothing at all inaccessible about it.
>>
>> Now for the real killer: if I revert back to how things were, with
>> no external disk pack and just the original two drives, I'm now
>> *still* getting the same error! (yes, SCSI BIOS is detecting things
>> just fine as they were before plugging the disk pack in) Help!
>>
>> Looks like it may be a bug in NT / aic78xx.sys and it can't cope
>> with more than x number of hard drives - yet it's gone and also
>> screwed up my registry or something??
>>
>> Any ideas a) why it happened and b) how to fix it (I'll try the NT
>> boot floppies in a moment) and c) if there's a fix so I can use all
>> 15 drives with NT 4 at once?
>>
>> cheers!
>>
>> Jules
>
> The SCSI driver loads first then the NT bootloader looks in boot.ini
> for the predetermined boot partition. If the bootloader can't find
> the partition then you get the error message. I can't tell you
> whether or not the partition is missing or corrupt, or the drive is
> offline, or the boot.ini has been corrupt. You can load the NT4
> install utility and see if it can find the drive. You need to have
> the SCSI drivers on floppy and hit F6 when NT4 is detecting
> hardware. If it sees the drive but not a partition then something
> may have corrupted the partition.
>
> Question, does your boot device have the same SCSI ID as it did when
> NT4 worked?

Just to add a little...

Once the OP gets it back running, it might be a good idea to do an
ERD (Emergency Repair Disk) for this machine...in case it throws up
again... <G>

NOI