Hello all,

I went to some great lengths last night to get my hands on a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate. I went to get it running and found very quickly that I was missing some vital drivers. I run the A8N SLI Deluxe MOBO, and due to my set up it is imparitive that I get my hands on a set of drivers that work with Vista for the Silicon RAID Controller. I can't seem to find one that Vista will recognize or install at the beginning on the installation so it can see my RAID 5 array.

The following is my set up:
AMD Athlon 64 4000+ ClawHammer
A8N SLI Deluxe MOBO
2 gigs Corsair XMS DDR SDRAM DDR400 PC3200 Dual-Channel
eVGA GeForce 7800 GTX 256MBDDR3
4 10,000 RPM Raptors on a RAID 5 array
CD/DVD Reader/Writer connected with SATA.

The 4 HD's are plugged into the silicon controller and the disc drive is plugged into the nforce controller.

Anyways, if anyone can locate some compatable drivers ide be much obliged if they would be posted here. I am having a rough time finding them.

Thanks
Mark

Took me almost a week to figure out how to install Windows Vista on the A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard. This may be useful to anyone trying to install Windows Vista on any controller card. One thing to keep in mind though, weather or not this is your same motherboard, is that just because it is a certain brand motherboard doesn't mean that company has to be the source for all your drivers. As fas as the A8N-SLI Deluxe goes I highly recommend aquiring your chip set drivers as well a coupple other packaged drivers from NVIDIA rather then ASUS. The A8N-SLI Deluxe features a NVIDIA nForce 4 chipset.

http://www.nvidia.com/content/drivers/drivers.asp
Select "Platform/nForce4 Drivers" --> "nForce4 Series AMD" --> "Windows Vista"
Choose the 32bit or 64bit version as applicable.

STEP 1
Secondly the A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard features a Silicon Image 3114R Raid Controller. As explained above it is best to go the the Silicon Image Website rather then the ASUS website as the ASUS site does not even have Vista Drivers available that you are able to use during installation.
32-Bit Installation --> http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/Si3114_RAID5_x86_15100.zip
64-Bit Installation --> http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/Si3114_RAID5_x64_15100.zip
These are the drivers that you will use during the installation of Windows Vista.
Extract the contents of the zip onto a blank floppy disk.

Step 2
Some installations of Windows Vista require that it be completely reinstalled rather then updated. In this cause you will simply insert the disk, ensure your motherboard is set to load the DVD-Rom First, when prompted insert the disk that we have created in step 1 and continue with the on screen instructions until the installation is complete. This method is highly recommended over an upgrade. You will lose your files during this process so please don't say I didn't warn you. Otherwise you may be able to insert your 32-Bit Vista while inside XP and follow the instructions that way.

Hope I have been of some help. Good luck to all.
Gorgut

AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ Duel Core (939)
A8N-SLI Deluxe
Duel PCI-X GeForce 7900GS 256MB GDDR3 (SLI)
Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty (with Faceplate)
2GB Dual Channel Kingston X-Gamer
2 - Western Digital SATA 8MB Cache 80GB (Raid 0)
Antec True Blue 480w (Duel 12v Rails)

I really appreciate you posting that info. I'm looking into buying this board as an upgrade to my system, since I don't really want to dish out the cash to replace my 4800+ 939 and 4 GB DDR 400. I Plan on running Vista x64 Ultimate. Now that your system has been running for over a month now, how would you rate it's reliably with Vista? Have you had a lot of crashes or driver issues? I use my system as both a multimedia center and a gaming system, would you recommend this board?

Again thanks for taking the time to past that. You most likely saved my hours or even days of frustration.

first of all thank you for your good description, buzz.

Unfortunately here (i live in europe) is the whole silicon image site down for over a week now, and it seems that its not going to come back soon.

so, if anyone has already downloaded the silicon image driver for x86-vista, i would be very grateful for sharing it on a one-click-hoster. thanks in advance and have a beautiful day.