Hi all. Completely lost, really appreciate any help.

[summary: after raid1 mirror rebuild, PC wont display anything after the IRQ allocation table screen at boot, when booting to either primary (the raid mirror) or win XP pro cd]

Background: SATA mirrored RAID 500gb running xp pro. Drives 15 months old. The mirror has been degrading and i've repaired it 3 times using the bios option, and it's been fine for a while after (a number of weeks with no problem). I've been meaning to do something about it but once the mirror's repaired, how can I diagnose the fault if there is one? Take one out each time and chkdsk? What if the problem's gone?

Anyway, so the mirror degraded again yesterday so I rebuilt, forgot to save when I exited, and rebooted. Watched some movies, did a load of other bits, all good. Powered off. Next morning, RAID saying it's still degraded. I'm thinking maybe it isn't but it says it is cos i didn't save after the last rebuild the night before, but i rebuild anyway and save. It finishes and I save and it reboots and goes through the first few boot info screens, does the IRQ allocation list, then the screen goes blank, and everything seems to be on. A little burst of CPU churn then no more. initial guess: hard drives screwed (the sata raid mirror is the boot drive). restarted a few times, same thing happens.

Remedial measures attempted:
1. BIOS: load defaults. Result: NTLDR missing. Figure it's related to the raid config which needed to be specially loaded with a slipstreamed xp pro sp3 disc. Screens still go blank.
2. BIOS: load optimised: NTLDR doesn't appear, screens blank.
3. BIOS: switch raid slave to primary boot. no change. switch it back.
4. BIOS: boot to CDROM. Stick the xp3 slipstream disc in there (w/ RAID drivers). does the same thing, irq list, blank screens. Second guess: either
a. RAID and/or HDDs and/or optical drive is dead, or
b. something else is wrong. video card works fine and hasn't had much to do recently, no intense gaming sessions or anything, and the boot screens display fine. I don't know enough to know what the computer runs after the IRQ list.

On advice, tried taking the first drive out (of sata and power), didn't change anything. Tried second, nothing. Tried both, nothing. Still get "NTLDR is missing. press ctrl alt del to restart"

From this website I tried the following:
NTLDR is missing
possible reason 1: non bootable cd. tried original (non slipstream) win disc. didn't work.
possible reason 2: hdd improperly setup in BIOS. no tips on how to fix this given, and why would it prevent the cd boot from working?
possible reason 3: corrupt NTLDR or NTDETECT.COM file. Solution: load from winCD. Doh!
possible reason 4: misconfig with boot.ini file. solution: edit the file in root of windows. How can I get there?
possible reason 5: attempt to upgrade from FAT32: i didn't.
possible reason 6: new hdd added: "Adding a new hard disk drive to a computer that already has Windows installed on it may cause the NTLDR error to occur". Might be the case if one's died and they both seem to be formatted. But how do I know which, since neither work on their own, when BOTH should work independently. And why would the optical drive be affected?
possible reason 7: corrupt boot sector / master boot record. Solution: fix with recovery console. On winCD. Doh!
possible reason 8: windows seriously corrupted. Solution: reinstall. from.............................................d oh!
possible reason 9: loose or faulty IDE/EIDE cable. They're sata drives, the cables were in place and in perfect condition.

Additional info: inside case quite dusty. Cleaned it.

Also, when it wouldn't go past the IRQ screen the first few times, I entered the BIOS and loaded fail-safe defaults - after this, I got the NTLDR error. I then loaded optimised defaults, and it went away. I wonder if this is to do with the RAID controller I loaded with the XP SP3 slipstream disc?
Even if it is, I still don't understand how I now can't use my optical drive....
The optical drive and SATAs show up in my CMOS.

I can play around with the BIOS but I don't know what I should be doing to make things work again. Any assistance AT ALL will bu hugely appreciated!
Thanks so much!

Hey bud, welcome to PCHF,

Honestly it sounds like your mirror HD was damaged and it just got worse & worse and now just plain won't work.

I haven't really messed with RAID but have you tried deconfiguring the array and booting with the main HD? Or is that not possible?

Is your optical drive SATA or IDE?

Maybe someone else will have a better idea as well soon

Hello,just posting to see if you need further assistance.

Or do you consider your thread as Answerd/Resolved/Fixed?

Please post back if you need any further help.

Jelly Bean.