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I just picked up an adaptec 2940 scsi card and two hdds and wanted to put win2k on it. if i boot from the cd windows will start installing on the pc, but when it needs to do the restart, it won't boot from the hdd. it will only boot from the cd and start setup over from the beginning. what do i need to do to get these hdds to work right? i made the scsi card as the first boot device. any ideas?

if you're installing win2k onto a drive that is on the SCSI controller and not the onboard IDE controller then you'd have to have the drivers for the SCSI controller on a floppy disk...
if you pay attention to the initialization of the drivers at the beginning of the install, you will get the chance to load up the SCSI drivers... forgot what you're supposed to hit.. but you hit say... "F2" and then it'll do a search on the FDD and load the drivers... then after that, everything should be a breeze.

It's the F6 key I think. First question the Win2K (or XP) install asks is to hit F6 if you need to install SCSI or other (like ATA100) drivers, or else hit Return to continue.

Hit F6 to load the SCSI drivers. You MUST have the drivers unzipped and ready on a FLOPPY (you can't access them off a CD or hard drive).

what they said and you can even pull the cd out after it wants to restart tomake sure it doesnt boot of the disk.

Greg

I'm pretty sure that Win2k has the 2940 drivers already onboard, I don't remember that I needed the F6 feature when I installed Win2k on my Asus P2B-LS which has a 2940U2W onboard ... though it's been a while that I sold it.
Win2k shouldn't even come to the restart part when it doesn't have the proper SCSI drivers, it should error out before it even comes to the partitioning part.

It also shouldn't restart the setup from the CD automatically after a reboot, well, at least I get a message after the SCSI BIOS finishes "hit a key to start setup from CD ..." with a 15 second limit, when I don't hit a key it continues with HDD boot.

Check your mobo BIOS setting for Bootorder and see if there's SCSI in it, if so, select it.

Oh, btw, what 2940 card is it exactly, U or UW or U2W?
Don't forget to cover the basics: proper termination and no double ID's, the designated boot HDD should get ID0.
Proper termination would be either a HDD with termination enabled at the end of the cable (up to UW) or an active terminator at the end of the cable (up to LVD/U160/U320,make sure no other drive has termination enabled).
We shouldn't forget about the SCSI FAQ which you can find at http://scsifaq.org:9080/scsi_faq/
Excuse me pointing out the basics when you're already a seasoned SCSI user.

All this said it wouldn't hurt to try the F6 feature/driver disk and remove the CD when you reboot, just put it back when it rebooted and the setup continues.

thanks for the info guys, i will try that stuff. I don't really need anything scsi, but it was cheap and i decided to give it a try.

letme go into a little more detail. what happens when windows setup restarts the computer is that the the computer tries to boot from the hdd first but can't find a bootable partition, it then boots form the cd and gives me this message: couldn't open the boot partition to check the signature. then continues to load windows setup. I am newq to scsi and i have no clue what that could mean. and when it starts windows setup it starts all over intead of leaving off where it began.

ok... did you make sure everything was set right?
hdd jumpers? scsi terminator (they still use them don't they?)

You new to SCSI = go and read at least some of the basics in the SCSI faq -> http://scsifaq.org:9080/scsi_faq/scsi_quick_start.html

- Did you check your mobo BIOS for the "Bootorder" , most likely in the "Advanced BIOS Features" if there's a setting for SCSI?

- What exact model is the Adaptec? 2940.. (U or UW or U2W) or just describe the cable connectors it has internally (50-pin looks like IDE, 68-pin like a high-density parallelport).

- Any info abou the HDDs ?

- Check the jumpers on the HDDs, there are some that have the value "SCSI ID" or just "ID".

- Did you read the FAQ yet?
After reading the FAQ, at least the "Generic SCSI Questions", check your setup for proper termination and SCSI ID numbering.


Termination (and how the cable runs from card to drives):

2940 (ID7) ---- HDD (ID0) ---- HDD (ID1) ---- Terminator

or

2940 (ID7) ---- HDD (ID0) ---- empty ---- HDD (ID1, termination activated)

You could also try to only install your main HDD first with ID0 and install Win2000, add the second HDD after you finished.

Fell free to ask when you don't understand what's written in the FAQ.

How do I know if termination is enabled on a hdd? right now the way i have it hooked up is just one hdd(id0), and the scsi card. i put one end of the cable in the scsi card, and the other on the hdd, there is nothing in between. would this setup work, or should i put a terminator on the second end of the cable? and where would i get a terminator? sorry about all the questions. btw, the card is just a 2940 50-pin. the thing is that windows will see the hdd, it will even copy all the files to the hdd, but when it restarts, it doesn't find a bootable drive. can i get into the scsi bios? should i change if it's bootable there?????

Yes, check the SCSI BIOS if it has some setting to make it bootable for HDDs.

Termination:
Your HDD should have one jumper for TERMINATION (maybe labeled TERM) and it should be ON when the jumper is ON. Only the drive at the end of the cable must have termination set to ON. All other drives must have termination disabled.

Can you list the possibilities for your mobo BIOS bootorder settings ? Or what is currently selected in your mobo BIOS ?
Something like "FLOPPY , CDROM , SCSI" would be ideal, "FLOPPY , CDROM , HDD" might not work since this would try to boot from IDE HDD instead of SCSI.