Can't install Intel RAID driver

[Menelmarar]

Core 2 E6600
965WH, Intel Motherboard, 965 chipset.

It's been running for months on Vista32, with the SATA controller in standard IDE mode. Recently added new harddrives and the desire is to RAID Mirror them.

First, I goto Intel's website and get the latest drivers. Application Accelerator RAID does not say it's compatible with Vista. I dig around a bit more and find Matrix Storage Manager and from the description it sounds like this should have the driver in it. When I install it, it says I don't have the supported hardware. This puzzles me for awhile. Nonetheless, I download the latest floppy disc tool from the Storage Manager section and extract it, and then extract it's .IMA floppy image file onto a USB stick.

So I go into bios, and switch the SATA controller from IDE to RAID mode and proceed to boot the computer. As expected, this completely changed the SATA controller so Windows is horribly confused. I boot to the Vista DVD -> Repair Installation -> it can't find any so I use the Add Device button to load the RAID controllers.

The new file I got from Intel.com will not load.
The original floppy disc that came in the retail box will not load.

How do you load drivers for the native Intel RAID controller if the drivers don't work at the Windows installer level, and the don't work in Windows. HELP!

 

[spotter]

It's been running for months on Vista32, with the SATA controller in standard IDE mode.

you answered your own question. If your board isn't in RAID or AHCI mode, the matrix drivers wont install.

 

[Menelmarar]

you answered your own question. If your board isn't in RAID or AHCI mode, the matrix drivers wont install.

...

So I go into bios, and switch the SATA controller from IDE to RAID mode and proceed to boot the computer. As expected, this completely changed the SATA controller so Windows is horribly confused. I boot to the Vista DVD -> Repair Installation -> it can't find any so I use the Add Device button to load the RAID controllers.

 

[Menelmarar]

Found a new help page:

I found this on Intel's site:

WARNING: Switching SATA modes in the BIOS after installing the operating system is not recommended or supported when a SATA drive is the boot drive. Switching modes may cause an immediate blue screen with an 0x0000007b error code, followed by a reboot.

Am I fucked? Do we have to do a complete OS reinstall with the bios set to RAID mode in order to use the raid funtions, no way to update Vista?

What I've been trying to do all this time is switch the SATA to raid, and then do a repair installation off the CD. But it 1. either fails loading the driver, or 2. the repair process itself fails.