An error that has annoyed me a lot recently at home on Vista, and I’ve just found two solutions for it.
The problem is when I come to install some pieces of software, I get “Error 1327: Invalid Drive P:\“. A useless error message, and fustrating.
The cause of this error is that my Pictures, Video and Music folders are stored on a NAS drive (mapped to P:\). When running a setup program in elevated security using the UAC, it appears Vista does not know that P:\ is mapped any more.
There are two solutions:
- Disconnect current drive. Run command prompt as Administrator, and “net use P: \\path\to\share”. Then map your drive as normal. I’m not sure if this sticks, or even works, as I’ve also done the other method which I think is more likely to have fixed it.
- In regedit, go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\. Change whichever mapped locations you have (e.g. P:\Music) to the full UNC path (e.g. \\path\to\share\Music). Basically, don’t use mapped drive letters, use the UNC path.
You’d think something as basic as syncing with a network disk would be available to everyone… but no, one of those annoying things I’ve found about Home Premium is this:
The ability to sync with network folders is not included in Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, and Windows Vista Home Premium.
It wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t cost £100 odd quid to upgrade! I don’t have that sort of money, damnit!
An issue thats been annoying me a little over the last few days was trying to get my nVidia nForce RAID array working. I’d taken 4x 300GB hard disks out of one of my servers as I wanted to keep them. Initially I tried to set up the array using my shiny Adaptec 2410SA. Alas, on a brief check, Adaptec don’t have Vista drivers. I tried hacking it a bit, but didn’t get it to work.
I gave up on that and tried setting up the array using the onboard RAID device… which actually makes more sense as it’ll probably be a lot faster and efficient than using a PCI RAID device. Anyway, I enabled RAID in the BIOS, set up the array in the nForce BIOS, and it was happy and existing as a nice big striped 1.2TB (!) array. Then it came to Vista, and the annoyance began.
The array appeared in Disk Manager as four seperate drives. My first instinct was to reinstall or upgrade drivers. I tried re-installing, to no avail. Having no internet meant I had to go round a friends house and download the latest nForce drivers (and get exceedingly drunk in the process…). I installed these, and still the same result. I did a lot of Googling, and some people recommended upgrading the BIOS. I managed to get my mobile phone to connect my PC to the internet just long enough to get on the ABit site and download the latest BIOS. No difference…
I tried various hacks that were suggested, and I finally gave in and posted on the nVidia forums. A bloke called Fernando responded telling me that the latest nForce drivers (15.17) didn’t support nForce 4 for RAID. Nice one, nVidia. This guy has obviously done a lot of work on this issue as he’s actually made a driver pack (even WHQL’ed!) for nForce 4 systems that worked straight off. If anyone has any issues at all with nForce 4 boards, I highly recommend installing this driver pack at the first instance. I am now happy with my 1.2TB hard drive… now I just need to fill it!
More detail, and the download links can be found here.
And lastly, thanks to Fernando for putting the effort in and making the solution so simple.
Oh - I forgot to mention also that I got around to upgrading to WP 2.5. Not had much of a fiddle, so far all I can see is that the admin section had a bit of a facelift, but I’m off to bed in just a second as Hannah is waiting for me, so I shall investigate another time!
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