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I'm still not sure that I'm getting the best driver versions though.

For example, the nVidia nForce Parallel ATA controller lists it's driver version as 5.10.2600.518, and looking through the nForce4 driver package archive at http://www.nvidia.com/object/nforce_nf4_archive.html, this driver appears under v6.53 bundle from 17th March 2005 "IDE NVIDIA driver 5.18 (WHQL)".

According to the Asus support website, I need to use Driver package v6.66 or later with BIOS v 1012 onwards (and I have v1016) to avoid crashing the disc filing system.  I don't think this is affecting me at the moment, because I only have one hard drive connected up to the NV SATA port 3, but this makes me nervous about reconnecting the Hard drives on the Parallel ATA connection.

There is another IDE driver listed under driver package v6.70, which is "IDE driver version 5.52 (WHQL)", so surely this one should be used instead of v5.18?

So, to try to work out what is happening behind the scenes, if

- the Bâshrat the Sneaky Chipset DriverPack v6.12 includes v6.86 of nVidia's driver bundle for nForce 4 AMD motherboards, but
- NVidia's driver bundle does not include the IDE driver for the Parallel ATA interface,

does this mean that the installation process is instead choosing the v5.18 driver that the supported devices page for the MassStorage Controller DriverPack v7.01.1 indicates is intended for the Nforce 1/2/3 packages, since this is a driver version that is also listed by Nvidia as compatible with my Motherboard?

On a related note, is there any way to check whether or not the nVidia Driver Package v6.86, includes the same "IDE driver version 5.52 (WHQL)" that is in Driver Package v6.70.  And if not, would this require both the v6.70 and v6.86 driver bundles to be included in the Chipset Package?  Or at least for the v5.52 (PATA) IDE driver from the v6.70 driver bundle to be included in the Mass Storage Driverpack?

PS.  After previewing this, I realised that I'd been going on a bit here, so I've cut out a section from the middle of 'interim' observations.  If anyone would be interested in the extra detail, let me know.

I'm not sure why you think that these aren't the correct drivers for my motherboard, unless you are referring to the Asus Support website still showing driver bundle v6.65 as the latest chipset drivers for 32bit Windows XP.  But there is another 'unofficial' support forum run by someone from Asus Tech support in the UK, that recommends getting the drivers from Nvidia directly.

Logging in through their Download Drivers section, and selecting Platform Nforce Drivers / Nforce 4 AMD / Windows XP returns driver bundle v6.70, and this is where I got the list of drivers that I posted earlier.

I was about to attach a copy of the output I hhad from DriverView to show the drivers that were being installed from a WinXP Home disc, slipstreamed with SP2, RVM hotfixes (plus a few other tweaks I wanted to try) and Bâshrat the Sneaky driverpacks to 11th June, before I realised that there doesn't seem to be an attachment function here.

I realise this would normally be a no-no, but I've instead attached the file to an old post of mine at Bashrat's old driverpacks Forum on MSFN.org at the bottom of this post. http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=67661.

I've also included a copy of the DriverView report, after manually installing Nvidia's v6.70 Driver bundle manually.   I've  also just realised, that the list of the driver versions that I posted above came from Nvidia.com, which lists them slightly differently to the equivalent page on nvidia.co.uk, although all the version numbers are the same.

I can see from the reports that the IDE drivers have changed from v534 (and 535) to v552 that is part of the v6.70 driver bundle, and that some Audio drivers appear to have been added, but I'm still not sure that I have all the correct drivers from the v6.70 bundle.

The other thing that I noticed during the manual installation is that the Unsigned driver warning popped up for the Serial ATA driver (twice) and for the Parallel ATA driver, even though the v5.52 of the Serial ATA driver is supposed to be signed.

Is it possible that the installation has used the earlier signed drivers here in preference to the newer unsigned ones?

Since Driverpacks.net says that the Chipset DriverPack includes v6.70 for the Nforce4 motherboards, does this mean that these replaced the previous v6.66 drivers (in the update at v5.11 on 6th Nov 2005) or that the v6.70 drivers were added to the existing pack?

If both versions are in the existing chipset pack, how would I go about removing the old ones to make sure there is no chance of installing a pre-v6.65 driver?

Or would it be safer to accept the drivers that have been installed as a minimum for the latest BIOS revisions, and accept that I'd need to update these manually?

Sorry it took so long to report back, but by the time I got back into my production environment, it was past midnight, and i knew that once I started typing I'd be there for ages.

My System Specs.

#1. Asus A8n SLi Deluxe Rev 1.02
AMD64 3700 San Diego E4
1Gb DDR400
Asus EN6600GT Top
WDC WD1200JB (IDE) + WD2500JB (IDE) + SamSung SP2504C (SATA II) + WD 2500JB (Ext IEEE 1394)
2* LG DVDRAM GSA-4167B (IDE) + LG DVDRAM GSA-2164D (Ext USB)
Silverstone TJ05 Chassis
Silverstone ST60F PSU.

The good news is that I got the installation to complete this time.  I turned the raid controller on for the NVRAID, but left RAID on all the IDE and SATA discs disabled as suggested, and also unplugged the IDE discs leaving on the SamSung Spinpoint 250Gb on the NV SATA port, and the two optical drives on their own IDE connections.  I also unplugged the Firewire and USB connections to my external Drives, Scanner and Joypad, but left the printer and mouse plugged in (although the printer (an ESP 950) was turned off).

The Slipstream disc was based on XP Home Edition, +SP2 +RVM hotfixes, and all Bâshrat the Sneaky driverpacks available over the weekend.  I used Method 2 and elected to keep the drivers, but I'm not sure if this worked or not.

I was also really chuffed with how fast it appeared to be going too. It started booting from the slipstream CD at 23:21 and was rebooting after GUI setup mode, by 23:40. 

The only point when I was worried was at the first restart, and got a blank blue screen for an extended period before the GUI part of the installation started.  I wondered if I should have turned off the NVRAID controller at that point (between text mode and GUI set up), but then remembered that I'd had a similar pause when I'd tested the same disc on my WDC 250 IDE drive at the weekend, after it had failed to install to the SATA drive correctly at the time, and also that the device detection was part of the GUI set up process.  Feedback point : If this blue screen (not a BSOD by the way) is when Method 2 is extracting its drivers from the CD to the hard drive, it would be useful to have a message come up to say so. << Moderator edit: we do that now. <<

After turning the NVRAID back off again, I let it start Windows for the first time, but it hit another re-boot, flashing up a blue screen breifly in the process, but I changed the next restart to Safe mode, and although it paused at MUP.sys, the system was definately doing something, and came up with the Welcome Screen a few seconds later.

When I clicked into the Administrator Account, it Started the DP finish process, and I guess I must have forgotten to turn of the driver signing checks in the WinNT.SIF file, because it ran through a long series of Unsigned Driver Warning screens, but seemed to cancel these automatically. 

It also seems to have installed the Chipset drivers for my Asus A8N SLi Deluxe Motherboard, because at the same time as running the DPFinish commands, the Add New Hardware started and detected my Video Card, and wanted to connect to Windows Update to look for the correct driver.  But it returned an error about an incorrect parameter, it didn't install the graphics driver.

This part ran from 23:42 to 23:51, when I restarted the system again, and this time it logged in normally.  This time the Add new hardware correctly updated the graphics driver, and a quick look at the Device Manager showed that everything appeared to have been detected.  At least there were no Pling or Query overlays to denote unknown of incorrectly installed devices.

The only thing that I'm not sure of, is how to tell if the slipstreamed installation has put in the latest version of the nForce4 drivers that are requierd for the latest BIOS updates for the motherboard.

I've tried looking at the propertes tabs on a variety of components that seem to be part of the nForce4 set up, but all the driver dates are from last year, and they have version numbers like 5.1.2600.534, or 5.1.2600.445, or 5.1.2600.450. 

Can any one advise what I should be looking out for, or if it has infact put in a previous version of the drivers, I remember seeing something about mofifying the DP to remove the ones that don't apply to my board - can someone help with this?

Overall, I'd also like to say that I'm impressed with the new version of the driver pack software, except as I said that it doesn't appear to have kept the drivers.  Oh yes, and the other thing I noticed when I was trying to install something else that the Hardware Wizard couldn't see the drivers on the CD either, because they were all in .7z files.  Is this a consequence of Method 2, and would method 1 let me install drivers from the CD, because they'd be CAB files instead of 7z ones?