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VMWare Server Caused acpitabl.dat Error?

Last night I installed VMWare Server on my new Dell Precision T3400. When I came in this morning the login screen was up. The computer hung after I entered the password. I had to give it a hard boot. When I try to boot in safe mode it hangs at acpitable.dat. The computer worked perfectly fine before the installation so I am assuming VMWare is the cause.

Dell Precision T3400
Intel Q9300, 2.5GHz
8GB, 800MHz, DDR2 ECC SDRAM
nVidia, Quadro FX 570
500 GB SATA... 2 drives configured in RAID 1
ICH9R Chipset

XP 64, SP2... all current updates applied

BIOS Version = A08
SATA Operation = RAID On
Virtualization = On (this was set to off, I turned it on to troubleshoot this issue)

Troubleshooting steps taken...

1. Last known good configuration... doesn't work.
2. I tried to boot from CD in order to try a repair of the OS. But it gets stuck at "Examining 476930 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on iastor...".
3. Enabled Virtualization in the BIOS
4. Unplugged one of the hard drives.

I am all out of ideas at this point.
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Irwin W.
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I found this fix in a VMware forum http://communities.vmware.com/message/413153;jsessionid=D3DFA97F77273A67A0F95711FB6273C5

rename update.sys in %windir%\system32\drivers, the server finally boot.
 
 Copy the  file update.sys from RTM cd.

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partypants

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Well, I would love to get into a command prompt to try that operation but I gets stuck here...

"Examining 476930 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on iastor...".

In other words...

1. I boot from the Dell XP64 CD
2. I press "R" for recovery console
3. It gets stuck at "Examining 476930 MB Disk 0 at Id 0 on bus 0 on iastor..."

It's almost like the RAID 1 array is malfunctioning.
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Irwin W.
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This Dell machine comes with the ICH9R Chipset, which includes an integrated 6 port controller.

The Dell XP 64 CD includes the necessary drivers, but I will try loading the drivers from a floppy anyway. I'll let you know if that works....
I used the drivers from the floppy when booting from the CD. This allowed me to get to a command prompt, but I still couldn't even get a directory listing!.It gave me an error.

Then I shutdown the PC. Then I physically plugged the drives into different SATA ports on the motherboard. The computer was then able to boot into Windows.

Then I replugged them back into the original ports, and it's still working.

Odd thing is that the intel matrix storage manager isn't loading at startup. Weird.