I broke XP and now I need to wipe my RAID drives

[moono]

Hello,
One of my machines, XP Pro with two RAID drives went down after I tried to upgrade too much hardware at once and got the dreaded ' NTLDR is missing '-  from which I could not recover.  So, I've decided to wipe the drives and start again.  How can I best do this, please  ?   I have another , Windows 7 , machine available.

[patio]

Why RAID ? ?

[moono]

The two drives were installed as a RAID pair several years ago.   Now I want to wipe them and reinstall XP .  No RAID this time.

[patio]

Wipe both...
Unhook 1 of them and do a clean install of XP to it...
Then after all drivers etc. are re-installed re-introduce the 2nd drive.

[moono]

Thank you, patio, I'll crack on with that tomorrow.

[moono]

OK, that particular route has ground to a halt.  I've got ' No VGA signal '  so I can't proceed.  I've swapped out the graphics card-  no result.  Same for the monitor.  Is my mobo finished ?   I hope not, it's a socket 939.

[patio]

At what point in the procedures is this happening ? ?
Do you have video booting to the XP CD ? ?
How did you wipe the drives ? ?
Is the 2nd drive dis-connected yet ? ?

[moono]

I haven't booted the machine for many months.
The last time I used it I was attempting to address the ' NTLDR is missing ' message-  which of course was displayed on the monitor.
I put the machine aside and returned to the task yesterday.
That's when the ' No VGA signal ' appeared , on first boot, and I posted here.
I've swapped out the monitor.
I've swapped out the graphics card-  both of which are good.
Message is ' No VGA signal '
Any ideas ?

I've disconnected each of the drives in turn but can't proceed with no VGA signal.
There is no VGA signal when attempting to boot from CD.

[patio]

Boot to the XP CD...you can delete the partition on the 1st HDD...format and then continue with Setup which will install XP.

[moono]

There is no VGA signal when attempting to boot from the XP CD. 

[patio]

Try another monitor...then try the onboard video...

[moono]

Yes, I've already swapped monitors-  no change.
I'm glad you mentioned the onboard video.  I would have tried that already but it's a nine pin male VGA and I've got nothing with which to connect a fifteen pin VGA monitor.  It's an aging Gigabyte board, a GA- K8NXP-9.    I'd never noticed the 9 pin connection before as I've always used a PCI-e card.

[patio]

All i can suggest then is borrow a vid card to test and swap it in there...
At that point you can decide if it's worth putting any money in to it...or not.

[moono]

As I said, I've already installed a spare video card-  to no effect.

Where can I get a cable which is 9 pin female AVG on one end and 15 pin male on the other ?   What would such a cable be called ?

[moono]

Nope, this board doesn't have a video port.  The 9 pin is a seriaL.    I'll check the PSU next.