OMG, I'm up running with Hardy now
No IDE to RAID switch, nor enabling the floppy drive (I disabled it again).

Using the desktop live cd, what did the trick for me was adding
Code:
all_generic_ide floppy=off irqpoll
to the boot options when pressing F6. I can't tell if you really need all three options. I'm just happy to be up running

Hope this may help someone - good luck to everyone.