Asus P5K-Premium O.S. Install Problems w/ ICH9R SATA Controller

[trowand]

I just built a new Quad Core system built around an Asus P5K-Premium mobo and I could not for the life of me install WinXP onto my Samsung 500GB SATA2 HD501LJ drive. I tried numerous times with different cables, ports and settings. Problems that I experienced include the drive not being detected in the BIOS sometimes but being detected other times, BSOD's while installing XP, and Windows setup not being able to format the drive and saying that the drive could be damaged. This drive worked fine in my previous system. So I eventually decided to try my older Hitachi 160GB SATA HDD and WinXP installed perfectly with no issues. So thinking that my Samsung had died and that I would have to RMA it, I went out to a brick & mortar store and bought another HD501LJ and that drive had the same exact problems. So I went to Asus's site & forums and found that many people are experiencing the same exact problems with many different brands of drives. I also went to NewEgg to check reviews for the mobo and found that many people were reporting similar problems there. The general idea is that there are issues with the new ICH9R's SATA controller/driver. I have the latest BIOS from Asus (2.04 I think). I wanted to spread the word on this problem and try to search for cures. ANY IDEAS on what to do or try?

 

[fpbear]

I ran into the same problem with a just-purchased P5K Premium with two WD SE16 750G drives. When I plug the Samsung Writemaster DVD into SATA port 1 or 5, Vista x64 will freeze during the install. So I have to use port 6 for the DVD. Attempting to use any kind of RAID, 0+1, 0, or 1, would cause Vista x64 to freeze at the Expanding Files stage. Finally I installed without RAID in IDE mode, using only SATA ports 1, 2, and 6. Now Vista x64 runs fine, but in case I ever have to use those other ports in the future I hope there will be a fix.

Has anyone heard if Asus can address this with a BIOS update, or is there some kind of design flaw in the Premium series motherboard? That is too bad because otherwise the board has nice features.

 

[fpbear]

Anyone else having this problem should also see this thread:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view...page=1&SLanguage=en-us

 

[trowand]

I hope Asus can fix it with a BIOS update. It sounds like the majority of users think this is the case. But I heard that one guy returned his mobo to NewEgg and received a P5K-Premium Rev.2 board in return. I REALLY don't want to have to disassemble my PC again.

 

[fpbear]

trowand, do you know if rev.2 worked for this guy? A lot of people would be very interested to know. Then it would indicate a hardware defect. Especially if he used Q6600 with SATA II drives.

 

[SKORPI0]

Looks like I'll have to use a IDE HDD for my OS drive for now till a bios update. :frown:

Just received a Rev 0.2 mobo from Newegg, Q6600 G0 stepping - ClubIT, eVGA 8800GTS 640mb - Dell , 2GB Crucial PC2-8500 - MWave & Antec 550W PSU to upgrade my 3 yr old system (A64 3700+).

 

[fpbear]

I ended up RMA'ing the crapsus board and got the Abit IP35 Pro instead. Very nice, it has everything that the P5K Premium has (at least, I mean, those things that are useful for me) plus much better tweaking and fan control via uGuru. What irritated me to abandon this company is that Asus does not acknowledge the problem while thousands of their customers post messages about it.

 

[trowand]

HEY!! SUCCESS!!! I returned my Samsung HD501LJ Drive for a Maxtor STM3500630AS Rev 3.AAE drive. I successfully installed XP to it with no problems whatsoever. It was about $150 from CompUSA and I installed in IDE/Enhanced mode in full SATA300 mode/speed. YAHOO!

 

[SKORPI0]

Sucessfully installed Vista-64 Ultimate on SATA1 (Maxtor 80GB) with a Sony IDE burner.

Version 0.2 on the mobo, BIOS version 0204 dated 06/26/07.

 

[fpbear]

Asus should add this to their P5K Premium product specs:

Hard drive compatibility: Maxtor only