Having a problem with SATA

[superkdogg]

Well gang I need a hand with this one.

I have an A8R-MVP and a 3000+ Winnie 2x256 Megs of Corsair ram and 3x WD800JB Hard drives as well as two Hitachi Sata drives.

I had been using this machine solely as a server, and had a PCI Cirrus Logic video card in it. I found a good deal on a x700 pro video card, so I upgraded to be able to at least think about some light gaming.

When I first finished the swap, Windows would not boot. The machine hung on a black screen with no error messages right after post. After messing with several things, I finally tried disabling SATA. That worked. I don't know why, but now I can use the machine as long as I have the SATA drives disabled. That is fine for a short-term workaround, but can somebody tell me what's going on and how to get it fixed correctly?

All I did was swapped cards and now the machine absolutely will not boot (not even safe mode) if the SATA ports are active and this machine has to have those drives operational to continue to share the music and files on those drives over the rest of my network.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Oyeve]

In changing vid cards maybe you knocked the sata cable? Remove sata cables and check if the connectors are cracked on the cable and mobo. Also, check in the bios to see if the sata controller is set for raid or not.

 

[superkdogg]

Thanks for the reply. I have tried the controller both set for raid capability and plain, and neither way works.

I had to remove the sata cables from the board in order to get the new card in, so I will check the cables and connectors for physical damage.

Secondary question: Since I had to remove the cables, and I'm not sure which ports they were on to begin with, would windows have a problem if the drives are not connected to the same port as they were before? If that's the case, I could try one drive at a time in each port until windows loads and then repeat with the other drive.

Is that a possiblity, or would it be a waste of time?

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: superkdogg

Secondary question: Since I had to remove the cables, and I'm not sure which ports they were on to begin with, would windows have a problem if the drives are not connected to the same port as they were before? If that's the case, I could try one drive at a time in each port until windows loads and then repeat with the other drive.

Is that a possiblity, or would it be a waste of time?

Technically it should not matter, but, I have seen and it happened to me once, that a system that had 2 sata drives and the cables were switched and XP went apesh!t. Worth a shot. Happened to me but with 4 sata drives. Took forever to find the right combo that XP liked.

 

[superkdogg]

Bump for any other opinions before I try to fix it this weekend