SATA controller won't work.......

[FiberOptik]

A good friend of mine just got done putting together a brand new system from parts that he and I had spec'd together. We chose an Barton based setup on the nForce2 platform and we were originally going to go with a gigabyte board. However, at the time of ordering, zipzoomfly was out of the gigabyte boards. So instead, at my recommendation, my friend ordered the Asus A7N8X-E Deluxe. Everything works fine except for the onboard SATA controller.

The driver for the SATA controller installs normally but afterwards the system will not boot. Windows will start to load and display the XP splash screen and then freeze. We have tried three different drivers for his controller and they are
1) the drivers that were supplied on the CD that came with the motherboard
2) the drivers that are currently available for download on ASUS' website
3) the OEM drivers provided by the manufacturer of the controller

In all cases none of the drivers work and they all result in in a non-booting OS. He's running WinXP Pro w/SP1a. The controller is configured with a single Hitachi Deskstar 7k250. Has anyone else had this issue? Is it possible that the controller is RAID only and does not support single drives? I've tried doing some research on the controller but I can't find much info on it, it's a Sil3112.

 

[Amused]

Have you checked the config for the controller in the BIOS?

 

[FiberOptik]

Do you mean the BIOS for the SATA controller or the BIOS on the mainboard???

 

[mechBgon]

For starters, this was a completely fresh WindowsXP installation, right? You're not trying to "recycle" the WinXP installation that he had been using with his previous hardware?

There's a paradox here. To install WinXP on the SATA drive in the first place, you must've given WinXP Setup the floppy with the drivers on it. Right? So now WinXP has the driver and it works. Why do you say that "the driver for the SATA controller installs normally but afterwards the system will not boot?" If it didn't install normally, you couldn't run WinXP Setup at all.

<-- me

 

[Cenetix]

Hey, I'm Fiber's good friend. I'll try to clarify what's going on. It is a clean install. Nothing has ever touched the HDD before. When installing XP, you press F6 for the SCSI/Raid setup. What I did was put the supplied driver disk into the computer, told the installation program where to go and it worked. XP told me it installed the drivers for the Silicon Image 3112. Ok, so on with the installation. Once the install was completed, I loaded the Nvidia stuff and the Ati stuff...and then checked the Device Manager to see what else was having trouble. There was a ? beside the Raid Controller. So, I updated the driver with the supplied disk and rebooted the computer. Everything 'seemed' normal until the splash screen. The logo loads terribly, almost like slow motion. The scroll bar cycles about 6 times and freezes. It just hangs. So you reboot and select to load from the last settings that worked. I've tried updating the BIOS, installing 3 different drivers from the CD, the Nvidia site, and the SI site. They all lead to the same point. The machine functions, except for that. So, does that help at all? Thanks!

 

[mechBgon]

"Doctor, it hurts when I do this..."



For the sake of argument, what happens if you just leave it as-is with the driver that gets you to that point? Did you get WinXP SP1 installed?

 

[Amused]

Originally posted by: FiberOptik
Do you mean the BIOS for the SATA controller or the BIOS on the mainboard???

The mainboard. Is the SATA controller set to be RAID, or not? If it's set to be RAID, and you loaded non-RAID drivers, that could very well be your problem.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: Amused

Originally posted by: FiberOptik
Do you mean the BIOS for the SATA controller or the BIOS on the mainboard???

The mainboard. Is the SATA controller set to be RAID, or not? If it's set to be RAID, and you loaded non-RAID drivers, that could very well be your problem.

There's no RAID\non-RAID drivers, just a single driver.

 

[Doomer]

I just put together a system with this MB and 2 x 160gig seagate SATA drives in a RAID O Config. I had no problems at all with the driver or getting it to boot. Sounds like you might have a bad board.

 

[FiberOptik]

mechBgon:
This is what makes the situation so odd, we have already supplied the drivers during the XP install. And yet XP still will not correctly recognize the controller. We are using a version of XP with SP1a already slipstreamed into it. If the driver is resupplied to XP after the installation the OS will not boot. There is no option that I know of to put the SATA controller in RAID mode or single drive mode. The only "option" for the SATA controller that I can find is a jumper on the motherboard that will either enable or disable the controller altogether. The main question that I have for you all is the single drive capabilities of this controller. Have any of you run a single drive with this controller? I'm trying to figure out if its a RAID only controller or if it will support single drives...

 

[Mem]

Go into the BIOS (main motherboard one) and then " Integrated peripherals" . Open the onboard PCI device section, that's where you enable the SATA drives normally.You normally have options for RAID,single S-ATA etc.

We are using a version of XP with SP1a already slipstreamed into it. If the driver is resupplied to XP after the installation the OS will not boot.

If it`s setup in BIOS right you shouldn`t have any problems,however you can try a NON slipstream version of XP and see if that makes any difference.

Remember to select F6 for the driver at Windows XP setup..

 

[WobbleWobble]

If the Windows was able to install on the SATA HDD, SATA must have already been properly enabled. Try drivers from Asus' web site?