PC Pals Forum
Technical Help & Discussion => Self Building, Upgrading & General Hardware Help => Topic started by: Moreno on February 26, 2007, 08:25
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Hi y'all,
Some of you may remember that I was having trouble with the asrock motherboard and the graphics card, thank you very much for all the help during that, I have now returned it and exchanged it for an asus motherboard which is currently working well apart from a couple of small aspects.
Can anyone shed any light on why it is taking so long for vista to start on the system? I booted the machine with XP and then loaded vista on top of it. It said that it would hold the old windows files else where and then load vista on top, but it seems to take like 8-10mins to load up. Anyone know what the problem is?
Also, secondly.....Once actually into the system, I go to shut down and it shuts down, but straight away boots up again, as if i have pressed restart....WTF is going on :o!!!!!
Any help would be greatly appreciated. :-\
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Long startup times are often caused by lots of programs that you dont use each time you start the pc loading as windows loads.
Go to RUN and then type MSCONFIG in the box and tick selective startup.
Then go to the startup tab and untick all the programs that are set to start up that you dont need.
You only really need your AV, Firewall and windows own security ones such as Bit Defender.
Click on Apply and then restart your pc.
The box will come up saying that you have used system config just click ok.
Hopefully that wil speed up any subsequent start ups.
The rebooting is a puzzle, all I can suggest trying is that you go to Control Panel/System/System Protection then click on the Advanced tab of the System Properties box that appears then click on Settings for the Startup and Recovery part.
Untick Automatically Restart in the System Failure part.
It may think its failing as its shutting down and so restart if that box is ticked.
Other than that I cant think why it should be doing it.
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Sandra to the rescue again 8-)
I will try what you have suggested when I get home. One thing I will say, is that it was very slow booting up from the start with no programs loaded on. The only thing I can think of is that vista has loads of underlying programs working.
Does this stir things up a little?
Long startup times are often caused by lots of programs that you dont use each time you start the pc loading as windows loads.
Go to RUN and then type MSCONFIG in the box and tick selective startup.
Then go to the startup tab and untick all the programs that are set to start up that you dont need.
You only really need your AV, Firewall and windows own security ones such as Bit Defender.
Click on Apply and then restart your pc.
The box will come up saying that you have used system config just click ok.
Hopefully that wil speed up any subsequent start ups.
The rebooting is a puzzle, all I can suggest trying is that you go to Control Panel/System/System Protection then click on the Advanced tab of the System Properties box that appears then click on Settings for the Startup and Recovery part.
Untick Automatically Restart in the System Failure part.
It may think its failing as its shutting down and so restart if that box is ticked.
Other than that I cant think why it should be doing it.
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All windows OSs load a lot of unnecessary programs but if you have installed Vista over XP I would have thought that it should have left applications such as Office, which is a big program, plus other microsofts programs intact.
Yours does seem to take a long time to load though.
Are the specs, especially the ram, sufficient to run Vista ?
My Vista Ultimate, clean install, seems to load a litle quicker if anything than XP pro did.
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I have 1gb ddr2 ram in there, which according to the cpu meter seems to be running at 50% odd.
All windows OSs load a lot of unnecessary programs but if you have installed Vista over XP I would have thought that it should have left applications such as Office, which is a big program, plus other microsofts programs intact.
Yours does seem to take a long time to load though.
Are the specs, especially the ram, sufficient to run Vista ?
My Vista Ultimate, clean install, seems to load a litle quicker if anything than XP pro did.
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That should be ok, mine runs fine on 1 gig but 2 gig would be better if using a lot of the extra graphics features I think.
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Right I have gone into msconfig, and unticked all the programs etc.....still running slow. Do you think it has anything to do with the fact I installed XP? Everytime I try to boot from the vista disc it tells me it is not a system disk....as soon as i put the xp one in, it boots as normal and installs.....
That should be ok, mine runs fine on 1 gig but 2 gig would be better if using a lot of the extra graphics features I think.
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So you havent actually installed vista over XP youre running it from the CD ?
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No its running. I have taken the cd out and it works fine, but still takes ages to boot up. I am going to get another stick of ram, but I think their is a different problem as to why it will not boot from the disk and takes ages to boot from hard drive.
So you havent actually installed vista over XP youre running it from the CD ?
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If you have 1 gig of ram already I cant see adding any more improving its boot time.
I would be tempted to format and reinstall Vista but if your pc wont boot from the Vista disc thats not going to be feasible.
Can you try the Vista disk in another pc as I am sure that all versions of Vista are bootable.
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Ok, I have had some progress. I disconnected everything and just left my dvd player and one 250gb hard drive. I then went to bios and obviously set it to boot from cd. It then began to boot and went straight through to installation. It gave me no option but to install a clean copy. So i did this and basically I got this message
Setup Error - "could not reinitialize the deployment engine"
I have been looking around forums on the internet and have found the following answers for this problem.....
"Have encountered the same error with a 250GB Samsung Spinpoint SATA disc in a Shuttle XPC SN95V2.
Would be interesting to understand if the issue is related to the size or interface of the disk?"
"I was getting the same error from RC1 my self on an Asus M2R32-MVP, with 2 Samsung SATA drives RAID 0. What fixed it for me was to delete the drive, and create a new partition, and format from within the Windows setup. Don't know if this will solve your problem, but its what fixed me up. I am not dual booting though"
SO I am thinking that now it doesn't like the 250gb hard drive :ack: so I am thinking of either partitioning the drive or using the other....this is where the next problem starts.....Firsty when booting from CD it gave me no option to partition drive, and when I disconnected the 250gb HD and connected the 125gb one, it just stayed on the motherboard logo screen. Can the system boot from the SATA drive....am I right in saying that most will by default try to boot from IDE?
Anyone encountered this problem?
If you have 1 gig of ram already I cant see adding any more improving its boot time.
I would be tempted to format and reinstall Vista but if your pc wont boot from the Vista disc thats not going to be feasible.
Can you try the Vista disk in another pc as I am sure that all versions of Vista are bootable.
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The size shouldnt matter, XP would only see up to 137 gig of a drive until it was installed and had SP2 on but it still allowed you to create a partition of up to 137 gig to install the OS on, then you could create a second partition in windows Disk Management to use the remainder of the hard drive.
I dont think that Vista will have that limitation and even if it did it should still allow you to create a partition, of whichever size you want, to install the OS on.
I think the problem is that you are booting from a SATA drive, as you assumed it might be.
If your motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA, some do some dont, then you need to load the SATA controller drivers from the motherboard CD.
I have only done one Vista installation on a SATA drive and that Asus motherboard supported booting from SATA.
With XP you had to press F6, I think, when asked to install the SATA controller driver from the motherboard CD or from a floppy if you had already extracted the drivers from the CD.
Does it ask you at some point if you need to load 3rd party SATA or RAID drivers ?
If so then the motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA by itself.
Can you tell me which Asus motherboard you are using.
Some motherboards have 2 different SATA controllers, if you look at the SATA data cable connectors you mave have 2 or more red coloured ones and another 2 or more black or even blue coloured ones.
It may be that the bios only supports booting from one SATA controller.
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Sandra, you are getting me wrong....my sata Hard drive is unplugged and I only have the 250gb IDE one plugged in.
I have the ASUS P5VD2-X.
If I boot from an XP disk, and then create a partition on the 250gb IDE drive, will vista recognise this?
The size shouldnt matter, XP would only see up to 137 gig of a drive until it was installed and had SP2 on but it still allowed you to create a partition of up to 137 gig to install the OS on, then you could create a second partition in windows Disk Management to use the remainder of the hard drive.
I dont think that Vista will have that limitation and even if it did it should still allow you to create a partition, of whichever size you want, to install the OS on.
I think the problem is that you are booting from a SATA drive, as you assumed it might be.
If your motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA, some do some dont, then you need to load the SATA controller drivers from the motherboard CD.
I have only done one Vista installation on a SATA drive and that Asus motherboard supported booting from SATA.
With XP you had to press F6, I think, when asked to install the SATA controller driver from the motherboard CD or from a floppy if you had already extracted the drivers from the CD.
Does it ask you at some point if you need to load 3rd party SATA or RAID drivers ?
If so then the motherboards bios doesnt support booting from SATA by itself.
Can you tell me which Asus motherboard you are using.
Some motherboards have 2 different SATA controllers, if you look at the SATA data cable connectors you mave have 2 or more red coloured ones and another 2 or more black or even blue coloured ones.
It may be that the bios only supports booting from one SATA controller.
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Thanks for clarifying your setup.
I woud always rather do a clean install of an OS rather than install one and then install another over it.
I find it starnge that Vista wont partition an IDE drive straight from the off :dunno:
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Last night I had a good muck around with the system, managed to get it all loaded. Thanks for your help Sandra!
One last thing....was given some Kingston ram, do you think it will be compatible with this motherboard? I will be running it alone, so don't take into consideration what i already have.....
I have the ASUS P5VD2-X motherboard and the memory is Kingston XW8200/1GB DDR2
Cheers
Thanks for clarifying your setup.
I woud always rather do a clean install of an OS rather than install one and then install another over it.
I find it starnge that Vista wont partition an IDE drive straight from the off :dunno:
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According to the Crucial site your mobo will take :
Each memory slot can hold DDR2 PC2-5300,DDR2 PC2-4200,DDR2 PC2-6400,DDR2 PC2-8000 with a maximum of 2GB per slot.*
DDR2 SDRAM Frequencies: PC2-4200
Kingston say that these models wil work with your mobo :
KVR533D2N4/256 256MB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM Get Price
KVR533D2N4/512 512MB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM Get Price
KVR533D2N4/1G 1GB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM Get Price
KVR533D2N4/2G 2GB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM Get Price
KVR533D2N4K2/512 512MB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM (Kit of 2) Get Price
KVR533D2N4K2/1G 1GB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM (Kit of 2) Get Price
KVR533D2N4K2/2G 2GB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM (Kit of 2) Get Price
KVR533D2N4K2/4G 4GB 533MHz DDR2 Non-ECC CL4 DIMM (Kit of 2)
So its hard to say really but DDR and DDr2 seems to be less fussy than SDRAM used to be so the best thing to do is try it, if it wont boot up or if it reports less than 1 gig then its not compatable.
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Ok, I managed to sort out which ram was for what, so all good there.
All was booting up nice and quickly with one drive connected and one dvd drive...so i started one by one to connect new Hard drives. I got to the thrid hard drive which happens to be a SATA drive and then booted up...saw it in bios...but it took ages again to boot up to windows!!! Mmmmmmm what is happening????
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Thats got to be a setting in the bios for the SATA controller/drive.
Theres often something to say treat as IDE, if you are not using SATA in a raid setup, but as its too early in the morning for me I cant think of the exacy term.
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Haha...Come on Sandra....I was up at 5am for work!!!
SO you think its the BIOS setting for the SATA?
Machine still won't turn off!!! Click shutdown and it restarts! Didn't do it when I had XP installed!
Thats got to be a setting in the bios for the SATA controller/drive.
Theres often something to say treat as IDE, if you are not using SATA in a raid setup, but as its too early in the morning for me I cant think of the exacy term.
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I bet you were in bed before 3am though ;)
You have messed around in the bios since you had XP on havent you ?
Maybe setting the bios to its defaults may help, until I can find the setting that I am thinking of.
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Ok, I was in bed for 11pm.....you won that one! :ack:
I may have to set it to default and try that. Do you think it could be something i'd get from the motherboard driver CD?
I bet you were in bed before 3am though ;)
You have messed around in the bios since you had XP on havent you ?
Maybe setting the bios to its defaults may help, until I can find the setting that I am thinking of.
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Ok I have downloaded your mobo manual and skimmed through it.
Go to the options for your SATA drives in the Onboard Devices Configuration menu.
SATA Controller Mode [IDE] should be set to IDE.
See if that sorts it.
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Ok, is that within bios or the software that comes with the motherboard?
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Its in the BIOS.
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Right, it was already set to that in the bios...Still doin the same though! Anything else I can try?
Its in the BIOS.
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Have you tried connecting the SATA drive to a different SATA connector ?
There are 2 different types ones SATA 1 @ 150mb/s the other is SATA 2 @ 300mb/s, which speed is your drive ?
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I think it is 300mb/s.
Its a Seagate 400gb 7200.10 SATA - Part Number 98J144 - 300
This seems to be the drive.....
Hard Drive (http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=Barracuda_7200.10_SATA_400.3_GB&vgnextoid=8eff99f4fa74c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&vgnextchannel=a32a2f290c5fb010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD&reqPage=Model)
Which connection on the motherboard should I connect this too. I have SATA 1/2 at the bottom right of the board and another middle left of the board. I have tried all of them, and have even taken the jumper off of the actual hard drive which seems to limit it to 1.5gb/s, and makes it 3gb. SHould I do this? Is there anything I should change in the bios? I think we def have narrowed the problem down to this drive.
Look forward to hearing from you
Have you tried connecting the SATA drive to a different SATA connector ?
There are 2 different types ones SATA 1 @ 150mb/s the other is SATA 2 @ 300mb/s, which speed is your drive ?
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To run at SATA 2 it needs the jumper to be off and you need to use the single connector near the audio connectors of the back panel.
To run at SATA 1 use the jumper and connect it to either of the 2 connectors near to the BIOS chip and battery.
Try it in both postions and see if it works better on one than the other, dont forget to use the jumper if its on the SATA 1 connector.
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To run at SATA 2 it needs the jumper to be off and you need to use the single connector near the audio connectors of the back panel.
To run at SATA 1 use the jumper and connect it to either of the 2 connectors near to the BIOS chip and battery.
Try it in both postions and see if it works better on one than the other, dont forget to use the jumper if its on the SATA 1 connector.
I have tried both positions, and neither seems to make a difference. In either position, do I have to change anything in the bios?
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Shouldnt need to do.
One thing you could try is to check that the boot sequence is set to boot from your OS hard drive as the first device, it may be set to boot from the SATA drive when its fitted and as it hasnt got a bootable OS on it and its a large drive it may be hanging on that as it looks for the MBR before it moves onto the next bootable device.
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Shouldnt need to do.
One thing you could try is to check that the boot sequence is set to boot from your OS hard drive as the first device, it may be set to boot from the SATA drive when its fitted and as it hasnt got a bootable OS on it and its a large drive it may be hanging on that as it looks for the MBR before it moves onto the next bootable device.
When I go through the bios I have the 125gb IDE as the master and another ide as the slave...the SATA just comes under SATA and does not come with a hierachy. When I go to my bootable menu, it just asks if I want to boot from Hard disk or cd rom or LAN
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According to the manual for your mobo once you enter the Boot Menu select Boot Device Priority.
Select Hard Disk as the first device and I assume that it should then give you the option to select which hard drive to use by its code letters and numbers.
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According to the manual for your mobo once you enter the Boot Menu select Boot Device Priority.
Select Hard Disk as the first device and I assume that it should then give you the option to select which hard drive to use by its code letters and numbers.
Ok, I have found that and I have the SATA in 3rd place. The 125gb IDE is in first place which has the OS on it.
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Ok fingers crossed that it does the trick :)
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Ok fingers crossed that it does the trick :)
No luck....still doing the same :bawl:
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I cant see anything else in the bios that can be affecting it.
Once its actually running does everything work ok with the SATA drive connected ?
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I cant see anything else in the bios that can be affecting it.
Once its actually running does everything work ok with the SATA drive connected ?
Yeh everything works fine, I can even store stuff on the SATA drive.
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Ok, I guess its time to start searching around on the net for a solution as all the things I have suggested havent sorted it.
I will have a search later on, when I get a few minutes spare, as I cant see you being the only one with this problem :dunno:
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Cant find anything so far re Vista and SATA problems such as you are having :(
I am wondering if its a faulty cable or even drive ?
If you havent any data on it that you need or if you have backed it up already then I would try this.
Disconnect the IDE hard drives, just have the SATA connected, set the SATA drive as the first boot device and see if you can install Vista on that and see if it takes a long time to boot from that alone.
That should eliminate any probems with the SATA controller dirvers/Cables and the drive itself.
A SATA drive would be better off as the boot drive anyway, especially if running at SATA 2 speeds of 300mbps as opposed to the fastest IDE UDMA 133 at 133mbps
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Ok, I am going to try this tonight. So I will install vista on the SATA disk and see if it boots from there. Then we can go from there.....
Due you think it is worth me formatting the whole drive before hand and see if I get anywhere with that? The one thing I find a problem is when connecting it to the 3gb/s socket it starts talking about RAID etc....and I haven't got a clue what that is! o:)
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It should ask if you want to set up a RAID array, just say no and then it should continue as normal.
I wouldnt bother formatting, just delete the existing partition and create a new one to install Vista on, around 60gig is recommended for Vista.
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It should ask if you want to set up a RAID array, just say no and then it should continue as normal.
I wouldnt bother formatting, just delete the existing partition and create a new one to install Vista on, around 60gig is recommended for Vista.
Right....at last!!! Some progress!!! :crazy:
I now have formatted the sata drive and partitioned it. I disconnected all other drives and booted from this one. All is working fine! BUT....always a but.....I thought I would introduce the next drive, one by one formatting each, but as soon as I introduced the next one, it slowed start up again! I have brought the two IDE HDD's into work for one of the IT guys to format for me so I can take them home and see if that makes a difference. Do you think it will?
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That sounds like theres a problem with the bios on the mobo supporting mixed SATA and PATA drives somehow.
Have you checked the ASUS update feature to see if theres a BIOS update that may have been brought out to fix this issue, if its been a common fault on that model of mobo ?
I cant see formatting the IDE drives making any difference.
Have you explained whats been happening to one of the IT guys at work as they may have some idea about whats happening ?
I have been looking at the manual again and wondering if its not setting the IDE drives to the correct mode.
When you have the IDE drives fitted go into the bios and on the main screen click on the Primary IDE master and check that the PIO mode is set to Auto and that the UDMA Mode is set to Auto.
Do the same with the Prinary IDE slave.
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That sounds like theres a problem with the bios on the mobo supporting mixed SATA and PATA drives somehow.
Have you checked the ASUS update feature to see if theres a BIOS update that may have been brought out to fix this issue, if its been a common fault on that model of mobo ?
I cant see formatting the IDE drives making any difference.
Have you explained whats been happening to one of the IT guys at work as they may have some idea about whats happening ?
I have been looking at the manual again and wondering if its not setting the IDE drives to the correct mode.
When you have the IDE drives fitted go into the bios and on the main screen click on the Primary IDE master and check that the PIO mode is set to Auto and that the UDMA Mode is set to Auto.
Do the same with the Prinary IDE slave.
From what I remember they are both set to auto.
I am not too sure where to do the bios update from, as when installing the software for the MOBO on the PC it has compatibility issues as its with Vista....so I can't run it!!! ahhhhhhh!!!!!
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Ok it looks like there are probably at least 2 bios updates from when you got your mobo.
Can you tell me which BIOS version you are running, I expect it will be v0301 at the newest and possibly v0211 or earlier.
Download and update to v0305 released 2007/02/07 from :
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5VD2-X
I cant see anything specifically realting to your problems that it says it has fixed unless its this 2. Fixed show "error loading operation system" when using CHS mode PATA HDD and set "Access Mode" to CHS.
from v 0304.
I dont really understand what that means but it may add an extra option to the bios as it mentions the PATA HDD.
The latest bios v0305 will incorperate all the previous bios updates so you dont need to update one by one, just download and update the latest one.
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Ok it looks like there are probably at least 2 bios updates from when you got your mobo.
Can you tell me which BIOS version you are running, I expect it will be v0301 at the newest and possibly v0211 or earlier.
Download and update to v0305 released 2007/02/07 from :
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5VD2-X
I cant see anything specifically realting to your problems that it says it has fixed unless its this from v 0304.
I dont really understand what that means but it may add an extra option to the bios as it mentions the PATA HDD.
The latest bios v0305 will incorperate all the previous bios updates so you dont need to update one by one, just download and update the latest one.
Will give this a try tonight....will see what happens when I load all the drivers i need on there first.
Cheers Sandra,
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Right.....Nearly there!!!!
Downloaded the SATA v PATA driver on the website, and it has allowed me to have the SATA HDD and one IDE HDD as slave working together. Wahoo!!! Finally....takes less than 40 secs to boot up!!! Can I just say thank you Sandra as it looks like we have finally got there!
But...always a but with me I know....the last IDE is a problem. I introduced the drive which is the 250gb IDE one, as soon as I reboot it slows up again. Once in the system, I try to format and it just sits there and does nothing...so I am now wondering if the drive actually has a problem.
What do you think?
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so you now have both IDE drives running at the same time or are you saying you swapped the IDE drives? If you just added them together I would just try the 250gb one on its own and see how it acts...
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All SATA drives run as masters on any of the motherboard connectors, no matter how many drives you have.
Usually the IDE drives would be set as a master and the other as a slave on the primary IDE channel.
Have you set the jumper on the IDE drive that does work ok with the SATA, connected as a slave on an IDE channel that has your DVD or CD set as a master ?
Did you check your bios version and try updating it to the latest version ?
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I don't think I updated the bios version, as the download wasn't the easiest.
At the moment I have one 400gb SATA drive running, this is where the OS is now booting from. And I have a 123gb IDE drive working next to it which the jumpers are set to slave. The one I am struggling with is the 250gb, which I am going to format today and then change the jumpers to cable select...see if this works!!!
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If you use cable select then the position on the cable denotes which is master and which is slave.
So dont forget to change the one thats set as slave to cable select as well.
I would still prefer to have them set as a master and as a slave, bearing in mind that some drives have a different setting for using as a single master to the setting used for a master with a slave.
If set as a master and as a slave on the same IDE channel then the master goes at the end of the IDE cable and the slave on the middle connector.
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If you use cable select then the position on the cable denotes which is master and which is slave.
So dont forget to change the one thats set as slave to cable select as well.
I would still prefer to have them set as a master and as a slave, bearing in mind that some drives have a different setting for using as a single master to the setting used for a master with a slave.
If set as a master and as a slave on the same IDE channel then the master goes at the end of the IDE cable and the slave on the middle connector.
Ok, will give that a try...The drive is being formatted as we speak by one of my IT guys....will let you know!!!
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Ok, will give that a try...The drive is being formatted as we speak by one of my IT guys....will let you know!!!
Right,
The drive was formatted successfully. I took it home and set the 250gb that I just formatted to master and put it at the end of the ide cable. Then set the smaller ide as slave. Once again it started up but took about 10 mins to start windows. It must be this 250gb drive!
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Or the BIOS :)
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WHich update should I download and install for the bios?
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Download and update to v0305 released 2007/02/07 from :
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5VD2-X
Its the top one when you click on the BIOS link.
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Download and update to v0305 released 2007/02/07 from :
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us&model=P5VD2-X
Its the top one when you click on the BIOS link.
Right I have downloaded this bios update and it basically is just a bin file. The file is 0305.bin What should I do with this?
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There are a couple of ways to update the bios these days.
You used to have to do it from a floppy in DOS but ASUS can do it from inside windows.
Did you manage to install the ASUS Update Utility from the motherboard CD ?
If so thats the easiest way as you can run that and update the bios from in windows from the file that you downloaded.
It will also give you the option to save the current bios file to a floppy before it updates it, just in case theres a problem.
If you cant get the Update utility to install then you can use the, Use built-in EZ Flash BIOS to Refresh procedure, as described in the second part of this page :
http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments.aspx?root=198&SLanguage=en-us
open the second one down, AFUDOS BIOS Upgrade Procedure
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There are a couple of ways to update the bios these days.
You used to have to do it from a floppy in DOS but ASUS can do it from inside windows.
Did you manage to install the ASUS Update Utility from the motherboard CD ?
If so thats the easiest way as you can run that and update the bios from in windows from the file that you downloaded.
It will also give you the option to save the current bios file to a floppy before it updates it, just in case theres a problem.
If you cant get the Update utility to install then you can use the, Use built-in EZ Flash BIOS to Refresh procedure, as described in the second part of this page :
http://support.asus.com/technicaldocuments/technicaldocuments.aspx?root=198&SLanguage=en-us
open the second one down, AFUDOS BIOS Upgrade Procedure
Thanks Sandra,
Have now updated the BIOS which has at least solved one of the problems....when I click shutdown in Vista it actually now turns off instead of restarts!!! Nice one ASUS!
But it still would not accept the 250gb hard drive.
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Have you tried running the hard drive manufacturers tools on the 250gig drive to see if it detects a fault with the drive ?
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Have you tried running the hard drive manufacturers tools on the 250gig drive to see if it detects a fault with the drive ?
Right have decided to buy an external caddy to house this drive and connect via USB, as its now just annoying me.
Thanks alot for your help Sandra, I am now up and running. Thanks!!!!!! You have been SUPERB!!!!
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So the drive works ok as an external USB one ?