Topic: New Motherboard - Vista - Couple of problems!

[Moreno]

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

[Sandra]

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.

[Moreno]

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.

[Sandra]

Ok fingers crossed that it does the trick 

[Moreno]

Ok fingers crossed that it does the trick 

No luck....still doing the same 

[Sandra]

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 ?

[Moreno]

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.

[Sandra]

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 

[Sandra]

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

[Moreno]

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! 

[Sandra]

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.

[Moreno]

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!!!

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?

[Sandra]

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.

[Moreno]

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!!!!!

[Sandra]

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.