A8N-SLI Premium SATA hard disk problem

Magicide

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Feb 4, 2006
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I just bought a A8N-SLI Premium, Athlon X2 3800 and Geforce 7800 GT.

All worked well when I first set it up and had Windows running. Restarted 3 times in the process of installing drivers/updates. On the third restart instead of starting Windows it reports no hard disk found. I tried shutting down and trying again several times but no good.

It's worth noting that BIOS and the POST messages do recognize the SATA drive and right before the Windows loading screen should appear there is a message that the SATA drive is the boot drive.

Since it isn't seeing the drive but the drive is physically fine I decided to reinstall Windows again. The install process goes fine and it finds the SATA drive just fine for the install. I get into Windows and on the first restart needed for driver installs it once again doesn't find the boot drive.

I tried using the Windows Recovery Conole during the XP installation and used the FIXBOOT command there. After doing so the computer can be restarted and will enter Windows once but if I shutdown or restart again it again can't find the boot disk.

I am now at a loss as to what could be causing it to do this. The SATA drive is set to SATA 1 rather than the RAID slots and BIOS does see the drive properly. It just won't boot Windows after the initial install. The SATA drive functioned as my primary drive on my old motherboard for 8 months with no problems so I strongly doubt the problem is with the drive itself.
 

bluesquid

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Aug 28, 2005
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yeah, you are wrong, IMHO

I just went through the same process. I will tell you about my hell.

I installed. booted. crashed. booted froze. 1/2 booted. 1/4 booted. booted, hung while loading system tray.

I went through that for two days.

in bios do you have the SMART feature enabled? I enabled it and in post it said a bad hard drive was detected.

swapped in another hard drive. pure sweet love from my new gaming beast.
 

jeffjun

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Feb 7, 2006
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Hi. Did you ever figure out your problem? I have an A8N5X with a Maxtor 250GB SATA that I can't figure out how to get to boot. Mine is brand new. I have used the special storage drivers on the MB (hit F6 to load on first install on Windows XP) and it still doesn't work. Files are copied, but when it reboots for the 1st time, it gives an error loading op system error. I'm in a similar boat and just wanted to see if you have a solution. Thanks, Jeff
 

Magicide

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Nope, no luck for me. Drive has no errors that I can detect and it did work flawlessly for 8 months before. I haven't restarted in a few days now and my system is perfectly stable, but when I did restart the problem was still there.
 

-999-

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Feb 8, 2006
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What drive(s) are you using? Raid or not? Which connectors are you using, nforce controller or the sil controller? What's your current bios revision? Also (dumb ?, gotta ask though), have you double checked your boot configuration?

I have the same board, 2x 320gb wd sata3gb, and I have had no problems. :?
 

Magicide

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I'm using a Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM SATA drive as the master using the SATA drive and power connectors. The SATA drive is connected to the non-RAID SATA ports on the motherboard. I have the nforce 4 chipset drivers installed in Windows but it shows the same issues with them not installed as well.

I can't check the BIOS version without resetting (and thus having to do a Windows repair installation) but the motherboard itself was manufactured in Dec 2005 so I assume it's a farily recent revision.

I have the boot device priority to CD ROM before HARD DISK and have the SATA drive as the first device in the hard drive listings.

I have 3 other ATA hard drives but they don't have an OS on them and are set in the boot priority to be below the SATA drive.

Even when the SATA drive isn't detected as having the OS on it BIOS sees the drive properly.
 

pat

Expert
I'm using a Western Digital Raptor 10k RPM SATA drive as the master using the SATA drive and power connectors. The SATA drive is connected to the non-RAID SATA ports on the motherboard. I have the nforce 4 chipset drivers installed in Windows but it shows the same issues with them not installed as well.

I can't check the BIOS version without resetting (and thus having to do a Windows repair installation) but the motherboard itself was manufactured in Dec 2005 so I assume it's a farily recent revision.

I have the boot device priority to CD ROM before HARD DISK and have the SATA drive as the first device in the hard drive listings.

I have 3 other ATA hard drives but they don't have an OS on them and are set in the boot priority to be below the SATA drive.

Even when the SATA drive isn't detected as having the OS on it BIOS sees the drive properly.

Even if they are connected to the non RAID connector, that don't mean that RAID is not activated in BIOS. Check and disable it.

No drivers are needed with the nvidia controller when RAID is DISABLED in BIOS for the connectors the HDD is connected in.
 

-999-

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What he ^ said. You have to go into the nvraid config in the bios and shut it off, and while you're doing that you may as well disable the silicon raid since it's not being used.
If that absolutely doesn't work, you can try installing onto the raptor with the ide drives disconnected, as that's fixed problems for people before, but mainly just with maxtor drives (which is a totally different issue).
 

Magicide

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The silicon raid and all other raid settings in BIOS are turned off. Still doesn't see the hard drive when I restart. Use the repair console to fix the master boot record and Windows boots up intact.

If I can't get any other solutions I will try booting without the ATA drives online and see if that does anything.
 

JussChilln345

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Aug 15, 2006
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Just out of curiosity, does your BIOS recognize your SATA drive as a Hard Drive or a Removable Drive? I'm not privvy to your mobo setup as I have a M2N32-SLI, but if there is a removable SATA port on the back of the mobo, then you may have to choose that in your boot priority. I am having the same issue with mine right now. It won't boot into Windows until I choose 'Removable' in the boot device priority menu.
 

MapAid

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Aug 16, 2006
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Hi!
I had the same problem with two A8N-E boards at my office. Installing Windose went fine, but after installing mobo drivers everything was ****** up! Downloaded files were corrupted, system restarted every now and then and the sata-drive showed as a removable drive! And sometimes boot hanged and system locked.
The problem was nvidia IDE-drivers and some nvidia "network management"-crap. After ditching these Ncrap drivers everything was fine and stable.
 

donutboy

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I have the same issue, i'm using Asus A8N SLI Premium with Raptor 74 GB Hard Drive. Before it was fine, occationally it will get stuck on the Windows XP Splash Screen and then start to windows, but lately it just gets stuck. I figured it was the hard drive. Cause it started saying cannot detect hard drive. So I RMA it, and get a new 80 GB SATA II Raptor Hard Drive (refurbished) and it was fine for 3 months, and now I get the same problem. Stuck on splash screen and now unable to detect hard drive. It detects fine in bios.

I did reinstall of windows xp and it worked good for 10 reboots and now the problem again. =[ What do I do? Is it the mother board? or the hard drive? RMA again? I'm tired of reinstalling all my apps =[