ASRock 775i945GZ IDE problem

Gorf12

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Feb 12, 2012
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I'm having a problem with an old PC which I'm trying to move from XP to Win7. My troubleshooting has led to suspect the motherboard's IDE subsystem to be the problem. I'm wondering if there's anything I can do about it - and if not is it likely to develop into something worse?

Long story short - motherboard is an ASRock 775i945GZ with an Intel 2.4GHz dual core CPU, 2GB RAM, no HDD, IDE Pioneer DVD writer. Trying to boot into a GPARTED live CD fails after 9 dots of initrd.img. Using the same optical drive and same live CD in another machine (using the same 2GB memory sticks, with its HDD disconnected, but a single-core Pentium), the boot gets all the way to the UI. Removing the HDDs has been part of the troubleshooting process. It doesn't matter which Pioneer writer I use, or which of the three IDE cables I use, I get a successful boot from the single-core machine but not the dual core.

Pins all appear present and straight on the motherboard IDE connector.

 
Solution
Hello... can you change bios settings and save them, and re-boot?
in other words force some other MB Bios options, 2) clear/reset the bios, 3) try auto detect, 4) check your ports, IDE settings.

Gorf12

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Hi, thanks for the response.

I'm able to change other BIOS options and save them without problems. I can also reset to defaults.

The drive is correctly detected by the BIOS as a Pioneer DVR111d. The only BIOS settings for it are PIO mode and DMA mode, both of which are set to Auto. The drive supports UDMA 4. I've ramped these back to PIO mode 0 and MWDMA mode 2 and it made no difference except fewer dots came up for Initrd.img

Have also tried using the slave connector (no difference, except the BIOS knows it's moved) and changing the drive jumper from CS to MA. There's only one IDE connector on the MOBO so can't try another at that end.

I've put the drive onto an old IDE to USB converter. The load of Partition Magic (it's not just the basic GPARTED after all) got way past the previous sticking point. The UNIX kernel load and module status messages all appeared before it rebooted abruptly, but not into Partition Magic.

Next step is to pull a SATA blu ray drive from my work PC and see how far that gets.
 

Gorf12

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Thanks again for the response. I've pulled the hard drive as part of the diagnostic procedure. If something isn't there and the problem persists, its presence not the cause of the problem. Sure, it might result in a different problem, but not in this case.

The Live CD is simply a version of UNIX that loads and runs from CD. No hard drive needed. The main content of the CD is a disk partitioning program, so it's a bit pointless to run without a hard drive, but that's academic at the moment - the problem I'm having is simply with the CD loading.

The CD works on another 2GB PC with no hard drive, so the CD is OK. I've used different combinations of three IDE cables, two DVDRW drives and one CD ROM drive. The only apparent difference is the CDROM fails much earlier than the attempt to load initrd.img but that can easily be blamed on failure due to hardware age.

As an update from yesterday - I've attached a SATA Pioneer BDROM and the problem persists. If I hadn't already swapped out the memory I'd be blaming that by now. I'm still at a loss...
 

Gorf12

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Thanks again for the help IronSounds. Turns out it was the PSU. When I swapped that out, the PC works fine, and the one that the "faulty" PSU went into doesn't even get as far as POST...