EPOX 9NPAJ+SLI - won't boot - NO SATA

[fedude]

I put my build together and it appeared to boot OK. The BIOS recognized my SATA drive. I loaded WINXP on the SATA drive and it installed properly. I even restarted and windows booted fine. Everything looked OK.

THEN I RAN THE DISK THAT CAME WITH THE MOBO. Suddenly when I rebooted I no longer have any SATA drives. During the boot process, it finds my non SATA drives, but it dosn't show the list for the 4 SATA sockets on the mobo.

Was this related to my loading the drivers for the Mobo hardware? Is there some way I can reset the board? Is the board defective?

 

[eizyark]

hmm..dat's weird..i'm also using a epox mobo but have never experienced such a problem..the only problem i could think of is the SATA drivers..u could try reinstalling xp and then flash the bios first before installing the drivers..i hope that helps!

beautiful rig btw

 

[fedude]

I cannot find a BIOS update on the Epox site. None. NADA. Anyone know where I might be able to find a BIOS for my mobo?

 

[kosmo]

Are you still having problems with your Mobo fedude? I have the same Mobo and have a few tips about the Bios if your interested?

 

[fedude]

It took a while but I finally figured out a few things for my mobo. Here's what I did:

1) I unplugged my case USB plugs from the mobo (to get windows installed on the "C" drive)
2) I wiped my system clean and installed windows XP again. Full reinstall.
3) Then I loaded the mobo drivers disk and manually installed the nForce drivers in a specific order.
4) I loaded the network drivers first. Then rebooted. Then I installed the AMD 64 drivers and rebooted. I did not install the other drivers because they are necessary for RAID and I don't plan on doing raid.
5) Next the video card drivers - again reboot.
6) I plugged in the USB connectors again.

BTW, If you are looking for the BIOS to flash the 9PAJ SLI mobo, you won't find it at EPoX. After a couple of messages with the EPOX support staff I found out that the 9npa+sli and 9npaJSli share same bios files. You need to download the 9npa+sli bios to reflash my mobo. At this time I've chosen not to do this, because everything appears to be fine.

 

[suemccartin]

Did you check the bios to be sure your SATA controller didn't get shut off in the bios somehow? Did you try clearing the bios?

I've found, for whatever reason, that the worldwide Epox site is different from the USA epox site. If there are no bios/drivers available on the US site look on the worldwide site and they're usually there.

You may suddenly have a drive hate going on, try disconnecting all your hard drives except your OS drive and see what happens then add them back in one at a time, check all conections and power connectors too. Good luck.