A8N32-SLI Problems with SATA and IDE working together

[Mr Vexed]

I've searched and read several other posts but none seem to be exactly what is ailing me.

I am using an A8N32-SLI Deluxe MB. All was well until I wanted to add an older IDE drive I had lying around to install Linux to. I have Windows XP installed on my SATA drive (3rd Primary IDE Master according to BIOS) and that works fine. I have my DVD Burner installed as my 2nd Primary IDE Master and it too works fine. The problem comes when I attempt to put my IDE drive on as 1st Primary Master. When I plug it in, I first go into bios (adding the drive changes around my boot order and tries to make the IDE my boot drive) and change it back to the SATA drive as being the 2nd boot device (DVD as the first boot device). It will load up to the 'there has been a problem' screen for windows xp and select start windows normally...it then reboots back to bios.

I have tried switching around the DVD and IDE HD so the DVD is Primary Master and the HD is Secondary Master and get the same response. If I unplug the IDE drive, windows xp boots up just fine off the SATA drive again. I then figured that it must have some old file system on it so I used my fedora disk to wipe out any partitions on the drive and tried again. Same result.

I went so far as to (with both HD's and DVD hooked up) to just install Linux on the IDE HD and it worked fine, but if I attempt to boot on the SATA it will just reboot after selecting 'start windows normally'. I've tried safe mode as well and get the same thing, reboot right after making the selection.

The IDE HD tested fine (using Maxtors HD tools). I'm really stumped here and any help would be much appreciated.


Thank you in advance,

Mr Vexed

 

[nathanc1]

I have that exact MB, you can NOT use SATA and IDE at the same time and have the SATA drive be the master. When you install Windows, it WILL put the boot record and several other boot loader files on the IDE drive. If you are OK with a few bootloader files on the IDE drive and the rest of the OS on the SATA drive, then you are fine, it you do that and then later remove the IDE drive, the OS will have to be re-installed. Get rid of the IDE drive or use the SATA as a data drive.

 

[cfvh600]

What is the current jumper setting on your IDE hard drive? Master, Slave, or Cable Select?

 

[Mr Vexed]

Ok...First. nathanc1, I actually used to have 2 old 20g HD's on the Primary IDE, one set as Primary Master and the other set as Primary Slave. I even made them dynamic disk and did MS's kinda software span on the 2 drives to make it appear as one 40g drive. So I would assume that yes you can have and IDE on the Primary Master, in my case to use as storage with the SATA as Primary.

cfvh600...
HD configuration that I want and tried:

Primary Master - 160g IDE HD (jumpered to Master)
Primary Slave - None

Secondary Master - DVD Burner (jumpered to Master)
Secondary Slave - None

Third Master (SATA 1 on MB) - 250g SATA HD (jumpered to Master
No other SATA drives connected.

Old configuration:

Same as above, with the following exception...

Primary Master - 20g IDE HD (jumpered to Master)
Primary Slave - 20g IDE HD (jumpered to Slave)


I don't use CS as I guess getting started back 'in the day' CS had many problems and always worked better to just jumper them Master or Slave respectively.

I'm sure this can work as I had the 2 old 20g IDE's on the same channel and worked fine with the SATA being the Master that XP was installed onto.

 

[cfvh600]

Try putting your 160gb IDE HD on slave, or your DVD Burner on slave.They can't both be on master and on the same channel.

 

[Mr Vexed]

cfvh600 - Either I didn't explain well enough or your mis-reading...the IDE 160g and DVD Burner ARE on separate channels...one as master on the Primary IDE (160g) and the other on the SECONDARY as Master (DVD Burner).

 

[Mr Vexed]

-= UPDATE =-

So for fun I decided to attempt to re-format and install Windows XP w/the IDE and SATA drives hooked up the way I wanted (IDE HD as Master on Primary, DVD as Master on Secondary, SATA as Master on SATA 1 (Third IDE in Bios).

Well, interesting stuff. First, after the first reboot (after copying files) I got a BSOD for the bios not being ACPI compliant. I just redid it hitting F7 when it asks about raid. After installation it booted up fine. I looked under device manager at the IDE drive and noticed it was running in PIO 4 mode. Since its a UDMA 6 drive this kinda surprised me but I continued by installing my chipset drivers.

Chipset driver's installed fine, but when it rebooted it did what it was doing before when it would get past post and try to load XP...Reboot. However unlike before I selected safemode when the screen came up and it allowed me to enter...now I changed nothing in safe mode and just rebooted...it rebooted and loaded xp. I did however notice there was a single beep when the windows xp boot splash (blue kit car bar) was finished and its about to take you into your desktop.

I looked again at device manager and it was showing the IDE drive correctly at UDMA 6. This is truly freaking odd. Take out the drive and again everything boots fine with no beep or anything...how freakin wierd. Just thought I would add some more information, I will play with this some more and see if I can get it to fail by rebooting and continuing with sound/video driver installation.


Thanks again all...

 

[Mr Vexed]

-=Update=-

Well after turning pretty much everything off, pluging in the USB KB into the PS/2 via USB to PS/2 adapter (wich is probably not good), I got it to install without the ACPI error. There is still a single very quiet beep right after the windows xp loading splash but before it loads your desktop (when it goes black). Have no idea what that is about, nor can I find any info about it.

Also on the previous fresh install, it would at times boot up with no errors, other times with a BSOD bad pool header as well as stop code 0x00000017 or some such with no identifier. Also when it did boot up sometimes it would have IRQ conflicts on the Primary IDE channel, other times not...and one time it had conflicts with my PCI-E Nvidia 7600. All very odd. This board is very touchy and has been since purchase. I may just RMA it since it is still under warranty and see if that changes anything. Sadly that means probably a week without my main PC, but may be worth it if it takes care of such headaches.

Anymore information anyone can provide or similar problems would be wonderful.

Thanks again! You guys/gals are great.