i newley bought this mobo and i setted up and i was using my hardsik in achi mode in my old intel mobo as usually i wanted to use my hdd in achi mode in the ep35 ds3r i enabled all achi functions in bios and inserted my vista setup dvd and formated the hdd and the setup didn't saw my hdd the sata cables was pluged in to the purple ones (which this mobo have two) i installed the driver of sata raid drive and after it saw the hdd and i clicked the setup and the set up gave me an erorr it says windovs could not determine if this computer contains a valid system value. it gave this error while teh hardisk is reachable in setup. after this is pulged the sata cables and plugged them to the other sata ports which is orange but i also installed drivers of the sata in setup but it gave the same problem when i pressed reset the system gave me an error BOOTMGR i don't know what is this after this i closed all achi modes is made them ide and i connected the sata cables first to purple ones the eror didn't changed after i tried orange ones it didn't made any changes it gave the eror again after this i resetted the bios over the mobo and tried to setup windovs it worked it vista is working but when i tried again to use achi mode it gave same error i reseted the bios again and setted up vista. in the windovs actually i installed all drivers of the mobo after the clean format after insattling mobo drivers i installed my graphic card driver nvidia 175.19 version. it installed and i reset the comp to activate driver but while in the welcome screen the display goess off i thought taht there might be an error in the graphic card driver and i installed a lower version which is 175.16 and the display goess off in the welcome screen again after this i reseted the computer and started vista in safe mode and uninstalled the drivers and it is working now but it is working standart as standar graphic card what shold i do. i am really getting angry with this because i am trying to fix it since 2 days but no result. ohh alos tried to install xp in achi mode ofcourse i installed the sata sata2 chip drivers from floppy in xp it copied files but when the xp starts it gave the same eror again BOOTMGR please help me what is the problem what should i do.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Model Name : GA-EP35-DS3R(rev. 2.1)
--------------------------
M/B Rev : 2.1
BIOS Ver : f2
Serial No. :
Purchase Dealer :
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VGA Brand : MSI Model : NX8600GT-T2D256E-OC
CPU Brand : Intel Model : D945 Speed : 3,4
Operation System : Vista 32-bit SP :
Memory Brand : Type : DDRII
Memory Size : 2GB Speed : 533MHZ
Power Supply : 400 W


samsung 120IJ harddisk
samsung 250hj hasrddisk

Use the orange SATA ports over the purple ones as they are natively attached to the ICH. Enabling AHCI is fine and it sounds like you had the right Intel drivers installed for it to work. Here's a little something I found on another forum which may fix your BOOTMGR issue:

1. Put the Windows Vista installation disc in the disc drive, and then start the computer.
2. Press a key when you are prompted.
3. Select a language, a time, a currency, a keyboard or an input method, and then click Next.
4. Click Repair your computer.
5. Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next.
6. In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt.
7. Type Bootrec.exe, and then press ENTER.
8. Type /FixMbr and enter exit setup and the computer will reboot

The /FixMbr option writes a Windows Vista-compatible MBR to the system partition. This option does not overwrite the existing partition table. Use this option when you must resolve MBR corruption issues, or when you have to remove non-standard code from the MBR.