[Solved] No post or freeze at post after sata

Motherboard: Biostar TA790GXB A2+
Memory: 2x 2GB Dual Crucial Ballistix 800MHz DDR2 4-4-4-12
Video: XFX nVidia GeForce 9400GT 550M 512MB DDR2
CPU: AMD Phenom II X2 550 3.1 GHz
PSU: Topower 650w
CPU Cooler: GeminII S
HD: Cant install

Help!!!
Been trying to get this build up for days and days!!!

It's turned out to be a total rebuild after crash 3 weeks ago.
To make a long story short, I replaced everything...and now I have the bare essentials installed.
I figured out the prob with the no post by booting to my old ATA drive and get into windows log in safe mode
but forgot passwords to go any farther.
The main problem I'm haveing is when I plug any Sata in the System freezes at the 1st post screen.
I'm guessing that the mobo drivers need to be installed but it wont boot from the mobo CD.
How can I fix this when I cant get into windows or am I even on the rite track?

Oh ya, I've tried all the parts in parts out/reset cmos a hundred times. HELP

Message edited by hdshiftyman on 08-03-2009 at 08:50:57 PM

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"Motherboard drivers," As in BIOS update? it might fix things though I wouldn't bet on it since SATA is not a new technology. I had a similar type of problem when dealing with a recent AMD build, nForce motherboard, and Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI). The controller was built kind of strange, and only 4 of the 6 SATA connectors were capable of AHCI (defaulted as on). See if you can turn off AHCI, or look at the schematics of the motherboard carefully for any odd configuration details.

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Reply to wathman

wathman wrote :

"Motherboard drivers," As in BIOS update? it might fix things though I wouldn't bet on it since SATA is not a new technology. I had a similar type of problem when dealing with a recent AMD build, nForce motherboard, and Advanced Host Controller Interface (AHCI). The controller was built kind of strange, and only 4 of the 6 SATA connectors were capable of AHCI (defaulted as on). See if you can turn off AHCI, or look at the schematics of the motherboard carefully for any odd configuration details.

I turned off AHCI and plugged a Sata into that position and nodda....same thing freezes at 1st post screen.

So taking into accout what you said about the 4 out of 6 and the AHCI capability....I plugged into the # 6 position and I got far enough to get windows in safe mode from previous install and different mobo. I think I have the Sata drivers to floppy now. Gonna try reboot to floppy.

Thanks for the advice...will keep you posted.

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Reply to hdshiftyman

hdshiftyman wrote :

I turned off AHCI and plugged a Sata into that position and nodda....same thing freezes at 1st post screen.

So taking into accout what you said about the 4 out of 6 and the AHCI capability....I plugged into the # 6 position and I got far enough to get windows in safe mode from previous install and different mobo. I think I have the Sata drivers to floppy now. Gonna try reboot to floppy.

Thanks for the advice...will keep you posted.

Hopefully that fixes it for you, if you're using an nForce based board, there's a fair chance that's the issue. I wasted half a day trying to troubleshoot that problem when I ran into it.

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Reply to wathman

wathman wrote :

Hopefully that fixes it for you, if you're using an nForce based board, there's a fair chance that's the issue. I wasted half a day trying to troubleshoot that problem when I ran into it.

Problem is still there, however I do have the #5 & #6 SATA ports working. One is a Sata dvd rom and the other Is A Sata hdd that I'm currently starting from scratch with a fresh install of XP Sp3 which if all goes well I am planning on useing as my boot drive. I hope to get the 4 other Sata ports working and install my 2 other Sata hdd's from my old system as storage and backup.

Still working on it and thx again for your input.

Reply to hdshiftyman

You shouldn't need any drivers with that motherboard if you don't have RAID or AHCI set in BIOS.

You have to check that RAID is not used, as well as AHCI. If you had the HDD attached to a different brand of controller, then some metadata written by the other controller on the HDD can fool the new controller and cause error. This often happen with HDD that was part of a RAID array, separated before the array is deleted, and plugged to a new controller. The new controller will try to read the data, but won't be able to deal with them and crasch the system. Sometime, deleting the partitions, creating new one will cure the problem, and other time, you'll waste lot of time trying to fix it.

On that motherboard, port 5-6 can be set independently of the 4 other port, and are set as IDE as default. That way, they are not fooled by leftover on the drive. I would make sure that all ports are set as IDE, or, try to erase partition with port 5-6, and start over with the other ports to see if it would work.

Reply to pat

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pat wrote :

You shouldn't need any drivers with that motherboard if you don't have RAID or AHCI set in BIOS.

You have to check that RAID is not used, as well as AHCI. If you had the HDD attached to a different brand of controller, then some metadata written by the other controller on the HDD can fool the new controller and cause error. This often happen with HDD that was part of a RAID array, separated before the array is deleted, and plugged to a new controller. The new controller will try to read the data, but won't be able to deal with them and crasch the system. Sometime, deleting the partitions, creating new one will cure the problem, and other time, you'll waste lot of time trying to fix it.

On that motherboard, port 5-6 can be set independently of the 4 other port, and are set as IDE as default. That way, they are not fooled by leftover on the drive. I would make sure that all ports are set as IDE, or, try to erase partition with port 5-6, and start over with the other ports to see if it would work.

pat is right, when I was dealing with that problem system, part of what took me so long to identify the fix was that once a partition is formatted in AHCI, it has to stay that way. If you want to switch back, partitions have to be reformatted.

Reply to wathman

Alls well as far as the drives goes. Turns out that once i set the raid to enable it picked the other 2 sata up and boots fine now.

Now on to the connectivity....says limited or no connection for the gigabit lan.
Always something, not to mention the heat comeing off the HDD's. Are they supposed to run that hot?
As far as the mobo, ddr2, Vcard, CPU and PSU goes, I've never had a system run this cool. I git to do something about those drives though. Maybe when I get my old files organized and moved I should stick to 1 main, 1 storage and an external for back-up.

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Reply to hdshiftyman

hdshiftyman wrote :

Alls well as far as the drives goes. Turns out that once i set the raid to enable it picked the other 2 sata up and boots fine now.

Now on to the connectivity....says limited or no connection for the gigabit lan.
Always something, not to mention the heat comeing off the HDD's. Are they supposed to run that hot?
As far as the mobo, ddr2, Vcard, CPU and PSU goes, I've never had a system run this cool. I git to do something about those drives though. Maybe when I get my old files organized and moved I should stick to 1 main, 1 storage and an external for back-up.

for the gigabit connection, that will probably clear up once you get some specific drivers for networking on your system. As for the hard drives, some do run hotter than others. One thing I really wish HD manufacturers were more up front about is number of platters a drive has per revision. Typically the first revision of a drive of a given capacity will use the most platters. I think the first 1 TB Seagates had as many as 5 platters crammed in there. As you can imagine, power consumption, heat, and airflow were much worse on the earlier generations of those drives. Most manufactures now have 1 TB drives that reach that capacity with only 2 platters. With better manufacturing and design, the modern revisions truly out perform their precursors.

So why don't manufacturers more clearly state platter counts? They usually have it buried in some obscure specs document that takes a half hour to find on the internet. At least Seagate is getting a bit better about it by telling you what the generation number along with the model. They really don't go into much detail why 7200.12 is better than 7200.11, and there are plenty of reasons why it's better. The majority of the consumers out there don't have a clue about this, and rip-off stores like Best Buy are usually just as happy to sell you an older revision for the exact same bloated price as the new one, just because the capacity is the same!

So short answer: if your drives are on the old side, yeah, it' might be normal they run hot

Reply to wathman

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