Problem with JMicron

[androdion]

Ok so the strangest thing happened this night. I have an ASUS P6T and I flashed my BIOS trough the BIOS utility (EC-Z or whatever) to the most recent version, everything went as according to plan with no bumps on the road. Two strange things happened, first my soundboard's (PCI) Control Center was reset of its definitions, I had to configure it again. Strange but it's a one time thing.

The really strange part comes next. I have SATA drives configured as IDE and JMicron enabled on the BIOS, when I boot the pc it does so normally and if I shut it down and then boot it again everything works as a charm. BUT if I command my OS to reboot, the first time it does so, it will fail to detect the SATA HDD and only detect the IDE ODD. By this point I hit reset and it then finds both drives and boots as normally as ever.

Why on earth does this happen? It's so strange, and it makes no sense whatsoever in my head. I've tried googling such situation but haven't been lucky, thought I'd ask here and see if I can make it go away.

 

[androdion]

Ok so the strangest thing happened this night. I have an ASUS P6T and I flashed my BIOS trough the BIOS utility (EC-Z or whatever) to the most recent version, everything went as according to plan with no bumps on the road. Two strange things happened, first my soundboard's (PCI) Control Center was reset of its definitions, I had to configure it again. Strange but it's a one time thing.

The really strange part comes next. I have SATA drives configured as IDE and JMicron enabled on the BIOS, when I boot the pc it does so normally and if I shut it down and then boot it again everything works as a charm. BUT if I command my OS to reboot, the first time it does so, it will fail to detect the SATA HDD and only detect the IDE ODD. By this point I hit reset and it then finds both drives and boots as normally as ever.

Why on earth does this happen? It's so strange, and it makes no sense whatsoever in my head. I've tried googling such situation but haven't been lucky, thought I'd ask here and see if I can make it go away.

So I posted the same thing on the ASUS Forum and got this response:

"There may be some problem in the ESCD table in the BIOS. It should have been erased when you did the revision.. and reconfigured on your first boot after the revision.. So one thing to try is the CLRTC procedure... that is described in the 'Jumper' section of your user manual.

The BIOS revision 'may' have updated the storage controller firmware on the board... and the issue may be related to the some problem between the new storage controller firmware and the hard drive firmware...."

Which led to this response from me:

"Hi Ulrich and thanks for the reply.

I did what you said (sort of) but it all remains the same. I was actually reading the thread below mine and it happened to me the same thing as to that guy, the date/time weren't reset. Now if you could just explain the process more precisely so that I can do it without any harm to the board...

So what I did was this:
1- Unplug pc and every device attached to it (power cable, keyboard, mouse, monitor, speakers).
2- Move the jumper from 1-2 to 2-3 and wait the 10 seconds.
3- Move the jumper back to 1-2, plug everything again and boot the pc.
4- Everything was reset apart form time/date.
5- Reconfigure BIOS settings.

So you tell me that I should remove the board's battery and push reset to discharge it of any electrical charge. So my question is at what point do I do that? After step 2? If you could make me a sketch of the process it would be great!

Also another question. Since this only happens because I have SATA configured as IDE, as opposed to AHCI, does it mean that if I replace my IDE ODD for a SATA one, turn the settings on BIOS to SATA as AHCI and disable JMicron, followed by a clean install of the OS, this situation will disappear? Because it seems that what's causing it is indeed the JMicron driver and as such not using it will avert the issue and my HDD will boot normally right? I've been wanting to upgrade my OS to Windows 7, so if this resolves my problem altogether it's another incentive to do so rapidly.

So, having all drives SATA instead of one IDE and disabling JMicron in the BIOS followed by a clean re-installation of the OS on AHCI mode will take care of my problem?

PS: Downloaded the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostic Tool to test my system HDD for errors and it passed immaculately so it isn't an HDD issue, it must truly have to do with the BIOS update. It sucks thought that one updates the BIOS to improve it and starts getting problems..."

Anyone wants to add any other thing?