Asus p8z68-v Pro HD issue

[otherworldview]

Evening all.

I just picked up an Asus p8z68-v Pro mother board last night and have been having an issue with the Windows 7 installer seeing my hard drives. I had first pulled the drives out of my previous AMD case which worked fine and put them into this semi new setup (only thing new is board and CPU). I plugged both hard drives into the Intel blue ports (SATA 3 and 4) and they appear in the BIOS just fine. When I go to install Windows it tells me there's drives to be found and of course to go browse for drivers. I have the ASUS DVD loaded up on an external HD since I have no optical drive and can pull up all the drivers but none of them work. What's odd also is that when I go to browse the installer will see my hard drives in that along with all the files which is quite perplexing.

Am I missing some option within the BIOS? I'm not using the Marvell SATA so that's disabled and I'm also not doing and RAID since I just have an OS HD and a file HD.

Thank you for any help.

 

[otherworldview]

Been trying most of this evening to get this working. Even went through Seven Forums "How to Optimize for Windows Reinstallation" walkthrough and still came up broke. Am I possibly looking at a bum board or is it Window's installer that's the issue. I can't tell...

 

[GhislainG]

Why do you need to load drivers? Windows 7 should already include all the ICHxR drivers (though you can upgrade them once the OS is installed).

 

[jitpublisher]

Windows 7 needs nothing, just set the SATA controller to AHCI mode and install away.

 

[otherworldview]

GhislainG:
That's what I thought too. I've never had issues installing Windows till now. I even tried copying a set of ICH10R drivers to another external USB drive (I have no optical drive atm) and now Windows installer isn't even seeing them. I do have USB legacy and all turned on so now I really don't know what's up.

Jitpublisher:
Yup, set to AHCI, but still a no go...

 

[GhislainG]

Can't you install from an eSATA drive or an optical drive borrowed from another system? I may be wrong, but it looks like your issues are related to the use of USB drives.

 

[raja@asus]

Were these HDDs ever part of a RAID array on your other system? If so there may be meta data remaining which is causing non-recognition.

The only other bizarre symptoms I have seen like this have been caused by DRAM instability. The debug is to use one memory module, or increase VCCSA/IO somewhat (may need to set DRAM volatge manually also).


-Raja

 

[otherworldview]

GhislainG:
Unfortunately right now I don't have another PC to borrow parts from. Only optical drive I have access to are in the laptop. Thing is though, I've never had an issue with the USB stick before. I don't use it for anything else but as an OS drive so it's not like something has been changed.

Raja@ASUS:
These drives were never part of a RAID array. There are only two and one was used stictly as a OS / program drive (500gb Hitachi) and other as storage (2tb WD). Right now I've pulled the storage drive just to take it down to bare bones. Only thing I have plugged in now is just the 500gb drive.
As for memory I'm using a 2x4gb Kingston 1600 set found here. I used the same pair on the AMD system I was using and gave me no issues. They show in Bios correctly as well.

 

[GhislainG]

The memory modules are designed to run at 1.65v which is quite high for the new system. I'd run memtest86+ for a few hours to be sure that there are no memory errors.

 

[magicman_77]

Was there ever a resolution to this? I'm having the same problem. In my case, I have an SSD that I want as my main drive. Its not formatted but I'm pretty sure windows should still pick it up. I've tried 2 different Win 7 images, setting my drive to IDE, loading drivers from both the driver disk and the website but no luck. I know on this board there is a way to use the SSD as a caching drive. Is it possible that that is set up, or would it be obvious?
Thanks

 

[GhislainG]

Is the SSD configured as your boot drive? Are you booting the Win 7 image from a SATA DVD? Your controller should be in AHCI or RAID mode if you want Trim to work.

 

[magicman_77]

Apparently, I can't read error messages. The original poster said that he/she's installing from USB with no optical drive. I reread the error message that windows is giving me on install. It said that it can't find any cd/dvd rom drive, so i must be missing a driver. There is no drive. Is there any way for me to tell windows that? I only have access to IDE DVD drives, so they're no good. Thanks for the quick response btw.

 

[GhislainG]

Are you installing from a USB drive? If so, is it connected to a USB 2.0 or a USB 3.0 port? No drivers should be required for USB 2.0.

 

[magicman_77]

I am installing from USB. The problem is that windows thinks everyone has to have an optical drive. I don't. I can't get past the discovery part of the install. USB is working fine, it loads the windows installer. It even finds an old sata hard drive that i had laying around. There is a problem with the windows installer, not the system. I'll see what I can do about getting an optical drive. Sorry for ppl in the future who hate optical media

 

[GhislainG]

You don't need to install an optical drive. Just connect it to the system to get the OS installed and then put it back on the shelf.

 

[kidindream]

I had the same problem..
Installing from a USB drive.

The problem was solved when I plug the USB drive to a normal 2.0 (instead 3.0) and the installation completed smoothly.

 

[Omi3D]

You might also try to update the MSI Installer from the MS TECH site. I recall that the update addressed an issue with installing Win7 without an optical drive, ... can't remember the exact KB article but you can search it "MSI Update". Also be sure you're using a "powered" USB port. Many MB's only have 1 or 2 active ports at post.

Side Note:
If this drive has a previously installed image of Windows from a previous mainboard, Windows sees this as a "duplication" of the end-user license agreement. It will not allow that image to be modified directly without the matching source drive that installed it. MS has a department that handles these types of transferred system images. It requires a phone call to MS. It will prompt you for the License and ask some minor questions, then issue a new license for the new install.