Help installing HDD on new mobo

Fanny Cradock

I'm having a few problems with an upgrade and any help would be appreciated.

To quickly fill you in: I’ve upgraded from S754 to S939 along with a new GPU and CPU. I wanted to avoid reinstalling windows (at the moment) and i took the advice (link provided by 8T8) on how to go about fitting a new mobo without the need to format my HDD. http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/...1400925745/p/1
I'm pretty sure that i carried out this guide accurately (the first half anyway - the other half is done after the new mobo has been installed)

The new parts arrived today and they're are now sitting in the case as I type. Everything appeared fine, however, when I went to boot the system up my monitor, connected directly to the GPU (A new 7600gt pci-e), remained omoniously blank (little orange LED as opposed to green) and the HDD didn't appear to be doing much after it initially spun up.

I'm a little confused by the manual. I'm unsure about the whole RAID thing and I would assume that my HDD should be connected to the SATA1 connector -there are 4 in total along with 4 SATA RAID connectors http://www.motherboards.org/imagevie.../1503_p2_9.jpg, yet the manual talks about being able to set up RAID 0,1, 0+1 or JBOD. I would have assumed the i would just connect the HDD to the SATA1 connection and that would be that. I'm further confused by the cables that came with the mobo - 8 SATA signal cables and 4 SATA power cables. I assume I'm supposed to connect with the slightly wider signal cables

New motherboard is http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.asp?sku=319951
New cpu is a 3700+ (s939)
New GPU is a 7600GT pci-e 256mb
Windows Xp home

So, after all that, my question is: what do i do?


Help!

:::Edit:::

I've popped out the battery and cleared the RTC RAM but still nothing. I really think that this has to be something to do with the HDD and my attempts to follow the guide that 8t8 provided or possibly I've connected it incorrectly. Yet, i don't see why the screen would remain blank.

8T8

If you are not getting a bios post it sounds like something is not seated correctly, I would suggest removing the graphics, RAM and re-seat them. If that fails remove the parts from the case and see if the system boots outside of it.

The black coloured SATA ports are the ones you want to plug the drives into, these are the NVIDIA SATA controller ports. The red coloured SATA ports are additional ones that are from a third party SATA RAID controller (which requires drivers to work in Windows, the NVIDIA one's do not).

One word of warning if the option is present do not plug in the old style molex power cables into SATA hard drives simultaneously with the newer wide SATA power cables one or the other but not both. The thin SATA cables are for data of course.

In the event the system becomes operational these are the core drivers you need to install;
nForce chipset drivers - untick storage driver & when prompted say no to the NAM {Network Access Manager}
NVIDIA display driver
Direct-X October 2006 update

Fanny Cradock

Thanks t8, i took your advice and switched the components around. i#It appears that moving the RAM to slots B1 and 2 solved the problem. Now, however, there are another few problems

*When the computer boots up it states that the CPU fan isn't working, but as this appears in black and white on the screen I'm looking at the stock fan spinning like mad. I'd like to get this sorted as I don't want to have to press F1 to bypass the 'problem' and continue with the loading process every time. If i don't press F1 it wont load.

*After the bove message, I'm asked if I want to enter the RAID utillity - I don't - and it slows the whole process down if it's asking every time. It's only minor, but is any way to get rid of this?

*Finally, and this is the most anoying problem, after booting up for the first time (and circumventing the problems above) I began to install some drivers. These, of course, required me to restart the computer after each one, but I couldn't be arsed doing this, and, instead, I just did a few of the more important ones together. I did eventually restart the computer but I'm now asked to activate my windows copy. Fair enough, but the thing is that the ethernet drivers aren't installed yet so i cant log on to the internet to activate it. How do i solve this? It's a genuine retail copy of XP home, btw.

:::EDIT:::

I phoned up Microsoft and, after ridiculous amont of number entering, i got a new code, so XP is up and running.

8T8

You really really really shouldn't batch install drivers like that in Windows they ask to reboot for a reason something a lot worse could have happened so count yourself lucky that it only prompted for a product re-activation.

Dismiss the activation prompt and it will say blah blah you have 30 days to activate then install the ethernet drivers. If you installed the above NVIDIA drivers then the ethernet driver is already installed check to make sure you didn't plug your ethernet cable into the secondary ethernet port on the motherboard (for which the driver is on the CD that came with the motherboard or you can download from Asus own site). (Edit I see you sorted it)

The fan warning comes about from you either have a fan which runs at too slow an RPM and hence the warning or you have plugged the CPU cooler fan into the wrong fan header so it is not detecting the CPU fan (but the fan still works).

The CPU fan cooler header is the one nearest the RAM slots, the one that is closer to the CPU is actually the chassis fan.

The RAID prompt is from the Silicon image SATA RAID controller go into the bios. go to advanced/onboard device configuration. Go down to where it says Silicon SATA Controller and set it to disabled, now save your settings and exit the bios.

Fanny Cradock

You are good at this, 8T8. I think that when i was removing the components I put the cord into a chassis header by mistake.

I actually think I wasn't that lucky with the batch driver installation. Windows is sort of mesed up now (greyed out options and some drivers (eg the graphics card) wont install. I remember this happened before and the only way around it was a clean install. I'll get this done in the next few days (pain in the arse, but a good lesson to do things properly, I guess) and hopefully that will be the end of that. I've a funny feeling not though!

8T8

Not sure what you mean by greyed out options you can install the graphics drivers in two ways;

1) Run the installer as a by product the installer will extract the files to C:\NVIDIA\...

2) Go into the device manager bring up the properties of the graphics card driver/unknown device and select the manual update driver but point it to the folder above and it will auto install the driver.

Note that the NVIDIA control panel is no longer present in the old display properties it has shifted to a dedicated section with the Windows Control Panel.

Fanny Cradock

By this I mean that options such as 'stand by' are no longer available to me, appearing, instead, as a greyed out/ ghost image. This is exactly what happened (along with my inability to install any graphics drivers) when I ran the windows restore function from within windows (as oposed to before it loads) a number of months back. Am I making sense? Trial and error, eh? Anywho, the only solution I could find was a format and clean install. However, I'll give your suggestion a try tomorrow. There are a couple of other minor things that I would appreciate some advice on, but I'll sort this out first.

Thanks!

8T8

Check the device manager are their any devices with an exclamation mark next to them ?

If so remove them, also check the system devices section and try removing ACPI related entries as that is what handles the system standby Windows should re-detect & install the drivers again.

Fanny Cradock

OK, I finally got a loan of an ext. HDD and I began the process of reinstalling XP last night, so the above replies can be ignored.

From the beginning there was a problem: my floppy appeared to be broken and so I couldn't create a SATA driver disk. Not to worry, as apparently my new mobo would automatically detect the SATA drivers or some such. Everything went well, and XP reinstalled without any trouble. Great! I was updating the nforce drivers (individually this time ) and I had to restart the computer. When I tried to boot up (this would have been the first time since my reinstall) I got this message:

system32/drivers/pci.sys are corrupt or missing,

and then it gave me the option of creating a boot disk (I can't remember the options off hand, but there were 4 in total) - obviously I couldn’t do this without a functioning floppy drive (I'll get that sorted tonight) - or running the restore function from the cd. It was getting late so I didn't have the chance to do either of the above.

I'm in work now and won’t be near the thing until later, but I'm wondering if anyone can shed light on what may have caused this? Not installing the SATA drivers from the start perhaps? I'm getting a bit worried because similar cases have been down to faulty RAM.

8T8

An unusual error to be displayed after everything seemingly going well during the install.

What you could is replace the file from the original XP CD see this instructions yes they are for Win2K but should still work with the following changes windows instead of winnt as the folder.

So basically boot from the XD CD, run the recovery console, input the command below replacing drive with the letter of your CD drive.

expand drive:\i386\pci.sy_ c:\windows\system32\drivers /y

Once done type exit to quit and reboot the machine and see if it loads.

Before installing the nForce drivers did you install service pack 2 for XP (you should) or does your XP CD already have SP2 built into it.

Fanny Cradock

Yeah, it's SP2 disk.

Is there any point in creating the boot disk?

I noticed that guide, but dismissed it as it was Win 2000. I'll give it a go later. I'm really hoping that this isn't a case of the RAM sudddenly deciding to die on me. I really can't afford to spend another 50 of your earth beans on this upgrade

8T8

You don't need a boot disk, but if you have access to a CD burner download the bootable ISO image of memtest+ and give it a whirl on your PC just in case the RAM is the culprit for all these shenanigans.

You could also try copying pci.sys from Windows\system32\dllcache to Windows\system32\drivers if you have trouble with the command above.

Your not overclocking anything are you ?

Fanny Cradock

No OCing. These parts are completely virginal; I've not been messing with them.

My plan is to:

Run the recover option from the cd;
Try that link you provided;
Remove the RAM to see if there is a problem;
and if all else fails, reinstall AGAIN.

I assume that when you suggest that I copy Windows\system32\dllcache to Windows\system32\drivers that this must be done within windows and not DOS.

One other thing: when the system boots up first it lists my card as a 7600 GT VGA, but its a PCI-E and the mobo has no VGA slot. Is this anything to be conserned about?

8T8

The VGA thing nah nothing to worry about.

The copying commands I mentioned above are done through the recovery console. If you boot the Windows XP install CD-ROM it will detect the existing XP install and prompt you do you wish to run the recovery console.

When you start the recovery console it will ask you to log on just press enter if there is no password for admin account and them you will be presented with a DOS like command prompt (but it isn't actually DOS).

From where you can run various commands and copy file around, just run the expand... command I mentioned above & that will restore the PCI.sys to the computer.

Fanny Cradock

Hopefully it's nothing more than replacing a missing file. I'll keep you posted. Again, Thanks 8T8

Fanny Cradock

OK... gettting there.


I can now get into XP. I followed your 'expand d:/ ...' advice, 8T8. Now I've begun to install the various drivers. So far so good.. however, there are a couple of odd occurances with this reinstall. First off, my maxtor HDD appears as a USB device (green arrow and grey box icon bottom right of screen); secondly, there are two local area connections listed - 'local area connection' and 'local area connection 2' as well as something called '1394 connection' (whatever that is). Also, I'vejust noticed that my A:/ drive is listed even though I have removed all cables (this was only after i reinstalled though).

8T8

Okay first off the motherboard comes with dual ethernet ports so that probably explains the two local area connection entries.

The IEE1934 is the alternate name for Firewire which is also present on the board. Firewire unlike USB also has some networking capabilities which is why it appears in the network connections section.

The above is all normal ad for green arrow on your hard drive that is for hot swapping {disconnecting} hard drives, not generally something you want to do. That it is enabled shouldn't be either unless you changed the setting or maybe installed the NVIDIA storage driver (it is normal so in that sense it is nothing to worry about) if you have installed the NVIDIA storage driver then I cant recall but in the driver properties is some toggle to enable/disable hot swapping I think.

One thing you could check is go into the device manager under disk drives bring up the properties of your hard drive and check the policies tab. Make sure it is set for "optimize for performance" & possibly enable write caching for extra performance.

Fanny Cradock

Ah, I was hoping to edit my last post before anyone replied. I had neglected to install one of the drivers, which, I think, would account for it appearing as a usb drive. I've since installed and the HDD no longer appears as a USB device. Hopefully it will take care of the intermittent (and horribly long) system hang I was getting. I've now enabled write caching and "optimise for performance". so I think that's sorted.

What about the appearance of a floppy drive? I have unplugged it since the reinstall and I'm assuming this would answer the question.

That makes perfect sense about the ethernet ports - not used to having two. Possibly I shouldn't have a couple of separate ethernet drivers running on the machine, marvel yukon and nvidia nforce, though they were both supplied with the motherboard. Maybe this would account for the dual network connections I'm getting.

8T8

Running multiple ethernet connections is perfectly normal though you can disable one if you want through two methods;

1) Disable the ethernet controller in the bios.
2) Right click on the device in network connections select disable.

As for the floppy disable the floppy disk controller in the bios and the drive entry may disappear it's been so long since I've messed around with that area that I cant recall the specifics.

Fanny Cradock

I'll look into it. I'm pretty satisfied that things are up and running near perfectly now. Thanks for all the help