Asus A8V, problem booting from sata or seeing other sata drives

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DaRkBlAd3

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 6, 2002
Messages
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Hey guys, i just splurged and purchased the Asus A8V. I swapped out my old mobo, and put in the A8V and my brand new 3500. The changeover went fine, but the problems started as soon as i turned it on (as they usually do ;)). It shows the little booting graphic, then scans for drives. This is where it says "Hardware Initiate Failed, Check Cables(or something to that effect)" Then, under this it says "Bios Not Installed" which confuses me to death because i am able to get into the bios. It says press <g> to continue. So i press 'g' and it scans for something else now, i assume the other sata chip, it then finds my raptor(system disk), then after that screen it asks which flavor of windows i want to load, i select the correct one and press enter, then it sits at a blank screen for a few seconds, then reboots! i never see the windows loading screen or anything. So i go into the bios and look around, i have both onboard sata chips enabled (i have 1 raptor (true sata), and 2 ide drives using sata convertors, and 1 ide drive using ide :)). In the bios it does not see any sata drives, it only sees my one ide drive, and so apparently it's trying to boot from it, which won't work b/c there is no OS on it. This brings me to my next dilemma, where can i see what sata drives it detects?! The only drives i've ever seen it list in bios is the 1 ide drive, which does me no good. Luckily i'm at work so i don't have the temptation to smash the thing to bits, but this is driving me nuts. Does anybody have any suggestions? I plan on updating the bios during lunch today, i would've done it last night, but i let my friend borrow my floppy drive and without being able to boot to windows, i have to have it. So my friend is bringing it over during lunch, and i'm going to attempt to update the bios, but i'm not sure that will even help. I really hope this is just a setting in the bios that i'm missing, and not a physical problem :(

Thanks for your time
 
Hmm, you moved all your drives without a clean install of the OS I presume. My suggestion would be - install only the drive with the OS on it and see if it can fix the issues. Move it from one controller to the other as needed. Looks to me like the bios or drivers for one of the chips are missing, and that is probably the one you have the OS hanging off.
 
"Bios not installed" refers probably to the SATA controller's BIOS. You have to configure it first (RAID/SATA).

Moving to a different mainboard was probably not appreciated by Windows. Windows NT (including 2k and XP) never showed much flexibility in detecting hardware changes, especially low-level stuff. You can probably just install on top of the current installation, so that it'll only install the right drivers for this mainboard.
 
Bios not installed means no drive attatched to whatever controller you are trying to use

thats why its giving loose cable message

Dont know about asus bios but you have to put boot order from sata, disable raid, enable SATA, boot partition on drive active, correct jumpers, and put drive on correct connectors.

Did you format drive from before - what was old mobo?

Edit: I'm fairly sure its because you have raid enabled somewhere - only one drive RAID will also give you hat message.
 
i moved from MSI K8N Neo, with a 3200+ chip. The jumpers should all be correct still, especially on sata, b/c i can leave it at master and never have to change them. i tried having only the sata drive plugged in, and it is now trying to boot from the frickin cdrom for some reason. Also, i wasn't able to get the floppy drive, but i have a usb key, and i have the update file on it, but i have no idea in the bios where to look to see if i can update the bios with a usbkey. Do you guys know?

edit:: i have tried having the sata drive on both sata controllers, bu it really didn't make a difference.
 
um, its NOT the mobo bios

its the sata controller chip NOT SEEING any bios - no HDD

disable RAID as I edited above.
 
there is no 'disable raid' option, there is RAID Mode, and IDE Mode, i changed it to IDE Mode, when it is in raid mode it usually just says it can't find the array. This is with the promise sata chip, the SATA Boot ROM is the other chip (the one that the drive is plugged into, and the only options it has is "enabled, and disabled'
 
pge 90 of manual AV8 DEL

promise raid - enable DISABLED
Onchip SATA Boot rom - ENABLED-disabled

page 101

boot order:
Floppy
***** SATA (HDD name)<<<<<<<<<
CDROM (name)
 
first, my manual doesn't have page numbers, only sections... =\
second, i config'd it like you said, and when i go to boot device priority i have VIA VT6420 1st HDD(which i have set at boot #1), then floppy, then my cd-rom. so i don't know how to get SATA (hdd name here) to show up.

ok, since it's still trying to boot from the cdrom, it says "reboot and select proper boot device, or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key" :(

do you have AIM? PatrickB98 is my s/n if you wouldn't mine helping me in real-time :)
 
heh heh - they gave you the 10 page quick start crap = nfg

heres the manual: (144 pages)
http://usa.asus.com/support/downloa...=1&m_id=1&f_name=e1642_a8v_deluxe.pdf~zaqwedc
(you want EUROPE ftp)

When you turn off the RAID or the whole promise thing, then the system will move on and recognize your sata HDD
then in boot order you scroll (+ on num keyboard) thru what options show and put it in

also I would try a cmos clear now before anything else.
 
ok, i cleared the cmos, disabled the promise sata chip, made sure the other chip was still enabled, rebooted, went into bios, went to boot order, and it still is listing only those 3 things, no sata drive, and when i try to boot, it is still giving me 'reboot and select proper boot device etc. etc.' :(
 
Dual RAID
The VIA K8T800Pro chipset incorporated two Serial ATA connectors with RAID 0(striping), RAID 1(mirroring), and JBOD(spanning) functions while the Promise 20378 controller provides another two Serial ATA and two UltraATA133 connectors for RAID 0(striping), RAID 1(mirroring), RAID 0+1, and multiple RAID functions. The motherboard is the ideal solution to enhance hard disk performance and security.

South Bridge
- 2 x UltraDMA 133/100/66/33
- 2 x Serial ATA, support RAID 0, RAID 1, and JBOD
Promise 20378 RAID controller
- 1 x UltraDMA 133/100/66/33
- 2 x Serial ATA
- Support RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1, and Multiple RAID
 
Just for the hell of it - try hooking up another SATA HDD to the mobo - but I bet you dont have one.

I'll have to study the manual a little more - Is there still an O/S / drivers on the HDD from before? Or did you reformat that partition?

I have to see what that VIA VT6420 is (Southbridge?) I'm an Intel guy.
 
honestly i think if we talked on aim this would be easier :) but to answer your questions...
i don't have another sata drive here :( the OS is still on the sata drive, i didn't do anything to it before i switched the mobo/chip out, i did this before when i got the msi k8n neo, and i didn't have a problem like this.
 
i wasn't expecting everything to 'go', i was hoping i would be able to boot at least, i mean is that too much to expect?
 
The VIA VT6420 features two Serial ATA channels, supporting up to four devices and one Parallel ATA channel supporting up to two devices. The With dual channel Serial ATA, the VIA VT6420 delivers 12% more bandwidth than ATA-133 for data transfer between storage devices and CPU, bursting up to 150Mbps of data and offering a significant performance improvement in data intensive and bulk storage application. The VIA VT6420 furthermore incorporates a SATALite Interface, which paired with a single Silicon Image Sil3012 external PHY chip, adds two more Serial ATA channels at very low cost.

looks like thats the right one to boot from
 
like other's have stated it's all in how you have yoru bios configured. The sata setup in bios needs to be set for raid or individual drives. If set to individual it will work.
Plus your board may not work with those sata converteres. You may need to plug them into one ide ribbon and put that on the promise IDE controller. But seems like you need to find out in bios how to configure your sata first. And your SATA drive will not be seen in mainboard bios I don't think.

I have sata on my Asus and it's fine. I wish they would include floppy for drivers, but that's another issue.
 
JNavy89GT said:
like other's have stated it's all in how you have yoru bios configured. The sata setup in bios needs to be set for raid or individual drives. If set to individual it will work.
Click to expand...

i have it set to individual, and yeah, i'm not worried about the ide drives with sata converters, i just want it to boot :(
 
its trying to boot from CDROM meaning we might have to disable legacy ide ports also, getting no bios because nothing bootable on IDE controller
 
well in that case what I would do is get the via drivers onto a floppy

and reinstall winxp

if xp install can't see drive something is misconfigured or broken
 
cisco guy said:
its trying to boot from CDROM meaning we might have to disable legacy ide ports also, getting no bios because nothing bootable on IDE controller
Click to expand...

so just unplug the ide/power to the cdroms? (and from the mobo)
 
unfortunately i have to head back to work now. i can still post on here, but i won't be able to try anything till i get off work later.
 
pge 79

IDE devices - (auto) (NOT INSTALLED)

2 primary
2 secondary

I would uplug the cdrom and set all 4 to not installed just to see if you can boot

Edit:
(You could also throw on a regular IDE HDD - jumpered master, primary partition, active, at end of cable, to reassure yourself mobo is working )
 
cisco guy said:
pge 79

IDE devices - (auto) (NOT INSTALLED)

2 primary
2 secondary

I would uplug the cdrom and set all 4 to not installed just to see if you can boot
Click to expand...

ok, i'll try that as soon as i get home
 
Assuming that works, would you advise that i back all that i need up, and then format the sata? b/c if it does work and i do format, i don't think that is going to fix my initial problem, unless i wanna use windows w/o cd-roms ;) so any thoughts about that? btw, i really appreciate your help, i know you have taken quite a bit of time to help me.
 
Heres the prob as I see it:

Your mobo has tons of options for RAID IDE ATA133 SATA.
You have a Promise Chip a VIA chip and a VIA chipset combo
When the bios routine starts it looks for a bootable device per cmos settings, going by what is preferenced if available.
Its your job to isolate the particular SATA connection you want the bios to see.
Once you have it booting to a single SATA drive not in RAID mode, you may then add one or two CDROM type drives to the legacy channels (Promise does not support CDRoms (opticals)) - I would start with secondary legacy port.
There have been probs with ASUS Intel boards not booting with certain SATA drives (WD) with the ICH5 controller. These were fixed with bios updates. I dont know if this is your prob. An email to ASUS might be worth a try. But I doubt it
 
cisco guy said:
Heres the prob as I see it:

Your mobo has tons of options for RAID IDE ATA133 SATA.
You have a Promise Chip a VIA chip and a VIA chipset combo
When the bios routine starts it looks for a bootable device per cmos settings, going by what is preferenced if available.
Its your job to isolate the particular SATA connection you want the bios to see.
Once you have it booting to a single SATA drive not in RAID mode, you may then add one or two CDROM type drives to the legacy channels (Promise does not support CDRoms (opticals)) - I would start with secondary legacy port.
There have been probs with ASUS Intel boards not booting with certain SATA drives (WD) with the ICH5 controller. These were fixed with bios updates. I dont know if this is your prob. An email to ASUS might be worth a try. But I doubt it
Click to expand...

Ok, that makes sense, i hadn't thought about it like that. I wish i could figure out how to update the bios with a usb drive, otherwise it might be a day or two before i can get ahold of a floppy drive to update the bios, this is all assuming that it doesn't start working when i isolate the drive, if it does start working, i can just update from windows.
 
During POST process, the BIOS requests a response from each hard drive programmed into the CMOS setup. Lack of a "Drive Ready" response from any drive will produce an error message and/or modify the BIOS setup to eliminate the drive from the programming. Each BIOS produces a different error message or code as a result, but all basically indicate that an expected drive did not respond.

The lack of response from a hard drive can be symptomatic of many things. It is important to point out anything that interrupts communication between the hard drive and the BIOS is a potential cause, such as a faulty cable or no power to the drive.
 
cisco guy said:
During POST process, the BIOS requests a response from each hard drive programmed into the CMOS setup. Lack of a "Drive Ready" response from any drive will produce an error message and/or modify the BIOS setup to eliminate the drive from the programming. Each BIOS produces a different error message or code as a result, but all basically indicate that an expected drive did not respond.

The lack of response from a hard drive can be symptomatic of many things. It is important to point out anything that interrupts communication between the hard drive and the BIOS is a potential cause, such as a faulty cable or no power to the drive.
Click to expand...

they did include 4 new SATA cables i could use. although it does detect the raptor, it shows it when booting, but not in the bios anywhere. i'll try a new one later, just incase.

edit: i just remembered that a faulty sata cable was one problem i had with my last board, so i'll definitely try it just incase, b/c it could see the drive but it could never do anything with it, once i switched the cable it worked perfectly.
 
ok guys, i'm at the end of my rope. I isolated the drive, i changed all the ide chans to "not installed" like cisco guy said, i then booted, same problem as before, so i go into the bios and look in boot priority and the only drive (other than floppy disk) is "VIA VT6420 1st HDD" i have no idea wtf this means and i have no idea why it won't show the sata drive there. does anybody have any ideas?
 
that via hdd is your hd

I think you just need to reinstall windows on it. but you also need the sata controller drivers to allow os to see your hd.

there is NO WAY in hell that your hd will work until the via sata controller drivers are installed. And on your current OS, I dunno how they could be. The drives OS cannot communicate with the board, that simple.

Reformat/reinstall. hit F6 when it prompts you to install other drivers etc...
 
ok guys, update, i got a floppy drive, i updated the bios, and it's still giving me the same problem!! there has to be a way i can get the sata drivers on there through dos...any ideas?

edit:: i don't understand why it would ask me what OS i want to boot before and now it just says 'insert disk to boot'
 
Note: at first boot of new mobo, you are not "getting the sata drivers on there", you are caching them so you can communicate the HDD with the BIOS. You "get them on there" when installing XP.

Insert disc (VIA 6420 driver floppy) to boot message is great progress actually. Apparently, this mobo has a non-auto bios routine to cache the drivers before install of O/S.

to be extra safe:
disable fast boot up in bios (more HDD detection time)
disable legacy usb support (has been a problem before)

this is the ol' chicken and the egg - you need the drivers to run the sata raid, but you cant add drivers until it works.

on manual sec 5.7 it shows go to mobo cd and do the makedisc for via 6420 driver floppy - you will need it anyway. insert that disc and set boot order to cd first (secondary legacy ide master., auto detect - leave primaries uninstalled) and insert your xp CD also. then boot and see what happens.If you have OEM CD - I dont remember if thats bootable.
Eventually, when you can get to CD do a setup to repair to save everything. And at F6 scsi-RAID point to VIA floppy again.

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]&rnum=6

I really think you got it now - after you put in VIA 6420 raid driver floppy disc

Quote:
What are the jumpers set to on the hard drive.

Make sure that sata capability is turned on in the bios.

When you reboot the system if sata is enabled after the bios box displays the drive the next thing to come up is the RAID /sata config screen. If this doesn't then you should then get a requirement to load the driver from the floppy.

Once the driver is loaded then you can configure the raid controller for the attached devices.

Once the drive is configured in the raid sata controller ( even for a single drive) then you should be able to detect the hd format what ever.

Now the process should proceeed to the xp install. Did I say that you should boot off the install cd for xp.

All of the above should happen as a matter of the xp install process. If every thing is set properly.

http://www.abxzone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75552&highlight=sata+hdd
 
hey cisco guy, thanks yet again. i got to the xp install process, i hit F6 and install the drivers, then it says "no harddrive detected" :(
 
yay! ok, i accidentally installed the Promise sata drivers, and the sata drive is on the VIA chip, so i put the new drivers on the cd and now it's working, it's installing windows now. :D

/me crosses his fingers
 
put what drivers on what cd

if you pretend you are doing a fresh install it should say have found a previous install and ask if you want repair, say yes and you will save all your stuff.
 
ok, i'm on the new pc :D i see my old installed directory C:\Documents and Settings\dark\ but it says access denied whenever i try to access it. I have had this problem before but i can't remember what i did to get access. any ideas?

edit: earlier i meant on the floppy, sorry
 
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