Cannot boot from SATA on A8N-SLI Deluxe

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Elstaf

Weaksauce
Joined
Aug 16, 2004
Messages
73
I get an error loading OS every time I try to boot with an SATA drive, WD2500KS SATA2. I have formatted the drive and copied the boot partition to it several times using two different utilities. I have tried all four SATA ports on the MB (1-4). I have tried with and without the IDE drives connected. The SATA ports are activated in the bios. I have set the SATA drive as boot drive in the bios. I only get the message Error Loading OS at bootup. The drive is recognized at boot and works fine as a storage drive. I want to boot from it for the added performance.

The board and drive are SATAII capable, but I tried limiting the drive to SATAI speeds via the jumpers and that no good either. What am I missing?

Thanks for your help.
 
I had a simular problem, I didnt have jumpers in it. And I have a question for you. I have Sata 1, i think. I was told it can transfer data at 150MB/s How fast is Sata 2??
 
SataII is 300Mb/s I think. Im still having no luck with this. Tried rewriting the boot sector and fixing the MBR but that made no difference. Still trying...
 
Have you set the partition as active?
perhaps you must boot into windows with the old drive
go to disk management and set the partition as active (boot partition)
power down, remove old drive and i think you should be able to boot from it

Or you can try a clean install
 
I tried disabling NCQ, uninstalling the Nvidia IDE drives, and trying it with another SATA drive and nothing is working. I cannot get this MB to boot from an SATA drive. I have another machine with a DFI lanparty MB in it and it works just fine. Anyone else out there with and A8N-SLI board having any such problem? I have not tried a fresh install yet, but it is beginning to look like that is my only other option. I hate having to do that.

Maybe I should close this thread and post it in the AMD MB section...
 
I tried reinstalling windows but it wont let me do that either. The drive is recognized by the installation cd but at the first reboot, when it attempts to boot from the drive, it gives the error loading OS message and cannot complete the install process. Can anyone help?
 
i had a similiar problem if not the same. I have the same HD as u i think (16mb cache). I couldnt get windows home to install and it kept giving me messages like boot disk failure and some other things. However when i tried installing xp pro, it worked like a charm. Dont know why, but it did. Maybe home doesnt have the proper drivers for this particular sata drive. Try pro and it should work. If you have any more questions please ask me and i will do my best to help you, sounds like we got similiar setups or at least similiar problems.

BTW my sata drive shows up in the removable hardware on the taskbar, is that normal since sata drives are hot swappable?
 
Thanks for the reply. I am trying to install XP pro not Home.

I did just get an older sata drive to work, but I noticed on the boot screen that it shows up as running at DMA 133, not SATA, which is where it should be.

The new SATA2 drive shows up as running at SATA2 speeds on that same screen but will not boot. (error loading operating system) I tried limiting it to SATA1 speeds via the jumper on the drive but it just will not boot from that drive.

I can't figure this one out and I am out of options.
 
Elstaf said:
Thanks for the reply. I am trying to install XP pro not Home.

I did just get an older sata drive to work, but I noticed on the boot screen that it shows up as running at DMA 133, not SATA, which is where it should be.

The new SATA2 drive shows up as running at SATA2 speeds on that same screen but will not boot. (error loading operating system) I tried limiting it to SATA1 speeds via the jumper on the drive but it just will not boot from that drive.

I can't figure this one out and I am out of options.
Click to expand...

Questions:
1. What bios version?
2. Were you copying data from an IDE drive to the new SATA one?
3. Does the install have the latest sata drivers?
4. ummm....yea....did you try the other set of sata connectors?
 
The partition must not be set active I think.

A SATA2 drive boots just fine in my own system, but it was hell's own job finding which drive was the bootable one when installing Windows with all 3 SATA2 drives connected :D Should be on the first SATA port of the native NVidia controller, and if it doesn't show up as bootable I guess you could try deleting the partitions on it and starting over.
 
I tried the drive on a DFI Lanparty NF4 board (my secondary system) and it worked just fine, exactly as it was supposed to without any problems. I used the WD windows utility to copy the boot partition, set it as the boot drive in the bios and there it was... it seems the A8N-SLI Deluxe, although I have been happy with the board, is fubar when it comes to running an SATA2 drive.

I tried the latest bios from ASUS, including the latest beta bios, and they made no difference. I don't want to move my X2 processor and better vid card to the DFI board, but it looks like that is the only way I will be able to use them with an SATA2 drive. I did get an SATA1 drive to work on the A8N but it shows up at boot as LBA, ATA 133, and not SATA. (The SATA2 drive showed up in the same window as SATA2 and would not work.) And, while the SATA1 drive worked with a fresh install of windows XP, it became very unstable very quickly. I had several BSODS after fully updating windows, drivers, etc.

Thanks again for your input guys. I don't seem to be able to find a fix for this one. Looks like I will be migrating to the DFI board, but I really wanted to build an SLI setup with the A8N...
 
I have a similar problem with my A8N-E, i cant boot straight too the SATA drive, but i can get it to boot if i leave the windows install disk in. it will say, press any key to boot from cd. as long as i dont push a button it will boot fine. but it is a pain to have to find the windows cd every time i want to boot up.
 
I believe you need to go to WD's web site and DL a firmware update for that HD to post.

Rick
 
I wish. The drive is working fine on the DFI MB, so it is not the drive. It is the A8N. Today I have been trying to make it run stable with the older SATA1 drive, but no matter what I do, it just will not operate without serious instability unless I run XP from an IDE drive. I can install windows, SP2, drivers, updates, etc, just fine, but as soon as I start installing other apps and trying to actually use it, it BSODs, stutters, etc. I cant even defrag the SATA drive without windows freezing every time I try it. I am disgusted. I have used this A8N board for a long time and have been happy with it, but this shit pisses me off. I should be able to use SATA drives with this thing...
 
Elstaf said:
I wish. The drive is working fine on the DFI MB, so it is not the drive.
Click to expand...

I suggest you try what the man says. Most likely the A8N is more up to date in drive recognition, and only accepts WD drives with the newer firmware. Throw it in a system and upgrade the firmware. I had to upgrade both of my Samsung's firmware to get them to work in RAID. But yet they worked fine in my old 754 system....lol

Or you could just give up and take it to Best Buy and hope that someone there knows wtf to do.
 
I had this same problem when I reinstalled everything (i thought i had done something wrong, a needless reinstall)

The problem I ran into was due to a change in the bios enabling a RAID array for the SATA drive even though I was only using 1 (one) SATA drive.

Look through the BIOS menus for the RAID controls, ( I am not at home with my pc so I cant exactly say). There will be options listing the 4 +1 SATA 'ports' on the MB. On this BIOS page try disabling the RAID options there.

Doing this allowed my pc to run perfectly. And by the way when(if) you install the nForce SATA drivers, your SATA drive will show as a removable drive, which is ok. Even if it is your boot disc it will show up in that manner.

This was all on an ASUS A8N32 SLI Deluxe with a WD SATAII 250GB Drive (the one with the 16MB cache)
 
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