Problems with Nforce 4 SLI X16 Chipset MB

[interested]

Hello.

Maybe someone out there can help me solve a problem that I am having?
Or at least someone out there with the same equipment ( or similar ) can tell me if they are having the same problem or not?

I own a motherboard which uses the Nforce 4 SLI X16 chipset

It is an Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe

I Also have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4200+,Dual Core Processor installed in it

I am having one problem in particular which i beleive is the source of all the stability problems i am having with this board.

every now and then i get Harddisk and atapi errors showing up in windows xp event viewer.(see attached image)

they are always the same errors:
Source:disk, EventID:11,
"The driver detected a controller error on \Device\Harddisk0\D."
or
Source:atapi, EventID:5
"A parity error was detected on \Device\Ide\IdePort0."

I beleive that the source of these problems lie with the Nvidia Chipset.

All my Harddrives and DVD burners are brand new and have passed all the tests i can throw at them.

I have tried the exact same hardware ( harddrives, and DVD Burners ) on other Intel machines with no problems ever arising,

I have a clean install of windows xp (32bit) pro SP2 with all windows updates.
The latest AMD X2 Driver is installed (AMD Athlon64 X2 Dual core processor driver 1.2.2.2)
The latest Nvidia Nforce 4 SLI X16 v6.85 Driver installed.

I have my Harddrives plugged into two of the four Nvidia SATA ports
I am NOT using RAID
I Get the same error whether i use the Nvidia IDE drivers or not.
I Get the Same error whether i Disable NCQ in Nvidia Drivers or not.
I am NOT overclocking
I have quality Memtested RAM
I have a quality High Wattage, High Amperage Enermax Power supply that has been throughly tested.
Everything is properly cooled in well ventilated case, temps are always low

I have 3 Harddrives,
2x Seagate ST3300831AS (300GB) SATA1.5 NCQ Drives.
1x Seagate ST3300831A (300GB) PATA

2 DVD Burners,
HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4163B, LG ATAPI
Lite-ON DVDRW SOHW-1673S, Lite-ON ATAPI


Another strange thing is that for some reason when i use the Nvidia SATA Drivers, Windows shows my Internal SATA1.5 Harddrives as being external.

I have never seen this happen on any Intel chipset board.
My understanding is that this should occur for only external USB2, Firewire, Harddrives/Flashdrives or external SATA2 Drives.


I beleive i have tried everything already, yet this problem persists.

So if anyone has any usefull advice to help solve this problem i would greatly appreciate it.

I also beleive i have listed all information relavent to solving this problem, however if i am missing somthing and you need further information, just ask.

Thanks for reading my post.

 

[war_child]

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=11&eventno=616&source=Disk&phase=1

i read a few things from the link above. Way to many things to list.

 

[interested]

http://www.eventid.net/display.asp?eventid=11&eventno=616&source=Disk&phase=1

i read a few things from the link above. Way to many things to list.

I had already been on that website, and unfortunately none of what is mentioned there apply to my situation.

Thanks for you post.

 

[wrangler]

Looks like you've covered all the bases.
Just gonna brainstorm here.

Cables? Interference? Have you tried switching them around. Use longer, shorter different brand? Re-route?

Interrupts, conflicts.......have you searched to see if any of the drives have firmware updates? Your using both ide ports or I'd say turn one of them off. Is the PATA the boot drive? Maybe make one of the SATA the boot drive.

Thats a hell of a gremlin you got there. Hope you find it.

 

[BUFF]

Another strange thing is that for some reason when i use the Nvidia SATA Drivers, Windows shows my Internal SATA1.5 Harddrives as being external.

I have never seen this happen on any Intel chipset board.
My understanding is that this should occur for only external USB2, Firewire, Harddrives/Flashdrives or external SATA2 Drives.

SATA drives are supposedly hot-swappable hence the "safely remove" icon.
I don't think that Windows will actually let you stop the OS drive but I haven't tested it ...

Unfortunately can't help with the other, more pressing problem.

 

[interested]

Looks like you've covered all the bases.
Just gonna brainstorm here.

Cables? Interference? Have you tried switching them around. Use longer, shorter different brand? Re-route?

Interrupts, conflicts.......have you searched to see if any of the drives have firmware updates? Your using both ide ports or I'd say turn one of them off. Is the PATA the boot drive? Maybe make one of the SATA the boot drive.

Thats a hell of a gremlin you got there. Hope you find it.

All great advice

However I have tried everything above and still no luck.

P.S one of my SATA drives is the Boot drive.

Still open to further ideas.

Thanks.

 

[interested]

bump.

 

[Dan_D]

Have you pulled all the drives except the boot drive? Cloned the boot drive to another drive and used it instead?

It isn't showing your SATA drives as external, but rather as hot plugable in the same fashion as external USB drives are. I can't remember where, but there is a setting to disable that. On my machine both my Raptors show up that way also.