Intel D975XBX2 Issues

[old stuff]

I just discovered this forum yesterday, and found many others have experienced the same glitches I have encountered since I decided to build my own system for the first time in Feb (see signature). Almost all problems have now been resolved, in part due to this forum.
At first I had BSD problems when awaking from a sleep state. This was fixed by an updated driver from Intel for the SigmaTel Audio.
The annoying Marvell message on boot about not finding a hard drive also was an issue until I disabled the secondary SATA driver as suggested on this forum.
The worst experience, though, was the defective bios update 2745. My system kept trying to access the DVD drive when starting up instead of booting, even when running the bios update from a floppy in recovery mode. I finally was able to recover the bios by disconnecting the DVD drive, and rolled back to v. 2692. I now have updated successfully to v. 2747. It is interesting that Intel makes no mention of 2745 in the release notes for 2747.
My remaining issue, for which I have found no clear solution here, is that the HDD LED doesn't work. I have tried reversing the polarity, but it didn't help, and disabling the secondary SATA made no difference either. Any hints on this would be greatly appreciated.

[mickrussom]

Lol. Intel even removed 2745 from the archive.

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Filter_ ... sType=prev

And yet, even though Intel screwed up, they still maintain my memory is "not supported" even though it works great again and I followed every single specification on the manual/TPS to the letter.

[BlueMagic]

Connect a battery to the HDD leads to make sure the LED works.

[Dandruff]

My remaining issue, for which I have found no clear solution here, is that the HDD LED doesn't work. I have tried reversing the polarity, but it didn't help, and disabling the secondary SATA made no difference either. Any hints on this would be greatly appreciated.

with the 2747 bios the hdd led is working fine here. check the led.

[old stuff]

As suggested by BlueMagic and Dandruff, I checked my LED and it is good, but still doesn't light up with HDD activity.

The drive bios are set up as follows:
Automatic Mode: enable
ATA/IDE Mode - native
Configure SATA as - IDE
S.M.A.R.T. - enable

The drive is attached to SATA Port 0 and is recognized in the bios.

The secondary SATA controller is disabled.

Anyone else have any ideas/suggestions? Thanks!

[ACL]

...
Configure SATA as - IDE
S.M.A.R.T. - enable

...

I'm curious, why do you have the SATA drive running as IDE? This maxes the speed out at UDMA4 or UDMA5 and disables NCQ ....

(according to the info provided in Intel Desktop Utilities)

ACL

[old stuff]

ACL-
I expected the bios to detect the SATA drive and configure it appropriately. By the time I discovered that wasn't the case I had installed the OS and a bunch of other software, and didn't want to start over.

[SteveS]

...
Configure SATA as - IDE
S.M.A.R.T. - enable

...

I'm curious, why do you have the SATA drive running as IDE? This maxes the speed out at UDMA4 or UDMA5 and disables NCQ ....

(according to the info provided in Intel Desktop Utilities)

ACL

Just noticed this reply and I am wondering what should the single SATA drive be configured as?

[old stuff]

I understand the fastest access would be with it configured as AHCI (advanced Host Controller Interface), but this has to be set up before you install the OS. If you try to switch from IDE to AHCI after the OS is installed, it will not boot. I am not sure how much speed you gain by this, but I wasn't prepared to start my installation over again to find out.

[ACL]

...
Configure SATA as - IDE
S.M.A.R.T. - enable

...

I'm curious, why do you have the SATA drive running as IDE? This maxes the speed out at UDMA4 or UDMA5 and disables NCQ ....

(according to the info provided in Intel Desktop Utilities)

ACL

Just noticed this reply and I am wondering what should the single SATA drive be configured as?

I followed Intel's recommendation to use RAID. A single drive runs fine when set to RAID mode.

BTW, I made the same "mistake" that Old Stuff did ... but I elected to reinstall WinXp and all the software I had installed. It was a pain, but it was plaguing my mind to have it run in IDE mode.

[old stuff]

After some searching, I found that it is possible to switch from IDE to AHCI without a reinstall of Vista. One suggestion involved a registry change to reactivate the ACHI driver, another installed the Intel driver directly from the device manager. The method I used came from a suggestion on MS Vista community discusssion group.

The "configure SATA" bios setting should be on IDE mode before attempting this.

You can install the Miscrosoft standard AHCI driver from within Vista through Device Manager. In Device Manager select your IDE/SATA controller (in my system this was listed under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, and was below the Ultra ATA controller). Right click and select properties, select the driver tab and then and select update driver. Then select browse my computer for driver software. Select let me pick from list. In the next screen untick the box "show compatible hardware". Scroll down under the Manufacturer column and select the Standard AHCI driver and select next. You will get a warning that this may result in the device not operating if it is not the correct driver. I ignored the warning and it worked for me, but there are no guarantees! This should install the Microsoft AHCI driver.

Restart, and go into the bios and change your IDE/SATA configuration to AHCI. Once you save the bios change and reboot you can then install the Bad Axe 2 AHCI driver. Wait for Vista to install the MS AHCI driver before you proceed. I used the executable Integrated Intel® Matrix Storage Technology (RAID) driver (STOR_ALLOS_7.5.0.1017_PV.EXE from http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... 2&lang=eng ). Just double click the file and follow the directions. After rebooting, the drivers installed and I had to reboot again. After the second reboot, Vista installed a driver for my Seagate HDD, and once again I had to restart.

Not exactly simple, but much easier than a reinstall.

[ACL]

Wow. That's some scary stuff there :D

Glad it's working for you though. Intel's web site says that blah blah blah Microsoft says you shouldn't try to change the drive mode in BIOS blah blah blah. Actually I tried several times (just changing, changing and using Recovery Console, etc.) and it would just get stuck in a reboot loop, but I never found instructions as detailed as yours. Who knows if that would even work with XP anyway.

Somewhere, someone will find this thread in the future and it will help them though.

[old stuff]

Footnote: Unintended consequences

While my HDD is spinning away as AHCI, evidently the change from IDE caused Vista to think I had changed the boot drive, and I had to reactivate. I have the OEM version so had to go the telephone call route. The nice lady couldn't explain to me why this was necessary, but everything is copacetic again.

[DaddyRabbit]

I did this in XP (installed Vista from scratch in RAID mode so no worrys there)

I didn't mess with the MS driver however, and it's simpler than it looks (note the standard "it worked for me but YMMV so do at your own risk and have a backup" disclaimer applies )

All I did was, with the BIOS set in IDE mode in device manager go the "update driver" route, select "Have Disk" select the appropriate AHCI driver from the BX2 floppy and immediately reboot, go immediately into BIOS set the controller to AHCI reboot again and voila!

I did not try to select the RAID driver and when I tried to update to the RAID driver from the AHCI driver that I updated to in the above steps I could not get it to work so I think it's a "one shot" deal.