Legit Reviews

I am unable to get past the second reboot after installing XP SP2 Professional. If I install onto an IDE drive it works find. But when I use either the blue (marvel) or black (intel) SATA connectors with the SATA WD hard drive it hangs on the XP logo. I've spent days on trying different boot things, such as different settings for IDE, RAID, AHCI, latest two bios installs, different XP cd, swapped hard drive, installed complete OS on IDE drive with latest drivers & patches and then copied boot partition to SATA, etc…….I’m at my wits end!!! ARGHHHHH!!!

Oddly, if you boot in safe mode it boots fine.

I’ve built many PC in the past and have NEVER had such problems installing an OS.

The system is as follows:

Intel D975XBX2
Intel® Core 2 Duo E6600 Conroe Processor 2.4GHz, 1066FSB, LGA775, 4MB Cache
Kingston KVR800D2N5/1G 1GB DDR2-800 PC2-6400 ECC Memory x 2
Western Digital Raptor WD740ADFD 74GB Serial ATA 10,000RPM Hard Drive w/16MB Buffer
ATI Radeon X1950 CrossFire PCI Express 512MB GDDR4 Video Card
500W power supply
IDE Plextor CD/DVD

Windows Vista installs without an issue, but I can't use it since I use AutoCAD 2007 and Solidworks which isn't Vista compat. yet. Besides, COD2 plays on XP and not Vista!

ANY help would be GREATLY appreciated!!!

Are you use the Intel Matrix SATA controller?
If not switch to that one.

Which version of the BIOS are you using.
If not the latest upgrade to the latest.

Let me know what you have.

COD2 is great and even better on a NEW 2.4 system.
Steve

I have tried both controllers. And I just tried the Marvel controller again with no luck.

I updated to the latest bios : 2634.

I am ready to launch this PC into the f...ing lagoon right now!!!!!!

Use the Intel Matrix SATA controller and plug into any port of the 4. Looking straight down on the board with (rear outputs at the top) use the bottom left controller port (that should be 0)

Go into the BIOS and set the system to base defaults and disable the Marvel (secondary controller) No tweaking till stable

Under Drive Config Set these:
Use Automatic Mode - ENABLE
ATA/IDE Mode - NATIVE
Config SATA as - RAID
SMART - ENABLED

From safe mode set the video to base VGA

Check your version of XP and make sure if you are using XP Pro and install SP1 before setting the graphics card drivers up.

Let me know what happens. You may want to make sure the PS is good and the HD is good as well. Also if you are using PCIe sometimes a bad video card will throw you out to lunch. When you see the Windows banner before startup the next thing that initalizes is the GC (graphics card) if it is bad no boot. If the power supply is not providing enough juice...same thing no boot.

Good Luck

MrStumpy wrote:Use the Intel Matrix SATA controller and plug into any port of the 4. Looking straight down on the board with (rear outputs at the top) use the bottom left controller port (that should be 0)

Go into the BIOS and set the system to base defaults and disable the Marvel (secondary controller) No tweaking till stable

Under Drive Config Set these:
Use Automatic Mode - ENABLE
ATA/IDE Mode - NATIVE
Config SATA as - RAID
SMART - ENABLED

From safe mode set the video to base VGA

Check your version of XP and make sure if you are using XP Pro and install SP1 before setting the graphics card drivers up.

Let me know what happens. You may want to make sure the PS is good and the HD is good as well. Also if you are using PCIe sometimes a bad video card will throw you out to lunch. When you see the Windows banner before startup the next thing that initalizes is the GC (graphics card) if it is bad no boot. If the power supply is not providing enough juice...same thing no boot.

Good Luck

Weird. I've got this same board but while I, too, used the Intel SATA ports, I set them to IDE and had absolutely no problems loading XP or any since.

My setup:

Intel 975BX2
Intel E4300 (so sue me, I'm cheap sometimes... )
2 x 1GB Buffalo Firestix DDR2-800 RAM
Radeon X1950 Pro
Seagate 320GB 7200.10 SATA hard drive
Pair of DVD burners, both IDE
Corsair HX620W


Haven't had a lick of trouble yet from that setup....currently running the 4300 at 3.1GHz.... 345 x 9 w/memory in a 1:1 ratio.

Thanks for you help guys, but I gave up last night and simply installed Vista Ultimate which installs without a problem. Vista is already creating headaches for me as my PDF writer doesn’t install smoothly (need to find a way to get the printer to show), need to wait for the latest release of the software I NEED to run (Solidworks and AutoCAD), etc.

I've tried everything including what you suggested BEFORE and nothing. Trust me....I've tried it all. Different video cards, different ports and BIOS settings for the controllers, different hard drives (interestingly an IDE WD drive installs without a problem). And if I missed something then it concerns me more that this board is so temperamental that there is a strict procedure required (all the moons and stars need to align with pink flamingos dancing in my front yard) to get XP installed all while this procedure isn't found anywhere in Intel's documentation or on their website. There is still something screwing with the controllers and the chipset, IMO, where the bios needs to fix. Intel needs to get the bugs cleared first. Maybe I shouldn’t blame Intel as they DO state this isn’t certified for XP yet (see this link http://www.intel.com/design/motherbd/whql.htm )

NDanecker wrote:Vista is already creating headaches for me as my PDF writer doesn’t install smoothly (need to find a way to get the printer to show)

Welcome to the club! I haven't found any PDF writers that work under Vista 64 yet. My best work-around so far is to print the file to the XPS driver, then copy the .xps file to an XP machine and print to PDF from there. XPS files will open with IE 7 on XP (it will download .net 3.0 if needed). Not the best solution, but at least I can do my work!

Sean

NDanecker wrote:I am unable to get past the second reboot after installing XP SP2 Professional.

...snip...

ANY help would be GREATLY appreciated!!!

Exact same problem here.

Initially I set up dual HDDs in Intel Matrix controller RAID0 and installed windows. All goes fine with the install untill I get to the final load screen into windows where it just locks up??? I can boot in safe mode fine???

I thought it could be a BIOS issue so I flashed to the 2663 BIOS and did a "repair" on the previos install. Same thing happened.

I decided to put off RAID for a while and just connected 1 HDD. Now it gets to:

"press any key to boot from CD..."

"Windows is inspecting your systems hardware configuration"

...................then nothing it wont even go to windows install page???

MrSTumpy wrote:Use the Intel Matrix SATA controller and plug into any port of the 4. Looking straight down on the board with (rear outputs at the top) use the bottom left controller port (that should be 0)

Go into the BIOS and set the system to base defaults and disable the Marvel (secondary controller) No tweaking till stable

Under Drive Config Set these:
Use Automatic Mode - ENABLE
ATA/IDE Mode - NATIVE
Config SATA as - RAID
SMART - ENABLED

Tried all that exactly but with no success

Tried all number of combinations of voltage, CPU/Mem settings, ATA/IDE config setups, different VGA, different RAM. Still get nowhere.

I don't own Vista and will not for at least 6 months and need this for work in the next few days???

Any other ideas?

k, a bit of an update. No ideas yet guys???



I've tried the following:

Flashed to 2663 BIOS

Changed RAM, VGA, HDD.

Installed Windows Server 2003 and an nLite version of Win XP Pro SP2

Setting up 1HDD on Marvell SATA port, no HDD detected in WinXP Pro SP2 install - Tried using RAID and IDE modes

Setting up 1HDD on Intel Matrix SATA port, finishes windows install then hangs on windows loading screen - Tried using IDE, RAID and ACHI modes

Setting up RAID0 on Marvell SATA ports, no recognition of Marvell RAID/SCSI driver floppy disk. "Disk is in unrecognisable format" or something - Tried using RAID and IDE modes

Setting up RAID0 on Intel Matrix SATA port, finishes windows install then hangs on windows loading screen - Tried using IDE, RAID and ACHI modes..

bump......no ideas yet guys?

Could it be the board? Can you still RMA your board for another?

I'm just coming back to this after a few weeks break from pulling my hair out.

I'm currently running XP using the IDE drive with no problems (except for the random lock-ups on first or second boot). Once booted it seems to run fine. Again, my solution was to run XP on an older IDE drive just fine, but would prefer to use the 10k rpm Raptor drive I purchased for this setup (arggghhhhhhhh!!!).

Well - now I'm going to try the new bios reflash and and see if this fixes the issue and allows me to use the SATA drive. Will get back to you guys.....

ND

By chance are you using a XFi s/card ?

If so , uninstall it before the os install (take it out of the m/board) , install it AFTER the os is in . Ive found that XP (x64) will do a simular problem if I install the os with the XFi card installed . Without the s/card in , the os install goes great .
Worth a shot .

Good luck .

NDanecker, I feel your pain.
I hate to revive (and perhaps beat a dead horse) but I am having the same problem.
Actually I can get XP to load on my SATA drive but only in IDE mode and I would like to use AHCI mode. I am fairly sure all my hardware is ok because it works fine with VISTA (on AHCI mode) on the same PC. Have tried many different versions of XP with no success. I am using the latest mother board Bios (2777) and latest Matrix RAID drivers (7.6.0.1011) with no luck. Do people acutely get this board working in AHCI mode with XP (for the boot drive) ????
Any Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Anybody even get this board working with SATA boot hard drive? .... see post above /\

yeah works fine here in AHCI mode on XP SP2


two thing i found out:

1. don't connect a SATA DVD Drive to the second black SATA1 connector (otherwise you'll get a large delay of about ~15 seconds before the OS will boot)
2. don't use the "Advance" Boot Menu Type in the BIOS-> set it to "Normal" (otherwise the board might not find a bootable harddisk)

I'm running Intel Matrix Raid on my SATA drives (see my signature) and having no problems. From what I've read the Marvel SATA's are buggy.