D975XBX2 won't boot with lan plugged in

[mickrussom]

I scrapped the Intel array and built a raid 0 array on the marvell controller,

Be careful trusting that marvell controller and their drivers. Somehow that driver doesnt smell like if passed a WHQL regression

[NN2K]

My suggesstion is disable Marvell controller and go get another Pci Controller. That save you a lot of time and headache.
Waiting for Bios update from Intel to fix it? Probably never.
To cool your 8800GTX, get a fan blown direct to the card. I use Antec Spot Cool. It really help.

[AARRGGHHH]

My suggesstion is disable Marvell controller and go get another Pci Controller.

One major issue there, PCI is capable of, at the most, I think 133Mbps. That would be a major slow down for a drive capable of up to 3Gbps. I suppose you could use the PCIe x4 slot, which I think would provide 1Gbps, but it'd be a shame to waste that slot on something that's supposedly built in to the motherboard.

Everything seemed fine until I enabled the Marvell controller. If I disable the Marvell controller, the system boots fine...

Okay, so if I understand right, this is only an issue when the Marvell controller is in use? A lot of Marvell controllers seem fine, do we know what other factors have to be involved for this to become an issue?

[Matt Dralle]

If your Intel D975XBX2 system hangs right after the Marvell and Intel ICH7R bios Post with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner, then the problem would seem to oddly be related to the on-board audio controller and the enabling of the Marvel RAID controller.

If you have the on-board audio DISABLED (yes, I said DISABLED) in BIOS, then go into the BIOS and ENABLED it. You should be able to boot in to Windows fine then.

The other method of getting past this particular problem is to unplug the LAN cable before booting the system, which will also allow the system to boot, but that's kind of a pain.

I have a Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Plat. PCI card installed too, but I found that I had the boot problem w/ or w/o this card installed. The issue started when I enabled the Marvell RAID controller (with the boot disk on the Matrix controller in RAID 1). There doesn't appear to be any issues running the Creative SB X-Fi concurrently with the Intel onboard audio controller.

Now, why enabling the Audio or unplugging the LAN cable fixes this particular boot issue, I honestly have to say, I have no idea...

Just another tip from your Uncle Matt...

[mickrussom]

One major issue there, PCI is capable of, at the most, I think 133Mbps. That would be a major slow down for a drive capable of up to 3Gbps. I suppose you could use the PCIe x4 slot, which I think would provide 1Gbps, but it'd be a shame to waste that slot on something that's supposedly built in to the motherboard.

See here before quoting any Speeds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths

PCI 32-bit-33MHz can do 133MB/sec max, but in reality its about 100-105MB due to bus arbitration overhead. (megaBYTES/sec).

PCIexpress x4 is 1.25GigaBytes/sec, minus about 20%.

It simply comes down to this: having a large cache on your storage controller will help you burst this data through the bus possibly faster than a 32-33 PCI, but all in all, as long as the 32-33 card isnt sharing the bus with other masters, the performance should be ok.

I want to try this:
http://www.legitreviews.com/article/508/1/

Adaptec RAID 3805

On this D975XBX2, as no other HBAs will allow the machine to boot. I have tried both LSI SAS/SAS raids, neither work right. Others complain about Areca and Promise as well.

I don't think the bus is the issue, but PCI-express always has the advantage of having no one else on the bus (the PCIe controller and the device are always "alone" on a given bus). It would be nice to get a real hardware raid HBA to work on the D975XBX2, I dont know anyone who has. The reason to use a PCIe real hardware raid is that they chose to solder on the worst drivers most unreliable fake raid controller known to man for some reason - would have been better off sticking with the SiL (CMD) 3114.

[drjim]

With the new bio update D975XBX2 (june 13th) will matrix and marvell now live together in peace...can i boot up with drives
on both controllers without removing the lan ???


thanks Jim S

[Matt Dralle]

With the new bio update D975XBX2 (june 13th) will matrix and marvell now live together in peace...can i boot up with drives
on both controllers without removing the lan ???

thanks Jim S

Looks like the answer is no. I installed the new BIOS and had the same issue.

That said, I have found that if you ENABLE the on-board audio, you don't have to do the un-plug thing with the LAN, regardless of the BIOS version.

Matt

[drjim]

thanks matt...

Still wont boot with Audio on... (blinking cursor of death..)
what are your bios settings any other issues

[drjim]

im gonna buy a PC E raid card to solve this mess any suggestions ??

[sygnus21]

Hi everyone,

I know this is old news, but many bios updates later, the “D975XBX2 won’t boot with LAN cable plugged in” is still present for me. Quick history:

I bought this board in Oct 07; put the system together in Nov 07. Initial setup consisted of:
D975XBX2 (bios 2802)
Intel Core 2 Quad (Q6600)
2 gig Corsair PC6400 RAM
4 Western Digital (SE16) 320Gig HD’s
1 Sata Lite-on DVD Burner
1 IDE Sony DVD burner
1 ATI X1650Pro 512Meg
Hauppauge TV Tuner (WINTV-PVR-150) – Replaced with ATI TV Wonder Pro - PCI
Antec Neo HE 550 watt power supply.

Setup on Intel SATA Controller:
2 HD’s, Lite-On DVD Burner – (One HD has Vista Ultimate 32, the other HD Has Win XP Pro, SP 2) - No RAID.

Marval SATA Controller:
2 HD’s (No OS, RAID 0)

IDE Controller:
Sony DVD Burner

Primary PCI Express: ATI X1650Pro 512Meg
PCI Connector 1: Hauppauge TV Tuner,
PCI Connector 2: Creative X-FI Fatality Pro Gamer Soundcard

With this setup and onboard sound disabled, system booted up and worked fine. Switched out the Hauppauge WINTV-PVR-150 TV tuner (old analog card, won’t work after 2009) and replaced it with an ATI TV Wonder 650Pro….and ran into the “D975XBX2 won’t boot with LAN cable plugged in” problem. What???? Thinking the card was bad, got a replacement, problem still there, returned card, got a newer Hauppauge TV Tuner card, still no system boot. Hmmm…try old Hauppauge TV tuner card, system boots…What???

Try another TV Wonder Pro 650, still no boot…what in the world??? Troubleshooting leads me to the LAN cable, which leads me to this thread, which led me to a fix, (enabling onboard sound)

Ok…maybe Intel finally fixed this??? Call Intel & send them e-mail of problem with link to this thread. They don’t know what the problem is, but state that I have “too many cards installed on MB", I correct the technician, by stating that the MB can take up to 5 cards, 3 PCI Express + 2 PCI cards, and that I only have 3 cards installed. Next they suggest replacing MB with a newer revised MB, I tell them I have the newest revision (-507), then they suggest updating BIOS, I tell them I have the latest BIOS (2802), baffled, they say they have to talk to their engineers and will call me back; two weeks later, I have to call them to see what they found out…nothing, but suggest I replace the power supply. I tell them there’s nothing wrong with the power supply; a supervisor finally reads the e-mail I sent them, with the link to this thread, acknowledges that enabling the onboard sound to fix the LAN boot problem is not a good fix and wonders if I have any problems associated with the onboard sound enabled with having another soundcard installed, I answer no. Ok, he promises me he will look into it and call me back and states he doesn’t think enabling onboard sound to fix problem is a good fix. It’s been 3 weeks since our last conversation. No phone calls, no e-mails.

Bottom line…You shouldn’t have to enable the onboard sound card when you already have one installed. Does this fix work, yes, is it the right fix? I don’t think so.

Would be nice if Intel addressed this problem.

My two cents.

[Kliggie]

I kind of wonder if it's the sound card because the only way we could install the x-fi xtremegamer is in safe mode,other wise we got the blue screen.We thought it was because of Vista and having 4 gs of ram, it still screech's every once and awhile like feed back from a mic.The old sound card didn't give us any trouble at all.
E6700,dg33tl,3 seagate 7200.10 500 gs raid 5 bfg 8800gtx Vista 32

[sygnus21]

Well, I never have had any trouble with the soundcard, even during the initial install.

[Methious]

Make sure your X-fi isn't installed next to a video card. Other wise it can interfere with driver install/update. Took 2 weeks for creative to get that to me. Didn't think of it cause PCIE is supposed to be on separate lanes. I could only install from the factory driver disk until I moved the card.

[sygnus21]

Make sure your X-fi isn't installed next to a video card. Other wise it can interfere with driver install/update. Took 2 weeks for creative to get that to me. Didn't think of it cause PCIE is supposed to be on separate lanes. I could only install from the factory driver disk until I moved the card.

Primary PCI Express: ATI X1650Pro 512Meg
PCI Connector 1: Hauppauge TV Tuner,
PCI Connector 2: Creative X-FI Fatality Pro Gamer Soundcard

The soundcard is in the slot farthest from the video card.

Thanks

[Kliggie]

Same with our card,it's 2 slots down from the video card.I real think Creative is giving us the gears about these cards knowing we will probably blame all of our other components.We have always bought Creative cards and have never had these problems

[Matt Dralle]

I've got the following combination:

Slot1 - Nvidia GTX8800 GTX
Slot2 - Nvidia GTX8800 GTX
Slot3 - Nvidia GTX7800 GTX
Slot4 - Creative X-Fi Platinum

I've got six 23" wide screen displays connected in a 2h x 3w configuration.

I've got the same issue with the LAN as has been described above. If I disable the on-board sound, the system won't boot with the LAN cable plugged in.

But here's something that nobody else has mentioned yet that I know of. If I'm running Winamp (any version up to the latest 5.51), and I span a window on the desktop so that it crosses over 2 or monitors, it cause loud clicks and pops in Winamp. There is defiantly a memory mapping problem with the X-Fi card and/or the Video cards.

Speaking of Creative, are they ever going to release a Vista driver that will add hardware volume controls to the standard system Mixer? It is totally bogus that you have to fricken open the Sound Control Panel to adjust the individual volumes for each hardware input on the X-Fi card. And worse, its a secondary modal dialog no less, so you can't just leave it open on the desktop. What a half-hearted, half-baked useless solution.

As far as I'm concerned, Creative has really dropped the ball with its Vista drivers and applications for their sound cards. Its just plain pathetic. I have been a huge Creative SB fan for years, but I would _not_ recommend a Creative Sound Blaster card for anyone running Vista.

My $.02

Matt Dralle

[sygnus21]

While I totally agree that creative needs to give us better drivers for vista, cause these bite, I don't really think this LAN problem belongs to creative. I for one didn't have the boot problem till I switched my TV tuner card from a Hauppauge WINTV-PVR 150 to the ATI TV Wonder Pro; others here have stated that they believe it's the Marval SATA controllers. I believe this problem strictly belongs to Intel. IRQ problem.

[Kliggie]

My husband is running the matrix controllers with 3 sata drives and the old creative card worked just fine except for bottlenecking (just old)and like I said we couldn't even install the x-fi normally, we have to do it in safe mode.And all he has in his computer is:
Dg33TL,E6700,4gs G-Skill ram, BFG 8800 gtx, Vista 32( which he hates )

[Methious]

If it's any help the X-FI driver problem isn't specific to Intel, or that mother board. It happened on my AMD on two different boards (both Asus) and I've seen it on Biostar, ECS, and Asrock. The only thing Creative gave us was don't seat it next to video. It wasn't a reference to the lan booting problem, just the driver problem with X-FI.