Intel D975XBX2 Won't Boot? - Try ENABLING BIOS Audio Ctrlr.

[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...