A8R-MX/SI motherboard drivers needed?

[tvh123]

Hi all,
Do you guys have the drivers cd for the ASUS mobo A8R-MX/SI?
I've seem to lost the drivers cd and can't find it anywhere on the Internet.

Thanks

 

[Dahak]

I found over at Hardforum that to get the drivers from Asus you have to search the Vintage-AH1 barebone system
the only thing not listed there is the integrated video/chipset drivers


Or You can get the drivers directly from the hardware makers

Chipset/Video and select your os and then Motherboard/IGP drivers and Radeon Xpress 200
Audio
Network
IDE/Raid Southbridge Drivers Select the latest ones

 

[hoegaardenzo]

hey there,

I'm hoping someone can help me out or point me in the right direction

I believe I need to update my BIOS on this same A8R-MX/S in order to install a WD SATA 500 GB HD

This old machine has windows xp running on a 250 GB HDD now. It's about 5 yrs. old. I have hooked up a new 500 GB HDD to the SATA 2 spot on the mainboard. When the system begins to boot up I can see both Hard drives displayed briefly on the first black screen. Now when I try to install windows xp from boot up the installation will not recognize any of the drives. It will ask me to select a drive to format or partition, but nothing is there, not even the c: ? Could this be as simple as a faulty windows xp disc?

You can probably tell from reading this I'm not familiar with doing this kind of thing at all. If you can, please help me out.

Thanks for reading,

Kris

 

[Harvey]

hey there,

I'm hoping someone can help me out or point me in the right direction

I believe I need to update my BIOS on this same A8R-MX/S in order to install a WD SATA 500 GB HD

This old machine has windows xp running on a 250 GB HDD now. It's about 5 yrs. old. I have hooked up a new 500 GB HDD to the SATA 2 spot on the mainboard. When the system begins to boot up I can see both Hard drives displayed briefly on the first black screen. Now when I try to install windows xp from boot up the installation will not recognize any of the drives. It will ask me to select a drive to format or partition, but nothing is there, not even the c: ? Could this be as simple as a faulty windows xp disc?

You can probably tell from reading this I'm not familiar with doing this kind of thing at all. If you can, please help me out.

Thanks for reading,

Kris

Since you posted that you need the latest BIOS and drivers, download them before you start. See Dahak's reply for instructions.

If you remove the 500 GB, can you still boot to your original 250 GB drive? If so:

1. Power down.

2. Connect the 500 SATA GB drive.

3. Start the machine, and see if it is recognized in the CMOS.If so, check the boot order to make sure the first drive it tries to use is the 250 GB drive.

4. Try to boot up, and see if it boots to the 250 GB drive.

If so, go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Storage > Disk Management. You should be able to find the drive and format it from there.

If your current installation is good on the original drive, you don't need to re-install Windows. If you have a copy of the DOS version of Norton Ghost ver. 7, aka Ghost 2003, you can use it to clone your current installation to your new drive, and it should work and need nothing more than defragging the new drive.

If you don't have access to a copy of Ghost, you can use Acronis True Image to accomplish the same thing. They sell the program for $50, and you may be able to find it for less, but both Seagate and Western Digital include a free version of the program that is only restricted in that one of the two drives in the chain (source or target) must be from the company providing the utility.

Free version from Seagate.

Free version from Western Digital.

Unlike the DOS version of Ghost, True Image starts from Windows. Install True Image on your original installation, and clone to your new drive. If your machine recognized the new drive in the CMOS, you may not even need to go through the earlier format the drive before you start.

With either program, the cloned drive should run just like the original drive without any further installation. If you want to re-install Windows, just because it's a good idea every now and then, the cloned drive should be formatted so that the system will recognize it.

Hope that helps.

 

[hoegaardenzo]

Hey Harvey!

Thanks a lot, I got the new 500 GB HDD setup and working! Awesome stuff.

I originally wanted to reinstall windows on the new HDD to get a fresh clean start, but falling short of that is not a problem now. In the future I will just make a copy of windows with Ghost, cool. If I run into anymore problems I will definitely be back. I really appreciate the fast reply and courtesy of not calling me a noob, and to gtfo! Hah

Thanks again,

Kris

 

[Harvey]

Glad I could help.

You can continue to use Ghost to back up your 500 GB drive to your 250 GB drive, as long as the total size of the data doesn't exceed the size of the backup drive. Ghosting to a PATA drive takes longer than to a SATA drive, and it takes MUCH longer to Ghost to an external USB drive (as in hours!) because the transfer rate is so much slower.

One thing you'll definitely want to do is defrag the 500 GB drive. Ghost is great, but the image it copies is often highly fragmented.

I like to re-install Win XP around once a year. Now that your drive is fully backed up, if you want do do a fresh installation, you can start it on yet another drive and carefully build and protect it with your AV, anti-spyware and firewall.

You can do this without conflicting with your daily usage by simply disconnecting your current running drive (500 GB), connecting the temp drive and continuing the build as you have time. When it's fully installed, you can re-install your programs and copy your files to the new build.

Finally, when your completely satisfied that the new build is ready for prime time, you can Ghost that back to the 500 GB drive.