Abit KT7A-R and Win2K Blues

[MrThompson]

My KT7s are playing the blues. I have been through three KT7A-Rs. Two died mysteriously (volt mod stresses?) and one died because I snagged a volt mod wire and pulled a leg off the HIP 6301 before I tied the wire down to the board. What really bugs me though, is I have been through EIGHT of them to get three good ones. I sent one back to New Egg today. I also drove 70 miles to Fresno and the board at the local store failed. The problem is ?inaccessible boot drive? when running W2K off the RAID controller. Five out of eight boards won?t boot from a RAID array or a single drive with W2K on the RAID controller. The RAID array and single W2K drive works fine on my original KT7-R. The techs at ABIT have acknowledged the problem exists and there is no cure other than trying another board. I have two more boards to check out 60 miles away in Bakersfield on Sunday. I will show up at the store with several HDs, a PSU, CPU, HSF, RAM, keyboard and a mouse to test the boards (I will use their monitor). I don?t have much confidence at this point. Is anyone else having this much trouble with KT7A-Rs and W2K or is it just me? Should I dump Abit? Sorry to trouble all of you with this but some intelligent feedback would be appreciated.

 

[zzzz]

what bios did you try? The newer HPT bios might help. I had the old bios and it worked for me. BTW, does the problem comes while installing win2k or after installing? Which drivers did you try?

 

[MrThompson]

According to Abit it should work with any of the older BIOS from WW to YH. I have a nice collection of BIOS chips to try on a board without having to flash. I have not tried the latest BIOS because I may have to rebuild my RAID array. The first KT7A-R that had this problem caused me to rebuild my array and reinstall W2K. I could not complete the installation. What a waste of time. The techs at Abit told me this is a problem with some of their boards. According to them, transfering a single HD or an array with W2K from one KT7A-R (or KT7-R) to another board should not be a problem. It's not the drivers or the BIOS, it's a defect in the KT7A RAID boards.