Asrock Dual SATA2 freezes/hangs when loading Windows

[carstea]

Hi there

here are my components

ASROCK 939Dual-SATA2 bios 1.5
ATX MidiTower some KDE model (450W PSU)
Venice 3000+
Geforce 6600 Gainward PCI Express - latest nvidia drivers
WD SATAII 160GB
WinXP pro sp2
DIMM DDRAM 512MB PC3200 Kingmax

apart from all the things i mentioned before, last night I reinstaled the sata2 driver, because when i first intalled it i didnt let the coputer do i full restart, i changed the sata2 operation mode to sata from ide before a it rebooted.

this was the only thing that i didn't do, i'll what justly said soon but i hope this thing solved it.

another thing we could to is exchange bios settings as a last option. i hope we solve this issue.

when does this freezing occur to you exactly? it happens in the same spot ar before and after the log on screen ? does this thing happen on a restart ? what monitor do you have? (not that it matters but i want to check something)

does your computer ever freezed in high demanding games or applications? mine hasn't. looking forward to your replay.

good luck!

 

[AustroBerrichon]

My monitor is a Philips 109S - CRT.
The problem I have with my freezings is that they randomly occur on HD activity: on Win log on but also while auto-saving a Civilization IV game.
For instance in the last time it was freezing when I started playing Civ IV and did so even after a couple of reboot. Then after switching the computer off, I unplugged and replugged the SATAII data cable and somehow it worked again but it doesn't mean a lot.
I also don't have the feeling that my computer freezes on high demanding games/applications.
If the problem persist I will have to reinstall my whole system on a IDE HD to see if it is really a SATAII HD/motherboard incompatibility or not.
BTW I put the DVD/CD on IDE2 and until now no freezing but I didn't use my computer a lot.
I will keep you informed.

 

[imported_Imp]

Hey,

I use to have a slightly different problem with my HD not being recognized/found at all in BIOS, but managed to fix that by moving my optical drive from IDE1 to IDE2. However, as noted in a post in the original ASRock Dual thread, it isn't a permanent fix; Battlefield 2 managed to BSOD on me with no error message (I heard BF2 is BSOD prone, but it shouldn't mess with booting). While trying to reboot, BIOS/POST found my HD, but it kept getting stuck with the HD LED stuck on (first time happening). Tried booting with Windows CD, but got stuck on a blank screen with HD light stuck on. I did get into the recovery menu a few times by disabling the HD in the boot menu, but then I couldn't do anything since it no longer detected an HD. Like Austro, I got it to boot by 'replugging' the SATA (moved SATA1 to SATA2). It is not the drive since when it runs, it runs perfect with no problems detected by SMART or Seagate Tools.

This obviously isn't an isolated problem, so it's either the SATA controller/BIOS or my mixed Ram. My question is, do you two use matched Ram? BTW, using:

ASRock Dual-SATA2 BIOS v1.50
Seagate SATA 80Gb
A64 3200+(stock)
1024MB DDR400 @333(won't boot at 400, memtest no errors at 333)
VS512MB400C3, VS512MB400
Lite-on SH1635
Sapphire 9600 Advantage
Antec Smartpower 350W
Onboard other stuff.

Small update & interesting read, note the second last post about a separate SATA controller: http://forum.ncix.com/forums/index.php?...165&msgcount=5&overclockid=0#msg993450

 

[carstea]

@ Imp : i'm using just one stick of DDRAM 512MB PC3200 Kingmax.

so guess what guys? ive told you about reinstalling the sata2 drivers, well this time after the install i let the computer load windows completely and then change the sata2 operation mode from ide to sata. it's been 2.5 days and no problems anymore, dont know if it's related but my WD HD is running now at about 35 degrees C. might be the fierce cold outside (- 20 degrees C)

let's hope this one solves it.

@ Imp have you tried to change the (i dont recall exactly the name, is in BIOS under IDE configuration, the last one i think) from normal to strong ? reinstall the sata drivers maybe this will do it.

that's about it, i'll keep you informed about the development

 

[qsrk]

I have been having the same problem for the past two weeks, since I re-installed Windows using SATA mode, and supplying the SATAII drivers at the start of Windows Setup (pressing F6). I have not installed the SATAII drivers in Windows, but Device Manager reveals the latest 2.07 JMicron drivers in the SCSI device category.

I NEVER had the freeze problem over 4 weeks when I originally installed Windows using IDE mode. In that case, however, I installed the SATAII drivers after logging into Windows, and occasionally experienced BSODs reporting the SATAII driver (JAHCI.sys) as the cause.

The reason that I can't 100% blame SATA mode is that I replaced the motherboard due to an RMA (same ASRock model, another problem) around the same time. I had reinstalled Windows 3 days before replacing the board, and did not experience the freeze problems for those few days. Coincidence?

I have observed the following about the freezes:
- the problem is more common when the computer & hard drive have not been used for a while
- the problem often repeats itself after pressing the reset button after a freeze
- the HD light is almost always stuck on after a freeze
- the freeze is not usually immediate, but usually takes 30-60 seconds to get progressively worse with all running programs slowly freezing until keyboard presses cause the PC Speaker to beep
- intensive HD usage seems to make the problem worse (i.e. installing Windows or other software)
- the computer can run very stable for 12+ hours during CPU / GPU intensive work. Also, memtest ran fine overnight, the Hitachi Advanced Test passed with no erros, Prime95 ran without errors, and hardware temperature / voltage logs show no odd behaviour at the time of the freezes

Suspecting the HD, I slowed it down to 1.5GB/s, and have not experienced the problem for ~24H. So SATAII speeds may be causing the problem. I will report back whether that solved my problem.

Some questions:

1. What is the performance hit by running at 1.5GB/s instead of 3.0GB/s, always in SATA mode?
2. What is the performance hit by running a SATAII drive in IDE mode?
3. What is the performance hit / stabilty hit if no SATAII drivers are installed in Windows when using a SATAII drive in IDE mode?

 

[carstea]

1st question : i dont know that because i haven't tried it but i guess it cuts the performance in half, although i've read that those kind of speeds are rarely reached.
2nd: the diffrence is not big, i ran some tests with some Hitachi tools and the avarage speed is only 3-4 mb/s down and the burst speed is lower but again by just a few mb/sec
3rd havent tried it

 

[grooge]

1-Your wasting something like 2.4GB/s of bandwidth with SATA2, as drive alone barely goes faster than 60MB/s. The only thing that is improved is the drive buffer to controller. But once the buffer is empty or not used, the transfer speed will be what the HDD can put out.
2-None. You loose only the enhencement that SATAII brought, like NCQ,.... and maybe some speed, but,... You wont notice anything in real life use. Ususally, SATAII drives, being more recent has improved firmware and electronics that make them faster.. not really the interface itself.
3-None. Drivers bring the enhenced support that microsoft did not include.. These drivers are the more compatible, as they are widely used by most chipset normally. Why do you think that nvidia SW enhenced drivers are not really recommended and known to cause (and actually cause) problem?

Hitachi HDD need a small utility to bring SATAII enhenced feature. Normally, the drive works in SATA. Did you know that before tring to run it in SATAII?

You have to keep in mind that benchmarking and real life usage is not quite the same. Take a Formulaone car. Put it alone on its track. It will be fast.. Put a Chevrolet Cavalier on the same track.. well, ... anyway

Now, put the F1 and the cavalier in day to day usage in traffic jam, and you wont see a clear advantage from a car 10 time faster...

So, living for benchmark alone, while maybe being fun, is not a proof a great system. A stable day to day computer equally fast for everything is much more important.

 

[carstea]

great answer grooge. my bad i used a toold called HdTach not the one mentioned above.

 

[qsrk]

Good points about SATAII there grooge. Yes, I used the Hitachi Feature Tool to change the drive speed from 1.5GB/s to 3.0GB/s, but that tool alone does not "turn off" SATAII. I've noticed that I can disable "tagged queuing" and "synchornous transfers" under my HD's SCSI properties in Wndows - is that where I turn of the NCQ feature of SATAII? Could one of those properties be causing the freezes?

By the way changing the speed to 1.5GB/s did not eliminate the freezes, but it may have reduced their frequency. Today I kept pressing keys and moving the mouse after the post-freeze beep in Windows, and I eventually got a BSOD: KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR, STOP 0X00000077 (0XC0000185, 0X00000000, 0X0134E000). After that error, the system is no always slow to POST. Maybe the BSOD damaged the HD.

I am now repairing the Windows Installation, running in IDE mode, and not providing the SATAII drivers (although Windows now already has them). I'll see if that helps the freeze issue.

I forgot to mention that the system also froze several times while doing an x64 Windows Repair right after replacing the motherboard.

 

[imported_Imp]

Hey,

I should probably add that I don't use SATAII, I'm on an SATA HD with SATAII controller disabled in BIOS so the normal/strong doesn't apply.

The problem with freezing from qsrk is interesting though, I thought it may have just been some program running in the back, but I also have/had the 'lag' and freezing shortly after booting that becomes progressively worse; this can be seen in the CPU usage mapping where the machine is idle but usage jumps to 50% and up. However, most of the time it goes back to normal after a few minutes. This problem actually went away after I switched my IDE cable for the CD to IDE2 from 1, but came back after moving the SATA from 1 to 2. Also, during the freeze/lag, I once tried to fix the problem early on by rebooting, but that screwed up my rebooting & cold booting. I suspected my HD before, but pretty sure that's not it as it isn't a permanent/reproducible problem after all the scans and the fact that it works mostly perfectly most of the time. My guess was that it was something up with the SATA controller, but since the SATAII is using something different (chip & drivers), not so sure any more. Maybe it's the BIOS, but I've tried 1.20 and 1.50, same problems.

 

[qsrk]

I currently have my DVD-ROM drive in IDE1, with IDE2 reserved for DVD writer which has been temporarily disconnected. I'll try the switch to see if it makes a difference. I wonder if I can just diconnect both drives and disable IDE mode...

Anyway, I think that the manual only tells you to use IDE2 when you have a HD to connect to IDE1. Using the SATAII port should mean that the condition does not apply, but you never know.

BTW, still freezing after repairing Windows!

 

[grooge]

You could then look into, memory setting. putting memory voltage to high and adding like.05 (assuming you have the 1.40 volts.. jump to 1.45 but don't get higher than 1.50v. )volts to the CPU coud increase overall stability. And that won't hurt anything.

I have this motherboard an it is rock stable so far. I did not read the whole thread, but I'm having an overall good PSU and corsair memory. I'm OCed to 2.35GHz(3000+ Venice)

My DVD burner is plugged into ATA1. RAID 0 on ALI and single Samsung on the SATAII connector..running with the drivers because I wanted to see if I could see any differences..Answer, NO. Setiing it to IDE will do the same.

 

[qsrk]

I've tried higher DRAM voltage, but have not played with CPU voltage. Any warranty issues with modifying CPU voltage? So are you using both IDE ports, with ROM drive in IDE2 and burner on IDE1? What do you mean by RAID 0 on ALI? Did you enable RAID 0 with just one drive?

 

[imported_Imp]

Well, I'm done with the problem. Nope, didn't find some miracle solution, and I'm not sure if it's fixed or not. All i know is that it doesn't like the Optical drive and HD on the same 'channel'; IDE1 and SATA1 or IDE2 and SATA2. It started crapping out again with HD on SATA2 and DVD on IDE2. Also, finally confirmed that it isn't the memory as I ripped one out and it still crapped out on first reboot. Went back to the most 'stable' configuration (i.e. CD on 1 and HD on 2; had no boot/reboot problems for just over a week until BF2 BSOD'd on me first time running causing the HD light stuck problem).So, from all this bull****, I've learned that:

1. My setup doesn't like similar 'channels'.
2. Something doesn't like something else in my setup, and is causing something. (I'm looking at you Mr. DVD and Mr. HD.:|)
3. Stay away from BF2, and there should be no problems.

Good luck getting your rigs going properly, gonna go exercise my legs and buy a pair of steel-toe boots.:laugh:

 

[AeGis3]

Hey guys, i've been having the exact same problem.

When booting up windows, especially after cold boot, 1 of the three things happens:

1. It would boot up straight away without any problems.
2. Have those blue bars go across the screen for like 60 seconds and then boot up into windows
3. After about 60 seconds at the "blue bar" screen it would just freeze.

I've been trying quite a few things in windows options, nothing helps so far. Just as carstea was saying, the system never freezes during gaming and other tasks, this is the only time that the computer freezes and its getting annoying. At times even when i turn it off and start windows up with the "last settings that worked" it still has the problem, and am forced to do it multiple times until it boots up.

I've also noticed that sometimes it happens after it install a new driver or a system utility.

If this helps, here are my system stats:

AMD venice 3800+
MSI K8N Neo4-Fi motherboard
Nvidia 7800gtx 256mb
2x 1024mb Corsair Value select sticks
Maxtor 8M SATA HD


I've got the DVD-RW/CD-RW running on IDE channel 1 and my hard drive plugged into SATA port 2. After reading this i will try to change the IDE to channel 2, and SATA to channel 1. I will tell how this goes.

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: qsrk
I've tried higher DRAM voltage, but have not played with CPU voltage. Any warranty issues with modifying CPU voltage? So are you using both IDE ports, with ROM drive in IDE2 and burner on IDE1? What do you mean by RAID 0 on ALI? Did you enable RAID 0 with just one drive?

I don't know about warranty issue..mine is overvolted because of overclocking.

My devices goes like this
ATA1(blue) -dvd burner
ALI 1 and 2 -2 x160 gigs seagate 160 gigs (320 gigs RAID0 array)
sata2- Samsung 250 gigs. in IDE mode. I don't trust the sataII jmicron driver.. reather use the compatible and prooftested microsoft one whenever possible..

 

[qsrk]

Originally posted by: Imp
Well, I'm done with the problem. Nope, didn't find some miracle solution, and I'm not sure if it's fixed or not. All i know is that it doesn't like the Optical drive and HD on the same 'channel'; IDE1 and SATA1 or IDE2 and SATA2. It started crapping out again with HD on SATA2 and DVD on IDE2. Also, finally confirmed that it isn't the memory as I ripped one out and it still crapped out on first reboot. Went back to the most 'stable' configuration (i.e. CD on 1 and HD on 2; had no boot/reboot problems for just over a week until BF2 BSOD'd on me first time running causing the HD light stuck problem).So, from all this bull****, I've learned that:

1. My setup doesn't like similar 'channels'.
2. Something doesn't like something else in my setup, and is causing something. (I'm looking at you Mr. DVD and Mr. HD.:|)
3. Stay away from BF2, and there should be no problems.

Good luck getting your rigs going properly, gonna go exercise my legs and buy a pair of steel-toe boots.:laugh:

I'm not sharing channels at all on my setup. Both SATA-I ports are unused, and only one IDE port currently used. I think that the SATAII port is running through the PCIe bus, so it should not be sharing an IDE channel. Does the floppy use one of the IDE channels? I've switched to IDE2 for the DVD-ROM, so I'll wait to see if that helps.

I have a 500W Seasonic PSU, so it shouldn't be a problem, (and it wasn't with the previous motherboard), but could the problem be related to the channel not getting enough voltage to run stable? I also read in another forum about other motherboards and bad capaictors. Maybe my replacement motherboard has a bad capacitor, which is believable with such a low-cost board.

 

[imported_Imp]

My guess is that there's something up with the chipset or BIOS itself as this board did originally ship with a 'cold boot issue'; it was supposefly fixed, but who knows? The pisser is that this is the only board or one of very few (I haven't seen before), so there's no real way to check. However, many people are getting it to run perfectly even with mad overclocking and other stability inhibiting things. I'll probably be staying away from ASRock boards in the future though.

Also, going to add another observation about this problem. The first few times I encountered the booting error, it would go away after one or very few reboots. Later on, it took more than 5, then ten, then never until I started replugging things. However, a few times when it appeared to crap out completely, it went away after I left the power off for a few hours, and then tried again. The only times this occurred during reboots was when the system BSOD'd on me twice, and once when I think I rebooted when windows was doing something very resouce intensive in the background (if it was updating, then it should have screwed up windows, and never booted properly again, but it did, and runs fine when it does).

Also, just an idea, but could it possibly be the RAM voltage in some cases? [qrsk has tested it out, but since the problem is common in so many configurations, maybe for certain people?] I'm guessing that in BIOS when set it AUTO, it's at 2.5v which is the 'label' I saw engraved on the DIMM slots. I think corsair (Value Select at least) is rated at 2.75v(stock/SPD). Just a thought.

Psh...totally forgot. qsrk said something about bad capacitors, it may be possible. Though I hear coil buzz is somewhat normal, during my first week just after building my rig, there was a lot of buzz. However, after adding in a second stick of Ram, it went away for the most part, but occasionally pops up sometimes with mouse clicks/some other stuff; this also appears to be when problems started. What sucks is that I only used it one week before adding the stick, so I'm not sure if it was ever stable:frown:.

 

[kb9nvh]

I get random 0009C stop codes (blue screen) when plugging in my game controller and at other random times as well but it seems the plugging in the game controller does it pretty consistently. The controller (game pad) works fine when it doesn't crash the system.
I never seem to hang on boot up however.

My setup is:
ASROCK dual 939 sata II with an AMD64 3200+ and 2 gigs of ADATA DDR400 ram from newegg (clocked at 333 and running in dual channel mode)
IDE1 master and slave for both DVD R/W drives (two drives)
SATA 1 port for my diamondmax 10 300gig 16mbyte drive.
I have the stata drivers installed (using F6 on windows installation).
video card is an AGP old Radeon 64
All bios settings are default except for primary AGP and I think I doubled my agp apature).

Anyone else have this stop code on a similar setup???

Thanks

 

[Mattd46612]

Sounds like possibly bad ram with the blue screen, every time Ive had issues like that it was ram related. Bios 1.5 is really nice I just got a Asrock from Newegg and its 1.5 and has voltage up to 1.45 but i havent tried htt yet.

 

[kb9nvh]

Nope, ram tests good all around. Last night I even overclocked from 2000 to 2500 with no stability problems.

Maybe your just not susposed to be pluggin in a joystick while the thing is running???
I'm used to doing USB stuff but in the old days, nothing was supposed to be plugged in or out unless the power was off...

 

[AustroBerrichon]

Hi all,

It seems that putting the optical drives on IDE2 solved my freezing problems.

good luck

 

[qsrk]

Congrats AustroBerrichon! No such luck here. With one optical drive connected to IDE2, I am still experiencing freezes. Since it was hard to access, I didn't physically remove the cable from IDE1 before, although I removed all drives from the cable. I'll pull the cable now and see if that changes things. Also checking out the hard drive and RAM, and will report back.

 

[grooge]

Ok.. for a stable operation, you need a good PSU, good ATA ribbon cable and properly plugged power connectors. Now, stop asking why this board don't work and start wondering where YOU screwed on the installation.. Plugging and unplugging IDE ribbon make the connector to get loose and cause failure. SATA cable that are cheap may be a bit loose and lose contact. Take a break, read the manual COMPLETLY and try to find what YOU did wrong. Did you cheap out on the PSU? Or is the video card is properly powered?

This motherboard simply work. Mine works. Lots of them work.

 

[AustroBerrichon]

Dear Grooge,

We are all sooooo happy that your motherboard (and many others) works but I find you harsh critizising people because they didn't read the manual through or because they eventually cheap out on their PSU (what is actually a non-issue since at boot time the system load is pretty minimal).
Don't you think that we all cheaped out on the motherboard by purchasing that board?