Asrock Dual SATA2 freezes/hangs when loading Windows

[carstea1]

I am using SATA2 port and it was a time when I disabled the SATA controller in BIOS and the freezing was still there. Now i have SATA enabled and using NON RAID, because of a reply I got from Asrock support saying that if I don't use raid the system expect two drives and this may as well causing the problem.

Here are the steps I made when I installed windows :

winxp pro sp2 cd (I don't know what settings you have in Bios ) . Sata2 set to ide mode. all went fine and very fast.
installed the Integrated213 drivers. i only chose from there something about PCI to AGP. restart
from this on I proceded with the latest drivers from the asrock website
processor driver, restart
sata2 driver, restart
restart changed the sata2 mode from ide to sata, restart
audio drivers, restart
lan drivers, restart
video drivers, restart

that's about it. I don't know why but i feel this time anything works fine. The booting is more smooth and fast, don't know what I could have done wrong before.

see ya!

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: carstea1
Now i have SATA enabled and using NON RAID, because of a reply I got from Asrock support saying that if I don't use raid the system expect two drives and this may as well causing the problem.

...

that's about it. I don't know why but i feel this time anything works fine. The booting is more smooth and fast, don't know what I could have done wrong before.

see ya!

You answered your last question in your post...

The RAID subsystem make the controller to work a different way of normal IDE controller. RAID has nothing to see with SATA. RAID can be used with PATA interface as well.

So, that was another user error as I can see...

 

[carstea1]

yeah grooge but i had sata enabled before too and it was set to raid because that was the default option. i changed it now to non raid. but I'm telling you that was not causing the problem, because I tried it with both raid and non raid and i would still get the freezing. now after this last win install, in 2 days and a half no freezing for like 9 start ups.

 

[imported_Imp]

Hmmm... seems like we've all tried everything possible with the IDE settings. Guess there may be some problem built in the board (*cough* cold-boot issue) that is aggravated and resurfaces only in some cases. Interesting that your windows installation went off withouta hitch. Mines appears ok with no system file problems (used scannow or something), but my DVD drive kept clicking about 4 times before POST when I finally got it running again while installing windows. It kept losing track of what was in the drive until I ejected and inserted the tray(thought install would screw up). Well, not much more to say about this problem, hope it lasts me about two years before I take it out and jump on it. Again, good luck.

 

[AustroBerrichon]

Hi all,

Bad news, the freezing problems came back. ~:-(((((
So this was NOT solved by putting the optical drives on IDE2...
I even deactivated IDE1 in the BIOS but it didn't change anything.
As qsrk I replaced the flimsy ASRock SATA cable but it didn't bring any success.
Yesterday I did a full check of my HD with the seagate tools. Even though the surface check went ok some weird "metadata file record" errors were reported... :-(
For what it is worth I noticed that switching completely the PC off and then On after a while is far more successful than warm rebooting in getting rid off of the random freezing.
Once the problem occurs I warm rebooted 10 times but the PC was keeping freezing after a couple of seconds within windows.
The only thing I didn't try yet is replacing the SATA2 drive with an IDE HD.
I will report to you as soon as I try that.

 

[grooge]

Is RAID enabled fo the SATA controller??? metadata are created by RAID controller, so, if you only have one HDD, then why use RAID?

 

[qsrk]

I recall reading a thread elsewhere where somebody was able to stabilize their system by enabling RAID even though they did not need it. Hey, has ASRock given up on this motherboard? It's been almost two months since the last BIOS update.

 

[carstea1]

hi there, i had my first freeze in 5 days with lots of start ups. it happened this morning. when i turned it on i noticed that the cdrom it didn't spin two times as it always did so i expected something bad. it freezed after loading all the desktop icons and before my LAN icon appear in the tray. I forgot a cd rw in there and i guess that's why it didn't spin in the first place. could this problem be cd rom related ? my optical drive is on the IDE2 controller.

 

[AustroBerrichon]

I disabled the SATA controller in the BIOS, there should be no need for it since I just have nothing plugged into the SATA slots.

 

[carstea1]

i'm telling you, this freezing is related to SATA2 in some kind. it's a good thing that you can check it out with no sata2 drives connected. i'm looking forward to seeing the results from what you do.

 

[letdown427]

Hey, I also have this POS board. lol. Last night it replicated Imps earlier problem, Hardware Interrupts etc, nothing would boot past starting windows (2kpro) Left it over night unplugged, checked connections next day after work, all works fine.

I'm using 2 sata ports, in raid 0. I've never experienced any of this cold boot stuff, but it is a recognized problem with the board. CHeck out ocworkbench. they have a lot of info about the board.

www.ocworkbench.com/asrock

(i think)

I don't know if any of them have solved the cold boot issue. either way, once I get me a PCI-e card, not long after that it's gna be DFI for me! hehe



Also, I've noticed that since installing my RAID0 setup at christmas, I can no longer overclock. basically. before, i ran at 2x 2.5 on my 4400+. 2.4 was ultimately stable. now though, 2.4 will consistenly produce an error on loading the starting widnwos screen. It insists a file is corrupt/missing, and requests I reinstall that file. I read that on that Asus board, sata ports 1 and 2 aren't locked, so if you OC they get overclocked aswell or something, could this be happening on this POS too? That the only way I can think that simply reading from the HD would cause a corrupt file like that. And if i restart then clock it normally again, boots into windows no probs. meh, either way, this board is a stop gap for me, I don't trust it, I don't really like it, and once I decide on a gfx card, it's gonna be dropped verrry soon.

 

[AustroBerrichon]

Hey,

I would be curious to know if you are using the a SATA or a SATA II data cable.
I personnally used until now SATA data cables (the one delivered with the mobo and another one I purchased).
I discovered today that there exist SATA II data cables...

Letdown: thanx a lot for the link to ocworkbench.
If I am motivated enough I might open a thread there.
I browsed through the numerous pages but didn't find a lot of informations specifically related to our SATAII problem.
Still, I read that there could be an issue with the cooling of the North and South bridges.
I slowly start to hate that board... :-(

 

[carstea1]

I'm using the sata cable that came with the board. It seems to work fine, I don't think it the one to blame, if that had been the case then we would have had a solution long time ago.

 

[imported_Imp]

That must stink Austro, I went through that twice(edit: THRICE) thinking I got it fixed. Cool to see that you can also get it to boot after turning it off for 10+ minutes and back on again. Does that suggest anything? Ram/cache clearing out for good? Power issue?

By the way, about the no BIOS updates, probably has something to do with ULi being bought out I guess or just laziness by ASRock. Also, I'm not sure if it has to do with the SATAII controller; I've disabled it before and it still screws up. I have also used Seagate Tools and went through all tests flawlessly. If the cable that came with the board were the problem, it would probably be a more permanent issue as in it screwing up while running intensive things needing using the HD. I doubt it has anything to do with O/Cin' since the only thing that isn't stock clocked is my underclocked Ram as the POS won't run it at 1:1.

I haven't had time to use my rig lately so I can't really say how my 'fix' is working. Putting my money on disappointment which is par for the course now. If this doesn't work, I guess I'll do what letdown's doing and just dump this pos when I get a PCI-E card in the summer a whole couple months away oh my....Had my 'fun' learning about troubleshooting and builds, but this is out of hand, and messing with my college work time.

By the way, is it true that SATA controllers are really hit and miss? An aquaintance who's been building systems for years mentioned that SATA hard drives sometimes don't get detected, and is why he sticks to IDE.

Just gonna add something I remember reading when I still thought my HD was busted from 'A disk read error has occured'. Google the error and some really long thread should come up about something to do with windows NTFS file system. Something about some windows issue, and fixing it by installing as FAT32 then converting over, don't remember it now.

 

[grooge]

BIOS updates are to fix issues or add compatibility to newer CPU. So, since I don't have any issue with mine, and did not upgrade to to any new hardware, then I don't need a new BIOS everymonth, as it is the case for Asus. Their A8N line has so many BIOS released and still so many that complain that I trust much more my Asrock board than the Asus.

And for those who has problem with this board, I'm sorry..

 

[carstea1]

grooge you are saying that you are using your sata2 HD in the sata2 controller in IDE mode and sata2 controller set to strong ? i don't remember, do you have a PCIE video card ? do you use the onboard LAN or audio ?

it is normal to have so many controlers under ide/atapi ? here's the print screen http://img281.imageshack.us/img281/5936/picture0po.jpg

 

[grooge]

I'm using a samsung SATA2 HDD in the SATA2 connector set to IDE and STRONG too. HAd to put it at strong because the overclocking. Running normal speed, it would detect it at normal. I'm swithching between AGP and PCIe video card when I need to try a game(PCIe video card) or capturing video(AIW 9600 AGP) all the time and it is not a problem, I have onboard audio for capture, but a sound card for general sound because the board lack of digital output. I don't often use the onboard LAN, unless I go to some frien that has broadband and I simply activate it and plug it in the router for full internet acess. I'm on dial up, so I have a modem installed too.

The link don't work, but, you should have, stuff for the ATA controller and some stuff for the SATA controller. I'm using RAID with 2 HDD on the ALI controller so it is listed in the SCSI and other stuff group.

 

[carstea1]

is ther a way i can uninstall the sata2 drivers? i want to get rid of them cause they are the only thing that can cause this much trouble. it'd be great if i don't have to reinstall win all over again. thanks

 

[grooge]

set the controller to IDE and then, update drivers. don't let windows install, but rather choose them yourself, get compatible material, and select the microsoft drivers.

 

[qsrk]

New 1.60 BIOS released two days ago. See here. Description is "Add one item "AGP P2P Deep Fifo" in BIOS setting." I wonder what that does. No new SATA / SATAII drivers.

 

[EKTELESTES]

carstea, the problem lies with the dvd drives, not the sata II...I had similar problems ( pc would never enter windows or it would stay like 2-3mins in the win loading screen, sata II hdd woudn't get recognises in restarts, etc ) and when I took the dvd-rw nec 3500 out, it booted wins in a few secs !!!...I tried swapping nec between primary and secondary controllers, but still no luck.. the drive works fine though, so I don't really know what's going on...some jumpers? I really got no idea...

 

[imported_Imp]

New problem. I think EKTELESTES may be on to something though it is no longer the same problem. My POS was running perfect since the reinstall of windows, but my DVD was in PIO mode(stuck) not UDMA4. So I followed the standard fix to uninstall the Secondary IDE Controller, but upon restart, I kept getting a BSOD (0x0000009 <- I checked up on it drivers or hardware). I safe mode reinstalled the drivers, worked fine then died again. Did a repair install, same fine then die. It got back to UDMA4 and worked fine, but getting this error a lot now. Probably screwed up some windows driver/config thing, but not completely sure. Looks like another format....then reactivating windows (wish I used up more of my 30 days last time). Note it was at UDMA4 up until my first format working fine, so I doubt it broke when I moved my SATA plug over.

Also, no problem on drive recognition anymore at startup.

 

[carstea1]

i can confirm that with the cdrom connected it takes more to start. it takes for the blue line to pass from left to right for like 5 times before the HD actually starts to spin(i see the led starting to flicker). when i intall windows now my cdrom is in PIO mode, i had it in the last system and it didn't perform in pio mode? the last 2 installs of win i manually sert it to ulta... if available. this time i let it like that to see wheter that freezing happens again.

i made i fresh install of win without installing the sata2 drivers, it now runs in ide mode. i'll keep my cdrom connected for a time now to see if the sata2 drivers were causing the freezing.

i'll se how it acts and come back with the results. i really got tired of this board. it messes big time with my study time.

 

[EKTELESTES]

it definitely has SOME issues...i thought from the very beginning that the cause of my problems was the WD 2500 KS SATA II coz I would often get the dreaded restart prob. I tried many different sets, changed the sata cable, and finally found out ide mode in bios would work better. I would still get the prob, but not as often. The fix for the prob was, switchin the pc off and back on BUT only until all devices were totally switced off. If I switced it on almost instantly, I'd still get the recognition prob. It always seemed as the mobo is waiting for some information to unload or sth - i don't get it.

Anyway, a few days ago, a friend came and we tested his new nec 4551 dvd-rw with labelflash.So, I disconnected mine, connected his, still win xp took long to load. After a couple of hours, I was about to connect my nec 3500 again and I thought "hey, let's see what happens if i don't connect it..." And voila...a FAST BOOT !...So..i connect my nec again, switch the pc again...and hmm...you guessed right...same loooong load...

the only thing i haven't tried, even though it doesn't make much sense ( but what does on this board.. ) is to use the dvd-rw as a master and try it both on the primary and secondary controller and see what happens (??)

it always seems that when win xp load, the hdd does not have a priority in the boot or sth!.. it looks like it's waiting for sth to load !...

I'm gonna give it a shot tommorow..If someone else tries it, plz let me know what happens guys..

 

[imported_Imp]

This is just a thought, but does ANYONE have an IDE hard drive connected to this POS? I know we've been blaming SATAI and SATAII, but the only thing really common is that we all have IDE drives (optical) connected; so could it be possible that it is screwy?

Also, just finished reinstalling(clean) windows (I'll sit on my activation for a few weeks this time). Everything looks ok, DVD drive didn't stall like last time, but the initial setup for windows got stuck and rebooted a few times. UDMA modes are correct for everything. If your drive gets stuck in PIO mode (due to errors) watch out on reinstalling the IDE controllers in device manager, totally messed it up again (<-- never touching those ever again). Good luck again. ~~~Although, not sure how badly it could have screwed it up, but I forgot to turn off my Anti-Virus before rebooting when uninstalling the controller. So, windows auto-installed with it on, may have corrupted something.