Asrock Dual SATA2 freezes/hangs when loading Windows

[qsrk]

Austro, any cold booting with your change to SATA1? I closed my case once too. Now the cover is just leaning against the side of the case.

 

[AustroBerrichon]

@qsrk: with the HDD on SATA1 I did of course cold boot and even warm booted once (WinXp updates). But no problem until now. What's about the side plate of the case causing our problems?

 

[professor1942]

Well, I think I've made progress in the 0x0000009c area...

case on floor - doesn't crash (currently at 41 hours)

put case back up on desk - crashes in a few hours

put case on floor again - no crash

put case up on desk - crashes

WTF?

 

[qsrk]

Originally posted by: AustroBerrichon
@qsrk: with the HDD on SATA1 I did of course cold boot and even warm booted once (WinXp updates). But no problem until now. What's about the side plate of the case causing our problems?

Hmm, could be a draft is causing the cold boot? I meant to ask "did you experience any cold boot problems now?"

 

[qsrk]

Originally posted by: professor1942
Well, I think I've made progress in the 0x0000009c area...

case on floor - doesn't crash (currently at 41 hours)

put case back up on desk - crashes in a few hours

put case on floor again - no crash

put case up on desk - crashes

WTF?

Could it be a loose cable that gets strained when the case is on the desk? As mentioned before, I only got that BSOD while plugging into a specific USB port - more specifically, a case-mounted USB port wired to a USB header on the motherboard.

 

[professor1942]

Yeah I'm thinking it's either a loose cable (or cables pressed too close together going through the 'cable hole' on the desk, or it's some sort of interference from my monitor or wireless router or solar flares or alien signals. Weird.

 

[imported_Imp]

@professor1942: I'm not one with the paint, so I'll just hold off till I get my POS Lite-on back (they better give me a new one...). Since your rig actually worked properly for months, maybe some wire or socket was stressed out like others suggested? Have you tried "bending" the wires, tapping on them to induce an error on the floor (might be risky)? Ask my POS VCR at work, move the cable 1mm and it screws up or starts working again.

Also, hope my new HD isn't busted. Not used to it yet, but heard a *crash/grind* sound when I shut it down yesterday *gasp*. Fine now, going to run some scans. Meanwhile, POS SATA detected fine. Western Digitals are louder afterall...

Just something to consider. Whenever I started getting 0x0000009c error, it was always after I updated windows (my disc is SP2). Coincidence or something messing it?

 

[professor1942]

Good idea, I haven't jiggled the cables around much to try and reproduce the error...

but for now I'm just happy if the friggin thing works.

I also have an XPSP2 disc, but the only update I've installed is the KB912919 from Jan 5 (my first 9c crash was a few days before that update).

 

[kb3edk]

Oh man, I wish I had found this thread earlier! I've actually got two of these boards... I love the flexibility it gives me but I must admit, it's definitely one of the flakier boards I've seen in a while.

The first of these two boards I have, has run perfectly fine for me with one exception (more on this later). I've managed to get some decent overclocks with the first board... got my X2 3800+ up to 2.4 GHz (240 HTT) and my old Winchester 3000+ up to 2.25 GHz (250 HTT).

So last week I went and picked up a second one of these boards to try to get some better numbers... just went here to the FS/FT forum and paid $50 for one, then did the volt mod (soldering together two tiny spots just above the CPU socket).

First off, I couldn't use my pre-existing install of Windows with the new board, I kept getting an "UNKNOWN HARD ERROR" message (which typically implies registry corruption). Anyone else ever see this message? I updated the BIOS of the second board to 1.60 to no avail. I had seen this message on the first board and when I updated its BIOS to 1.50 it no longer happened.

So then after updating the BIOS the message kept appearing, so I just decided to do a clean install of Windows on the box (with second mobo inside)... Setup hangs up a few minutes in just before it's time to pick which HDD partition to install Windows on.

Not sure what to do with this box now that I can't even load an OS... I guess I could try flashing the BIOS to 1.50, or just rip the board out and go back to the first one.

I'm thinking that with these boards, there must just be a pretty high natural failure rate on them that goes with the territory, for budget boards. It's possible that the tiny little volt mod I did fried the second board, but I doubt it given how successful and popular the mod seems to be on the other enthusiast sites out there. Has anyone else here tried it?

 

[qsrk]

I received an "UNKNOW HARD ERROR" soon after replacing my motherboard on a pre-existing install of Windows also. That was soon after I began experiencing the freezing problems with the new board.

EDIT: No mods or overclocking on my board. Hey maybe we should call these problems "getting ASRocked". What do you think Imp?

 

[imported_Imp]

Some good and bad news.

The bad is that my POS crashed again (0x0000009c) the second I double clicked one of my SATA partitions; this was on my first boot after leaving it off the whole night. Well, after spending the afternoon scanning with both Seatools and WD Life-something, not a single error. My conclusion: ASRock boards are made my some jack*ss in a basement(dirty one, bet he didn't even Mr. Clean it) who buys his parts from some shack. So if you get an IDE to make this POS work (with the money, you could get a top of the line board), try VERY hard to NOT use your SATAI or SATAII drive. Otherwise, you yourself may get "ASRocked" (that is so lame, I know). The new IDE works great so the old error for me was obviously from both SATA channels. By the way, the SATA worked yesterday for hours, and worked right after the crash.

About the "Unknown Hard Error", did you try the board before soldering? May not want to hear it, but there's a chance the soldering didn't go all that well.

 

[professor1942]

Well, I've gone 46 hours now without being assrocked, lol, is that a record?

 

[Athlon64SSE3]

My XP Pro installation today...died! When this morning my XP locked once more in splash screen, then it gave "CAN'T LOAD FILE C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM etc etc".....so there was only a solution....deltree windows and reinstall all. So I tried to install XP on SATAII controller in SATA2 mode (i have an hitachi drive, so i can change trough feature tool), but nothing....always 0x000009c error :-( in some points of setup. I tried to take out of case 512 MB of my memory thinking it was due to that and to dual channel...but again BSOD. Then i changed cable but another BSOD in installing. Then i changed drive to sata1 but another BSOD. This with or without driver for sata2...in both mode in bios, IDE or SATA mode. After many tries i got XP succesfully installed (without SATA drivers in IDE mode). BUT.....it was hanging when copying large files (avi files) from a partition to another one :-(. So i opened another time my case and attached my hitachi drive to SATA1 port, leaving in bios NON-RAID mode. My XP started well....and from then i had no single problem. So....we can definitely forget SATA2 or SATA1 mode and use our drive as an IDE drive . I lose much speed in HDTach benchmark...but only in Burst Mode....not in average read (55.8 MB/sec). Burst speed was 219 MB/sec in SATA2 mode, now is 127MB/sec :-(
Ah....the drive is more noisy now....but it seems to go fast, as before in sata2...only an instrumental lose

 

[qsrk]

Since my BSOD only came when I plugged into a USB port, some may want to try two different things (I can't because I am currently abandoning SATA-I): 1) Enable "Legacy USB Support" in the BIOS to see if it helps. It is disabled by default. 2) Install the USB drivers from the CD / ASRock website / ULi website even though they are not required in XP. I read in another thread/forum that one person was able to make some USB ports work again by installing the drivers. At your own risk!

BTW, did any of you setup your hard drive with more than one partition? I did. Could it be a cause?

 

[professor1942]

Can you guys getting 0x0000009c try a surge protector (if you have an extra one) with nothing else plugged into it? Because this thing hasn't crashed a single time since I added a second powerstrip and the PC is no longer sharing power with monitor, printer, etc. I'm leaning towards this theory now...

 

[Athlon64SSE3]

:-( :-( Today other problems...XP loading forever in splash screen. Then, when it usually loads desktop ->black screen and then ->back another splash screen. I tought to reformat all..but...It loaded! Every day is a lottery....

 

[qsrk]

For those that don't know, there is another discussion about getting SATAII drives working on the SATAII port here:

http://www.ocworkbench.com/ocwb/ultimatebb.php?/topic/30/6147.html

I'm installing XP on a brand new Hitachi SATAII HDD now, and already getting lockups during initial setup (although the latest does not leave the HDD LED on). Turning off Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC) is the next thing I'm trying.

EDIT: Turned of SSC in HDD and in BIOS. Set HDD speed to 3.0GB/s. Installed XP fast and without hiccups. Boots with about 1.2 passes of blue line. Now to install drivers...

 

[imported_Imp]

My powerstrip is a POS since I can hear pops whenever something big (washer/furnace) comes on, but it's the same one as my last system and it's been doing it all the time on my new IDE HD. Doubt it's that for me, and pretty much confirmed that the SATAI and SATAII are the cause (double clicking SATA partition = 0x0000009c yesterday). I have yet to be assrocked by staying the hell away from my SATA(might try pawning it off, maybe). No problems yet since the incident yesterday with the aforementioned SATA.

Just read through qrsk's link, only thing that really popped out was the thing about someone's bad cable. So, has anyone tried a different SATA cable? Farfetched though since when it works, it works without interruption (don't think a cable would work sometimes and just crap out, especially since it does so without any jiggling; that and not getting any errors on the drive).

Psh...it doesn't like accessing the SATA HD on first boot. 0x0000009c after trying to disable system restore (first time "accessing" it since boot). La di da, works perfect after reboot. Looks like "cold boot" problem is there regardless.

 

[qsrk]

I tried a new SATA cable with no luck. And Imp, you were right about the board toying with us. I ran for almost 7 hours with a very fast system without a glitch, getting all comfortable and ready to install more software, and then it froze! BTW, since I'm back on the SATAII port, I no longer have the cold boot problem.

 

[imported_Imp]

I'm happy that I crapped on your hopes enough to lessen the disappointment. Yep, cold boot seems to be isolated to SATA(150) channels, 0x0000009c to SATAII(300) for me at least; watch out for those.

 

[Athlon64SSE3]

Originally posted by: Imp
I'm happy that I crapped on your hopes enough to lessen the disappointment. Yep, cold boot seems to be isolated to SATA(150) channels, 0x0000009c to SATAII(300) for me at least; watch out for those.

for me is on the contrary! I had cold boot problems and bsod copying big files from a partition to another using sataII controller, now it's all ok on the SATA1 controller, without any drivers (IDE mode). I fixed the last problem of XP not loading....this time was a stupid usb->ps2 mouse adapter LOL. Now my config is fully stable...but...i will forgot SATA2 mode for a long time....I hope they will release fixed sata2 drivers. End of the story for me!

 

[carstea2]

hi there, im back. i read carefully all that you wrote but i dint repply because i lost my password again, this is the 3rd account i make.

my computer is dying. windows has corrupted and i cant even start it. if i lived in america or in another country where 60 buck is nothing i would smash it to the ground with out even thinkin. but i have to try to replace it with another brand. never want to hear about asrock. i would make a complain to them but know how to do it. i think of this board as the michelin tires problem with the ford trucks if i recall right. i should have my money back or given a brand new board with no problems what so ever.

if we 4 or 5 persons and many other have tryied to fix it and didnt succeed what do we need more? i dont know how big the failure rate is among this boards but it's go to be huge.

and again if i had more money i;d sue them for causing all this trouble and so much time lost for nothing.

 

[professor1942]

Originally posted by: carstea2

my computer is dying. windows has corrupted and i cant even start it..

Put in your XP disc, enter the recovery console and type 'fixboot'.

My system has been 100% rock solid since I moved it to a different power strip; it might not have anything to do with your guys' SATA problems but I'd at least give it a try if I were you.

I'm actually starting to like my assrock board again...

 

[AustroBerrichon]

Originally posted by: qsrk
Hmm, could be a draft is causing the cold boot? I meant to ask "did you experience any cold boot problems now?"

No, I didn't until now.
Actually I never experience specific cold boot problems: the freezings occured at random (during WinXp boot, while surfing on internet, etc...) I just noticed that after a first freezing warm booting was not helping and and freezings then constantly reappeared.

 

[imported_Imp]

@Austro: If your SATAII (300) is still plugged in, try to either stop accessing it or just take it out completely. My system still BSOD's (SATAI (150) now, forget what I said in last post), but only after a good cold boot, and I access my SATA HD in any way; after a reset, it's fine again. My IDE so far has been perfect, no problem as long as I don't touch the other drive. Hope it stays this way as my WD makes an audible (woosh) sound right when it powers down on a shutdown; no bad sectors on scans after sounds, and it's always there. I must not be use to WD drives.