Asrock Dual SATA2 freezes/hangs when loading Windows

[AustroBerrichon]

@Imp: my SATAII HDD is plugged to a SATA1 connector. I boot from it (I don't use the IDE HDD booting solution) and it seems to work now (no freezing, no BSDO).

Still, I am having problem accessing my USB stick: WinExplorer is stuck/frozen as long as the stick is plugged even though the USB drivers are properly installed (from the Windows site) and no problem are reported by the Device Manager...

Anyone having that problem too?

 

[imported_Imp]

There's another thread about someone having USB problems with this board. Anyways though, couldn't hurt to check the USB adapter pins and match them to the board pins if you haven't already (check both MB and case manuals for layouts). Although, they've been pretty standardized, this probably isn't the problem. May just be the POS again...

http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...atid=29&threadid=1782127&enterthread=y

 

[imported_Imp]

Frig. Well, today started up the thing, it detected all my drives, but it wouldn't boot; it kept loading the XP load screen, but restart the second it was loaded (no blue line). After about 5 times, I said what the hell and upped my Ram voltage to High, worked again. Mind you, I changed nothing since the past few days having succesful boots. Think it's time to pull the plug on the SATA drive, and pawn it off. Still getting 0x0000009c, don't even have to guess what it is. The store where I got my IDE HD just started selling this POS mobo, boy did I want to laugh.

 

[grooge]

Originally posted by: ImpThe store where I got my IDE HD just started selling this POS mobo, boy did I want to laugh.

Well, if you have a bad board, which can happen with all the possible brand, thn it is too bad. But mine, and many other are working fine...

Fact is, I still find that for a budget board, there is not that much post in the forums.. amd most are by the sames users..

To me, this board seems to have less problems than Asus with nvidia chipset..

 

[professor1942]

Mine works awesome now!

And to think that only a week ago I was wanting to stomp it into the ground...

 

[imported_Imp]

Yes, I did want to point and laugh and write "POS" on it with a marker. Well, I don't know if it's defective or by design. On one hand it works sometimes, on the other it screws up in a very similar fashion with many people(notable amount) and it shipped with a significant error(cold boot by desogn). I KNOW others are getting it to work and FULLY understand that, but the fact is that mine does NOT work properly, and it has effed me over for two months. I've lost sleep, I've wasted time working on it when I could have done other things (studying...), and also wasted an extra $80 to make it work better. Obviously, I am VERY pissed off, and I KNOW that I am BIASED and WILL speak(hath spoken) out of my *ss on this issue due to my personal experience. So, to those that it works for, good for you, just ignore me. Personally, I would like to beat it into the ground, and can't(won't) avoid being negative about this unless someone gives me two months back (call me if you could turn back time...if you can find a way...sit down Cher). So, no need to remind me that it works for other people again.


Also, tore out the SATA HD, feels like I cut a cancerous mutated rotting painful limb off. Guess the SATA was playing the good old mock and assrock on me again.

@professor: Was looking forward to pictures.

 

[carstea2]

hi there, mine still freezes i guess i've tried so many things to make it work but with out any results. i'm through with it.

 

[qsrk]

There might still be hope. I followed the advice of tech support and did a fresh install of Windows using default "optimal" BIOS settings with minimal changes. I have been running for about three days of moderate usage without any freezing.

No guarantee that this will work long term, but here is what I did: I slowed my HDD down to 1.5GB/s and turned off SSC. In BIOS 1.60, I pressed F9 to load "optimal settings". You may need to save changes and reboot. Then I made only the bare minimum of changes. I changed my memory clock to DDR400, SATA to non-raid, SATAII to SATA mode (HDD on SATAII), and primary graphics card to AGP. I provided the SATAII drivers on floppy during the Windows installation, making sure that there were no other files on the floppy first. I installed the LAN and AGP drivers from the CD (not downloaded) in Windows. So far, I have only installed enough files to operate at 80% and will make other changes slowly. No AMD drivers, no hotfixes, and no antivirus :Q yet.

 

[carstea2]

@qsrk you slowed down your sataII HD and you still use it on the sataII controller? what's the point of that? i moved the sataII hd to the sataI controller and so far so good. in real use i dont see any drop in performance just in tests i see that it was reduced in half.
CONCLUSION : the sataII is bad or deffective or there's something damn wrong with it.

 

[qsrk]

I only slowed it down to take things slowly at first. If it all seems stable over the next few days, I'll increase the speed. At least then I will know if speed is a factor or not. I bought a SATAII drive to go with this motherboard too, and I also don't want to compromise. BTW, SATAII's NCQ is still enabled

 

[imported_Imp]

So I was bored at work, and read through about 30 pages of threads at ocworkbench (LONG/HUGE ASsRock forum). Apparently, as suspected, the SATAII IS screwy, but not too much mention of SATAI which was my original problem. Also, ASsRock may be fixing it in newer revisions, heard some with rev 1.04 have problems, but not 1.05. Good luck qrsk, I had it run perfect for one whole week before getting cluster effing. So far so good with IDE, it's louder, but hasn't crashed or even hiccupped once since taking out the SATA completely (got half price for it:confused. Just waiting for my POS optical back, then I may be able to close the case.

So which revision do you guys have anyways? Mines is 1.00 (no wonder it's SO screwy). Note I am not talking about the BIOS version, you can check revision in CPU-Z. Guessing not 1.05... If you care enough, might be able to try an RMA and get a newer revision. Meanwhile, they didn't even send me a nice "greeting" for my nasty letter.

 

[qsrk]

I've got rev 1.04 too. I also think 1.05 may be more compatible, but RMA is a last resort since I don't want to have to rebuild the system again.

 

[imported_Imp]

That pretty much explains why my SATAI effed me over(man my luck sucks). Sold it to someone, running with no problem in his machine (never really did suspect it). Some more reading, someone at OCWorkbench tested out different CPUs to check on cold boot problem; one change eliminated it. We all have Venice 3000+/3200+, maybe connected?

Well, found it, people with my exact problem. POS.

 

[crabbyman]

I have problems too...

..tried everything here except the IDE HDD. If that is the "fix" I am going to RMA.

I have an Opty 144 so its not the processor problem.

 

[qsrk]

I have X2 4400+, no Venice.

 

[professor1942]

Mine's a 1.00, hasn't acted up in a while but I won't get too cocky because I know it will...

 

[carstea2]

now my WD 1600js sataII is running in sata1 port. i moved it there and so far after three days no freezing. I dont't think i solved it though, it played on me many times thinking i got over it but it proved me wrong.
I also got the email from the support team and they said it might be my power suply not being able tu give enough power. but this is not the case as you all know. mine behaves like it should and i know ppl who thought this was causing it and changed it but it didnt solve it. my email to them was pretty big and explained to them in detail what is happening and the development of the problem.
if i still encounter any problems what so ever i'll change it. i wanted to change it last week but i thought id give it a try because i didnt want to trouble to build my system again.

 

[crabbyman]

If I RMA the board and get a different board..would I have to reload Windows or can I just plug and play from there after the mobo drivers?

 

[quickk]

Hi everyone,

I've been reading this thread because I also have the same problems. I purchased this motherboard about 2 weeks ago, and ever since it's been just giving me trouble. Anyway, to make a long story short, I am convinced that the problem lies is that the motherboard doesn't deal with SATA/SATA2 drives properly. However, I don't know if it's a hardware or software issue. Specifically, here are the kind of issues that I've had:

1) My system would often freeze up at completely random times. It could work fine for 2 days, and then it would lock up. At this point I would either get a BSOD and the computer would reboot, or it would simply remain frozen.
2) Often, upon booting (or rebooting), the motherboard could not find my drive (I'm using a SATA1 seagate 120Gb 7200.7 drive). I would get a message along the lines of "could not find boot device, please replace ...."
3) Often, even while in the BIOS setup, the motherboard couldn't find the drive.
4) Sometimes, my drive would randomly get stuck in PIO mode

I'm pretty sure that all my components are working fine, because I never had any problems with them in my old motherboard from which I've "upgraded". The only components that have changed are the cpu and the motherboard. Regarding the cpu, I've tried overclocking, underclocking, upping/dropping the voltage on the cpu. I'm certain the problem is not the cpu (3800 X2), since it runs fine even @ 2500MHz for hours on cpu burn in tests.

Anyway, all the problems I've had are related to the hard drive. It's like if all of a sudden the motherboard loses the drive, at which point windows freezes because it can no longer find a drive.

I've tried different SATA cable, no luck.

I've tried using all the different SATA/SATA2 connections, no luck.

Finally, I've tried the SATA2 plug (but set to PATA mode in the bios), and I havn't had a problem since. That's why I'm convinced the problem lies with SATA on this motherboard... I'll let you guys know in a few days if I've had any more freezes/weirdness, but I'm thinking that I won't.

 

[imported_Imp]

Well, there goes the Revision and CPU theory. All I think we can safely say is that this POS doesn't handle certain(many) configurations well. I also wrote a long letter, but didn't ask for help, wrote it in the "you ruined my life, go to *****" tone. I doubt it's the power supply(calculated, I use ~240W at 100% on a 350W), I have a quality Antec, although I never did try the second SATA power cable(may have tried if I didn't find so many others with the same problem); heard others who changed out the PSU and still had the problem. If it were the PSU, I would have thought it would have crapped out more in games, but it rarely(never) did originally. The weird thing is that this board seems to slowly degrade itself over time. It goes from perfectly stable after some type of change (cable, XP reinstall) to completely unable to boot.

The pisser is that people with SATAII HDDs moving to SATAI seem to have no problem, but SATAI on SATA1 messed me up. Also, definately something up with the SATAI and SATAII controllers. the SATAII is just crappy from what I've read. The SATAI drivers are messed up as I once found out that my ALI M5289(???) driver that controls the SATA started reporting errors in event viewer every 5 seconds; this coincided with sudden "lag" that froze the system for a second, then worked, then froze. Upon restart, it wouldn't boot. I should add that this freezing occurred since the beginning when I first built it, but was very minor and would go away after a few minutes. As time went on, it stayed longer, and started freezing up completely. This went away when I moved to the SATAII connector, and here came the pretzels (0x0000009c).

@crabbyman: It would be the same board essentially, but probably wise to reinstall everything to be safe (stability).

 

[crabbyman]

I meant more along the lines of a completely different board personally. Rid myself of this problem... maybe Asus? MSI? havent looked..

 

[professor1942]

I agree that the problem is with the SATA controller, as every time I've had the dreaded machine check exception it has said "writing to minidump file" it got stuck there for a second, rebooted, and: no minidump file ever appears which suggests to me the hard drive became "disconnected" before the crash.

The really strange thing is: in the 2 1/2 months I've had this board, it has NEVER crashed as long as the tower is on the floor to the left of my desk. If I put it up on the desk - boom, machine check exception usually within a few hours. I've tried all the things everyone else has tried: different RAM and RAM speed, unplugging all PCI, optical drives, using different PSU etc. etc. and it doesn't matter. For now, I'm content with just keeping this thing on the floor where it doesn't crash. I know it sounds bizarre, but I'd strongly suggest to all you guys having troubles to try the PC in a different location - it worked for me. My only explanation is the board gets some kind of radio interference which screws up the SATA controller.

 

[crabbyman]

SO my next question is this....

1. Do I buy an IDE driver?

or

2. Do I buy a new mobo?

 

[designit]

To all those w/ freezing problem.
If your board came w/ a blue sata cable, throw it to trash and buy a new one.
the plug come loose on the board and causes the freez. beleive me, I had the same problem and everytime I unplugged and plugged in the sata cable no freez problem.
what happens is if it it loose during winxp installation, some files get corrupted. it can happen during any program installation.
go get yourself a sata cable and make sure it plugs in snug, and reinstall winxp and your programs again (all fresh install).
comeback here and thank me after kicking your own *ss for not figuring this out in first place.

 

[quickk]

Hi designit,

Thanks for the suggestion. However, I had allready thought about that possibility, and tried out different SATA cables. Initially, I used the cables that I had with my previous motherboard (which worked just fine), and got the freezing problems. Then I tried the SATA cable that came with the ASROCK morhterboard, and I still got the same problems. I've made sure that the cables were completely snug, and it doesn't change a thing.

I'm still convinced that the problems are related to the ASROCK SATA controler. I've plugged in my SATA drive to the SATA2 connector on the motherboard, set this to PATA mode in the BIOS, and ever since I've had absolutely no freezes or problems whatsoever.