Building new Pc, SATA error?

[axion]

What could be causing this to happen?

I have a new 37gb raptor
abit ic7-max3 mobo
p4 3.2c
1gb of corsair xms2
bfg 6800 gt oc

i use my winxp pro cd for boot, go in, press f6 to load sata drivers diskette, do that, windows copys over all its files and stuff.. says its going to restart, and does.. boot screens going, gets to the Verifying DMI pool......

and just sits there with a blinking cursor and does nothing?
Sata drivers are installed, went into cmos, and it shows my raptor at channel 3 master and recognizes it fine..

what could i be overlooking that would cause this to happen guys? any help would be appreicated!

 

[mechBgon]

Here's some text from a guy who got his Abit to boot from his SATA drive:

but where i think the main problem was - was in the bios settings - here are the settings that worked for me (this one is without raid - im waiting on a second disk to set up the raid):

note - these are from memory (and from your other thread) - i dont have the box in front of me atm:

Under Integrated Peripherals -> OnChip IDE Device:
IDE Bus Master - Enabled
OnChip Serial ATA - enhanced
OnChip Serial ATA Mode - ide
SATA RAID ROM - Enabled

Advanced BIOS Features:
Hard Disk Boot Priority - 1. Bootable Add-in Device
Bootable Add-in Device - Onboard sata
Boot Other Device - Enabled

Bigger picture 1: you have a pretty gnarly power supply for that rig? Oftentimes people bump their memory voltages to overcome stability problems, so also keep that in your bag of tricks if it proves to be crash-prone. Some of Corsair's XMS 3200 is spec'ed for 2.75 volts, so AUTO (2.5V typically) is sometimes not enough.

Bigger picture 2: if you're installing WinXP and don't have a hardware firewall then make sure you take some wormproofing measures. I put up my suggestions here for that scenario.

 

[axion]

hey thanks for the info, although i had just about the same config setup already, i went ahead and tried that and no luck either..
the harddrive has no jumper on it, should it have one and if so what row of pins?

as far as a PSU i have a antec trueblue 480 in it, i will try the voltage bump to the ram and see if that helps at all

 

[mechBgon]

These are the boards that scare me with their freakish SATA setups It sounds to me like you just need to change some settings to clue the mobo in that it needs to boot from HDD-3, which is now packing a WinXP installation-in-progress if the mobo would just try to use it.

Lemme look at the manual...

Ok, looking at Advanced BIOS Features, there's the list of first/second/third boot devices, and the Hard Disk Boot Priority right above them. I assume you have it set for 1st Boot Device being CD-ROM and 2nd Boot Device being Hard Disk... what about Hard Disk Boot Priority, is that set to HDD-3 or whatever is hidden in there that matches up to your drive?

 

[axion]

yep, under hard disk boot priority it is set for hdd-3 and it lists my raptor right there

ram voltage change did nothing as well, lol

 

[mechBgon]

Ok, next question: what SATA port is the drive plugged into on the mobo? SATA1 or SATA2 would be run by the Intel controller. SATA3 or SATA4 would be run by the Promise PCI-based controller. You mentioned using a driver floppy so I'm guessing either you used the Promise, or you used the Intel and the Intel is stuck in RAID mode instead of normal no-floppy-for-me-thanks mode.

 

[axion]

Im using the SATA1, and yes i used the intel sata drivers on the disk

 

[mechBgon]

Is the Intel controller running RAID mode then? I would think you would NOT want that. And if it isn't in RAID mode, then I think giving it the RAID-mode drivers on floppy might be the error.

Try this for a test: make sure the Intel SATA is not in RAID mode in the BIOS. Now start Windows Setup again from CD-ROM. This time, don't press F6 and don't give it any drivers on floppy, just pretend your SATA drive is PATA.

If Windows Setup can see the drive and its partitions, then delete all the partitions, hit F3 twice to exit Windows Setup, and now start Windows Setup once again. No F6, no driver floppy, just pretend it's PATA. See how that goes. At least you're not losing any major headway by doing so.

Good luck with it, I gotta jam for a while.

 

[axion]

ok thanks for the info and help, much appreciated

i will update with what i find out

 

[axion]

ok well after tinkering around with all the settings i could think of, i finally got to a NTLDR error, so i went back and deleted the partition, formatted and re did winxp for like the 10th time and FINALLY got xp to boot up so all is good, thanks again for the help!

 

[mechBgon]

sweet