MSI MB Issue with IDE Controllers

[bcsman]

Have an MSI P6N SLI Platinum that decided to stop booting. In my BIOS screen it does not detect either primary or slave hard drives on the primary IDE controller. At that point both my DVD drives on the secondary IDE controller detected both. But eventually they also were not detected. I tried to put the main bootable hard drive on the secondary controller but would not detect it. Tried numerous configs with master, cable select, etc. I did try another hard drive with no luck either. Figured I wasn't getting anywhere there so I ordered a Promise PCI Ultra ATA133 Controller. Thought it would be what I needed but got it today and doesnt look like it will help me. To make the hard drives bootable when installed on the Promise you have to first boot the hard drive and install the Promise drivers. Well since my MB controllers dont appear to work I don't see how I can install the drivers first.

Any advice here?? I really like the way my hard drives are setup and dual booted with Linux so I would like to save their configs. Maybe another PCI controller that would boot without installing drivers? I'm kinda lost at this point besides getting another motherboard.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16816132004

I believe that the SI 0680 chipset on this board works with standard MS IDE drivers.

If you could source one of these cards and try it, it might work.

I think I actually have a couple of them in storage somewhere, but I'm not sure where, and I don't think I want to get rid of them.

The problem with the Promise ATA cards, is that they require drivers, and show up as a SCSI controller in the OS. The SI 0680 chipset will work with standard drivers I think.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Rosewill-AT...sk_Controllers_RAID_Cards&hash=item46117db635

 

[bcsman]

Thanks for the info Larry. Decided think it's time for a new MB, as one of the hard drives that was attached is dead. It won't detect no matter how I config it, the main one seems to be OK yet. So there may be other issues I don't know about with this MB and not going to take any more risks. Thanks again....

 

[Cerb]

Any advice here?? I really like the way my hard drives are setup and dual booted with Linux so I would like to save their configs. Maybe another PCI controller that would boot without installing drivers? I'm kinda lost at this point besides getting another motherboard.

Does it not boot with anything, or just with 2 DVD drives on the secondary IDEs? I've got one currently being used as a CPU holder, that flat won't finish booting anything, despite no outward signs of problems.

Might be easier to just let it go. You can often find P35, P45, G33, or G41 boards around for reasonable prices.

 

[bcsman]

Cerb,
It doesn't boot with anything, BIOS detects no drives no matter what I connect. Secondary IDE seems to not work anymore either. Found and bought an identical MB yesterday on Ebay, I hopefully can just swap out MB's and boot up my current drive as everything should be the same. Notice I say hopefully..lol. My MB is an MSI P6N SLI Platinum...wish me luck!!

 

[Cerb]

Good luck...but do note, when I said, "I've got one," I did mean exactly that model, currently resting against a wall, with a spare C2D in it . I got it in a bum XP box (dead 8800GTX was why I got it), and hoped I could make a salvage-based XP box out of it, but while it would POST, it wouldn't detect some drives, and would never finish booting anything except Linux from a USB stick (it would run that all day long, but PATA and SATA are no-goes, as were Highpoint, Syba (SIL3112), and 3Ware PCI cards).

 

[bcsman]

Yikes that doesnt sound very uplifting. Must be that chipset not super dependable I guess...

 

[crashtech]

If it boots a USB stick, it might be good for something. Actually that would be one way to get the Promise controller working, by reloading the OS with a bootable iso burned onto a stick.

 

[bcsman]

Never done the bootable USB stick before but sounds like something to experiment with. The largest USB stick I have is 8GB but they are pretty cheap now.

What do you do to put an OS on the USB stick?? Just clone an existing one over to it or copy a CD from like XP over to it and then boot?? And then install?? Should be fun to see if I can get my broke MB working this way. Hopefully the one I ordered will be up and running in a few days.

 

[Cerb]

With XP: ???
For that matter, with any Windows: ???

With Linux, you select the USB drive as the device to install to, and that's it, typically.

 

[crashtech]

You need to have a program that can make an .iso image of your OS disk, then use a program like Rufus to burn it onto a stick. I don't think this will work with XP in your case without modifying the image to include extra drivers for the disk controller. I've done that before, but don't know it well enough to write a tutorial. You'd be better off with Win7, or even Vista to attempt this.

 

[SolMiester]

If it boots to USB, could you not then put the IDE drive in an enclosure and boot the original O/s.

 

[Cerb]

If it boots to USB, could you not then put the IDE drive in an enclosure and boot the original O/s.

You need to use an OS that will boot from USB. It's possible to make Vista work, if there is a detected HDD, and 7 or 8 with just USB, but not with just the regular installer. The easiest way seems to be to install it as a virtual to the physical USB disk, then do some registry editing to turn on USB support at boot-time.

 

[bcsman]

My drive that I had working in there was a dual boot with Win XP and Kubuntu 11.04. Would Linux boot from the USB drive as that was the default system, altho the boot menu allowed you to choose which system?? Looks like this MB allows for USB booting.

 

[crashtech]

Yes, most if not all Linux distros support USB boot. My favorite tool is Parted Magic.

 

[bcsman]

Update: Received my used MSI MB yesterday and all is back to working. I did have some issues as the CMOS battery was dead and things were not working well until I discovered that problem. Put a new battery in and things worked as they used to. I did have to reinstall Kubuntu as I had messed up the dual boot MBR so the drive didn't know what to do. After the reinstall dual boot with XP is there and life is good!!

I am going to play with the other MB. I bought a 16GB USB stick and will try to boot from that after hopefully making it bootable with Linux. Thanks so much for all the help, I will keep this post as info when I work on the broke MB.