Nevermind, Fixed! KR7A-133 Raid Sometimes Finds IDE HDD, other crankiness, Help please

[tslugmo]

My set-up:
Abit KR7A-133 RAID
AMD XP 1700+
1 stick 256 meg Samsung PC2100 DDR-SDRAM Non ECC in slot 1
Alpha 8045 heatsink
2 Panaflo fans (heatsink and case)
Enermax Whisper 350 W PSU
Visiontek 5654 GeForce 3 Ti-200 Vid Card in AGP slot
80 GB Western Digital HDD, ATA 100, 7200 RPM as master on IDE 1
TDK 24/10/40 Velo-CD CD/RW Drive as master on IDE 2
Bios 6N

Ok, I give up, I don't know what the heck is going on. First of all, sometimes it recognizes the HDD on IDE 1, and sometimes it doesn't. Either way, sometimes it searches for IDE devices for a full minute, finds them and quickly flashes them on screen for a split second before going to the Highpoint screen, and sometimes it will display the IDE devices on screen for a full minute before going to the Highpoint screen.

Then after searching for Highpoint devices, it displays all the system settings and says "Verifying PMI pool data...... success" and it tries to boot to a drive immediately after displaying "verifying PMI pool data", and sometimes it will freeze for 2 minutes before trying to boot. It doesn't recognize the HDD at all if it's on a Highpoint controller, and I've switched it from IDE 1 to 2 and back, and it doesn't seem to make any difference. The CD-RW gets recognized every time, regardless of the IDE. Once it does get recognized, I take the opportunity to try to install Windows.

I've been able to format it, partition it, and get a C: prompt (although for some reason I can't use a boot disk to get CDROM access, like a D: prompt, it will go automagically to the CDROM drive and try setting up XP if I let it boot w/o a floppy). I can get through the XP setup process to where it finishes formatting in NTFS and unpacking all sorts of files, and when it tells me to restart, and I do, it just hangs after showing "verifying PMI pool data". I don't get it. My temps are running great (in the 40's), I've taken it out of the case and am running it on the cardbox box it came in to avoid shorts, I've cleared the CMOS, I don't know what else to do, unless the board is faulty (refurb from Newegg). Any suggestions? Should it take a full minute every time I start up to search for IDE devices? Do you guys have to wait for it to find them that long every time? I'm going to try to install Windows again if I can get it to find the HDD, and I'm going to try another HDD, but you guys always have good ideas.

Thanks in advance for your help!

-tslugmo

P.S. Eventually, if it will recognize, I wanted to have the HDD running on IDE 3 (highpoint controller) as a non-raid device so both my CD/RW and DVD can be masters on IDE 1 and 2. It should just recognize the HDD on IDE 3 out of the box and have no problem, right? Or is there something special I have to do to load Windows on a non-Raid IDE 3 HDD?

 

[ShinSa]

i had a simmilar probelm with my WD.

Have you tried it on a differnet system?

 

[tslugmo]

Ok, problem solved. I tried swapping drives and couldn't get the WD to come up on my other system, but could get a Maxtor that was from the other system to come up on the KR7A, even on IDE 3 or 4. So I tried making the WD a slave under the Maxtor, and that was fine, but still couldn't get it to be the only device on the channel. So I called WD Tech Support finally, and they picked up right away, no hold time at all! He patiently explained to me that the device has to be set up as "Single" instead of "Master" if it's the only device on the channel. Duh. I'm glad he didn't just yell "RTFM!" at me. I swore that I had, and I knew that, but I was just blanking. Works fine now, so hopefully I can get 98 and XP to dual boot off of it, and I'll be enjoying my new (close to) top of the line (well, it started off that way when I began buying components...) rig tonight. Thanks for the response, and good luck with your HD. Call 800 ASK 4WDC for their tech support, press 3 then 2.

-tslugmo