NForce 2 Woes

[bulldawg]

I am really having a hard time solving a problem. I bought an Abit NF7-S and used it with 2 different WD hard drives and again 2 different Maxtor hard drives. Every combo caused a hang at the point of hdd detection at boot. RMA'd that board and bought an Epox 8RDA+. Overclocks well in the 3 out of 10 tries that it boots Then I RMA'd one WD hdd, traded for another Maxtor and I am still not able to get this board/hdd to work consistantly.

1) Is this a power supply problem? I have an Enermax 330 watt ps in this machine.

2) Is it possible for all these drives to just go bad at the same time?

3) Is it time to get a VIA based board?


Thanks for any helpful replies.

 

[mechBgon]

How have you been setting the hard drives' jumpers, and are they on the same cable or separate ones?

 

[bulldawg]

I've put them as Master, I've used CS, installed them alone and in groups. No matter what I do, this problem keeps coming back. :disgust:

 

[mechBgon]

What drive(s) are you using at this time? (full model numbers would help, I want to look up the jumper settings)

 

[woodie1]

Have you tried different ribbon cables? I had an intermittent problem like yours until I changed one.

 

[Brian48]

Yeah. I've had this problem with one of my 40g WD WD400BB. The system would stall upon bootup at the point of detecting the IDE devices. This would occur with my 8RDA and Soltek SL-75FRN-L, but it did detect fine with my A7N8X. Of course, my A7N8X died immediately there after for some other reason. Setting the jumper to CS and modding the IDE cable didn't work for me.

Finally fixed the problem by swapping out the the WD400BB with a 60g Maxtor. Oddly enough, my other WD400BB (with a different revision number: #32CLB0) works fine with all my nForce2 board. The one WD400BB that didn't work, works fine with my KT333 board (Epox 8K3A).

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: Brian48
Yeah. I've had this problem with one of my 40g WD WD400BB. The system would stall upon bootup at the point of detecting the IDE devices. This would occur with my 8RDA and Soltek SL-75FRN-L, but it did detect fine with my A7N8X. Of course, my A7N8X died immediately there after for some other reason. Setting the jumper to CS and modding the IDE cable didn't work for me.

Finally fixed the problem by swapping out the the WD400BB with a 60g Maxtor. Oddly enough, my other WD400BB (with a different revision number: #32CLB0) works fine with all my nForce2 board. The one WD400BB that didn't work, works fine with my KT333 board (Epox 8K3A).

I'm using a 40gb Maxtor D740X 6E040L0 that worked fine with 2 other boards and I'm getting the hang@ the windows XP progress bar using the SL-75FRN-L but after about 30seconds it continues then hangs@a gray screen for 10-15seconds then boots straight to windows and then can run F@H all night rock solid. I'm going to try disabling the Nvidia LAN and using a PCI card and disabling F@H running as a service and see if that resolves the sloooooooow boot up. If not no biggie because once I'm finished tweaking and overclocking it'll go for weeks on end with no reboots

 

[chizow]

If you're not using the SATA RAID controller, disable it. Also, check which IDE drivers you are using. The SW IDE drivers seem to have been causing strange errors.

Chiz

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Hey Chiz, I said no to the SW drivers and my board doesn't have the SATA but there is an option for it in the bios, I'll go disbaled it if it's set to auto and LYK.

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
Hey Chiz, I said no to the SW drivers and my board doesn't have the SATA but there is an option for it in the bios, I'll go disbaled it if it's set to auto and LYK.

Yah, unused SATA has been known to cause problems, which is why I usually recommend disabling EVERYTHING other than onboard LAN on the first boot, then after installing the nForce2 UDA, enabling stuff in the BIOS that you are using. If you can't disable in the BIOS, there may be a jumper on the board; that's the case with my A7N8X-D. Disabling an unused SATA controller can cut 20 seconds off boot time and solve weird issues with hangs/errors during bootup.

Chiz

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I disabled the SATA and rebooted 3 times and it still hung on the gray screen for approx. 10seconds but the progress bar only hung for an extra 12-15sec so it did help, thanx Guess it's looking for drives on them when it's enabled eh?

 

[bulldawg]

Originally posted by: mechBgon
What drive(s) are you using at this time? (full model numbers would help, I want to look up the jumper settings)

Older WD AC28400 (In Now But Won't Boot)
New WD 80Gig SE Series (Waiting on new one since I RMA'd this one to Newegg)
Maxtor D740 Series
Maxtor 51536U3


:|

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: bulldawg

Originally posted by: mechBgon
What drive(s) are you using at this time? (full model numbers would help, I want to look up the jumper settings)

Older WD AC28400 (In Now But Won't Boot)
New WD 80Gig SE Series (Waiting on new one since I RMA'd this one to Newegg)
Maxtor D740 Series
Maxtor 51536U3


:|

Ok, and you're using all four now, or just one, or ???

If used alone on its own cable, the WD 80Gb is probably going to want to be jumpered as a Single Drive, for starters. That means taking the jumper off the pins completely, according to Western Digital's info (they show a couple alternate single-drive settings too, which you might want to try... the "Neutral" settings). That's cured most of the complaints I've heard regarding the recent WD's. The jumper settings for the AC28400 should also follow those guidelines.

Looking at the jumper settings for the Maxtor D740 series, it looks like Master would be the most logical setting, and you say you've tried that, so I don't know what to think there.

I also like the suggestion of replacing your IDE cable with a stock, flat, new 80-wire cable to eliminate the possibility of a marginal cable. If there's just one drive on a cable, it should be at the end connector, not the middle one, so there isn't vacant cable beyond the drive.

 

[bulldawg]

Originally posted by: mechBgon

Originally posted by: bulldawg

Originally posted by: mechBgon
What drive(s) are you using at this time? (full model numbers would help, I want to look up the jumper settings)

Older WD AC28400 (In Now But Won't Boot)
New WD 80Gig SE Series (Waiting on new one since I RMA'd this one to Newegg)
Maxtor D740 Series
Maxtor 51536U3


:|

Ok, and you're using all four now, or just one, or ???

If used alone on its own cable, the WD 80Gb is probably going to want to be jumpered as a Single Drive, for starters. That means taking the jumper off the pins completely, according to Western Digital's info (they show a couple alternate single-drive settings too, which you might want to try... the "Neutral" settings). That's cured most of the complaints I've heard regarding the recent WD's. The jumper settings for the AC28400 should also follow those guidelines.

Looking at the jumper settings for the Maxtor D740 series, it looks like Master would be the most logical setting, and you say you've tried that, so I don't know what to think there.

I also like the suggestion of replacing your IDE cable with a stock, flat, new 80-wire cable to eliminate the possibility of a marginal cable. If there's just one drive on a cable, it should be at the end connector, not the middle one, so there isn't vacant cable beyond the drive.

Sorry, not very clear. I have used all these by themselves and had problems. The WD 8 gig is now set to single with no jumpers. But it won't work most of the time. Set them as master and cable select and had problems.

This has really amazed me. Also must say I'm disappointed so far. Really have no more VIA desire either, though.

 

[McCarthy]

WD400BB and Aopen AK79D-1394:
Will not detect. As master, slave, single....will NOT.

Another nForce problem - if you have a Santa Cruz card you can't use the gameport, must use onboard soundport. Except many boards don't include the expansion bracket.

Overall while it's a nice board I'd think be liking it a hell of a lot better if it was a VIA. Old board was a VIA and not only works with that drive and let me use my soundcard, but had no problems with it. Got caught up in the nForce2 hype.