Serious A8N-SLI Issue

[anox3]

I have a problem with my A8N-SLI. It has to be either the mobo or the Maxtor 250 GB SATA hard drive. The problem originally started shortly after the computer was put together, But I thought I had it resolved. I turn the computer on. Computer goes through it's boot sequence. Will go to insert system disk dos message. So obviously hard drive is not being seen. The drive has power you can hear and feel the spinning. It is connected to sata 1. I go to bios screen and nothing is seen on sata master. It will do this approx 4-6 times than will refuse to go off intro screen to A8N, The 8 bit photo I guess it is. Other times it will not power up at all. Monitor will shut off for lack of video signal. I reset cmos and will power up again.

At random times it will boot into windows and everything will be fine. Other times it will hang like this. I have a friend I need to drop this drive off to a friend that just had a P4 system built. He is the only one I know that has sata ports to be able to use for this. Has anyone had these issues? I am at a loss with this, But figure it has to be either the hard drive or the board due to no sata recognition of the drive. This drive has windows xp installed on it and has worked off and on in the past. So not an issue with formatting or operating system.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Sounds like a power related issue. What power supply do you have? Whats your ram?

 

[govern1]

It's your Maxtor hard drive. Search through this forum and you'll find quite a few posts regarding this. I've been in contact with Maxtor and they claim that Asus is supposed to be putting out a bios fix for this.

Shawn

 

[anox3]

OCZ 600 Powerstream and Crucial Ballistix 1 GB PC 3200.

 

[anox3]

Originally posted by: govern1
It's your Maxtor hard drive. Search through this forum and you'll find quite a few posts regarding this. I've been in contact with Maxtor and they claim that Asus is supposed to be putting out a bios fix for this.

Shawn

It is very strange. Sometimes the drive works and sometimes is dosen't.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: anox3
I have a problem with my A8N-SLI. It has to be either the mobo or the Maxtor 250 GB SATA hard drive. The problem originally started shortly after the computer was put together, But I thought I had it resolved. I turn the computer on. Computer goes through it's boot sequence. Will go to insert system disk dos message. So obviously hard drive is not being seen. The drive has power you can hear and feel the spinning. It is connected to sata 1. I go to bios screen and nothing is seen on sata master. It will do this approx 4-6 times than will refuse to go off intro screen to A8N, The 8 bit photo I guess it is. Other times it will not power up at all. Monitor will shut off for lack of video signal. I reset cmos and will power up again.

At random times it will boot into windows and everything will be fine. Other times it will hang like this. I have a friend I need to drop this drive off to a friend that just had a P4 system built. He is the only one I know that has sata ports to be able to use for this. Has anyone had these issues? I am at a loss with this, But figure it has to be either the hard drive or the board due to no sata recognition of the drive. This drive has windows xp installed on it and has worked off and on in the past. So not an issue with formatting or operating system.

I have exactly the same drive as you, yet I can use mine fine with the A8N-SLI Deluxe. That is the only drive in my system and it works incredibly. If you enable NCQ however, things will get corrupt in short order.

Update: It stopped working. grrr. On my other rig this happens with some of my drives, and screwing with SMART a couple of times sometimes works, but I can't get my rig 2 to boot at all. Sounds like lots of people are having these issues so I'm not too worried that I destroyed my hard drive.

 

[anox3]

Well i have it back up and running. I went back to bios 1002. Cleared the CMOS and working fine. This is really pissing me off with Asus. Is there an issue with this drive or what? They have to know there is an issue with their bios and certain hardware. I was running the final version of 1003. Final my a$$. I bought this board due to their reputation. Time for asus to correct this shit. Still getting an error for the video card warning telling me it is not getting sufficient power and is shutting down to a safe level. More asus crap probably?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Originally posted by: anox3
OCZ 600 Powerstream and Crucial Ballistix 1 GB PC 3200.

Do you have another PS that you can try. I have seen people having trouble with the OCZ 600 on this board. I believe its a dual rail PS with like 18a and 16a on the two 12v rails. This board needs more amps on the 12v to the motherboard, especially if your running 2 video cards.

 

[anox3]

Originally posted by: GuitarDaddy

Originally posted by: anox3
OCZ 600 Powerstream and Crucial Ballistix 1 GB PC 3200.

Do you have another PS that you can try. I have seen people having trouble with the OCZ 600 on this board. I believe its a dual rail PS with like 18a and 16a on the two 12v rails. This board needs more amps on the 12v to the motherboard, especially if your running 2 video cards.

Unfortunately no. All I have is another dual rail that came from the pack with the 6800 GT from Chumbo. The one thing about the OCZ is adjustable rails though. Everything is green and ok. Does not seem underpowered at all. That would really suck though. As much as this PSU cost and have it be an issue. Wonder if OCZ would swap it for a 520 Powerstream.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I bet they will, OCZ has great customer service

 

[squonk]

Anox do a search on author squonk and in the main thread for the board read my findings while building 2 systems.

 

[Thorsson]

Clearing the BIOS settings (RTC RAM as they call it) solves some problems. I think final 1003 has some issues, I'm staying with beta 007 for the moment. Also it's a known problem that most two molex to 6pin PCI-E adapters have been wired incorrectly - this will lead to insufficent power. IMO this has led to a lot of people jumping on the PSU bandwagon. My dual-rail Enermax has no problems supplying sufficient power.

I've not had one problem with my Diamondmax 10, so I can't comment on that.

 

[FastEddie]

Originally posted by: Thorsson
. Also it's a known problem that most two molex to 6pin PCI-E adapters have been wired incorrectly - this will lead to insufficent power.

You have a link for this?

 

[figfiddle]

Originally posted by: anox3
I have a problem with my A8N-SLI. It has to be either the mobo or the Maxtor 250 GB SATA hard drive. The problem originally started shortly after the computer was put together, But I thought I had it resolved. I turn the computer on. Computer goes through it's boot sequence. Will go to insert system disk dos message. So obviously hard drive is not being seen. The drive has power you can hear and feel the spinning. It is connected to sata 1. I go to bios screen and nothing is seen on sata master. It will do this approx 4-6 times than will refuse to go off intro screen to A8N, The 8 bit photo I guess it is. Other times it will not power up at all. Monitor will shut off for lack of video signal. I reset cmos and will power up again.

At random times it will boot into windows and everything will be fine. Other times it will hang like this. I have a friend I need to drop this drive off to a friend that just had a P4 system built. He is the only one I know that has sata ports to be able to use for this. Has anyone had these issues? I am at a loss with this, But figure it has to be either the hard drive or the board due to no sata recognition of the drive. This drive has windows xp installed on it and has worked off and on in the past. So not an issue with formatting or operating system.

I had the same problem as you but with my Seagate. The only solution that got mine working was clearing the cmos. It is definitely an Asus issue.

Something else to stay away from right now is Norton Antivirus 2005. It conflicts with too much other software currently and actually forced me to reformat once. I have been running stable for a week now.
I am afraid to add anymore software or hardware because ever time I have done so in the past I have had issues. Don't get me wrong I do have quite a bit of both installed. I just need to find a decent antivirus program.

 

[century child]

I use this one with no problems: www.free-av.com

 

[scruffles]

make sure you have it in the right sata slot, I had mine in the red sata 1 for a while and it did similar things. Once i got it in the Black sata 1 it recognized without Driver instalation lor anything, Goodluck, I hope it's just something simple like that

 

[kjackson09]

I am just about to purchase my new rig which includes the ASUS A8N SLI motherboard and the Seagate 160GB HD /8MB Cache and NCQ.

I had no idea what this NCQ thing was, but from the sounds of things it is going to give me a headache. Is anyone successfully using a seagate HD that comes with NCQ. (I don't care if I have to diasable the NCQ feature I just want the HD to work and be recognized)

Cheers,

Kerry

 

[FastEddie]

I using two Seagate S-ATA II drives (with NCQ) with no problems whatever. I have NCQ disabled as nvidia has yet to come to the table with native NF4 chipset drivers, which should fix any NCQ issues we are currently experiencing.