Soltek k8tpro-939

[jcmartel75]

Hey guys,

This is my first post. I've sent an email to Soltek's tech support but haven't heard back yet. I'll post my email here as that will explain my situation. If anybody has any suggestions I'd sure appreciate the input. Thanks a bunch.

K8tpro-939 mobo
Athlon64 3200
1GB Corsair XMS LL(2x512MB)
Audigy2 sound
Gainward Nvidia fx5900 ultra video
2 Western Digital 36GB SATA raptors (raid0 stripe)
1 160GB SATA data drive (I think samsung)
Lite-On DVD rom
Lite-On DVD R/W
3.5" floppy
520W power supply

Now here's what has happend. Since I will be using all SATA drives I
installed the DVD drives together on the IDE1 connector with the DVD
ROM as Master and the burner as the Slave. I also installed the 2
raptors on the VIA SATA slots and the 160GB SATA drive on the 1st
Promise SATA connector. In the BIOS I Disabled the onboard sound,
disabled the Promise (because I didn't want to install windows on the
wrong drive accidentally), and saved and rebooted. I then used the
VIA RAID setup menu and created the RAID0 array using the 2 raptors.
Now, I was ready to load my OS. I had my SATA floppy disk ready for
the F6 portion of the install. Well, I rebooted the pc and made sure
the BIOS was set to boot from cd and that the VIA array was recognized
as the main hard drive. Well I rebooted to start loading my OS and
the motherboard went through post no problem. Error code displays
showed FF meaning all good. Well when the computer went into the boot
from cd loading stage it hung, just ended up with a blank screen. I
tried putting my WinXP disk into the other dvd tray and rebooted with
the same results. I had read somewhere that some people experience
that problem so I just set both DVD drives to master and put one on
IDE1 and the other on IDE2. That solved that problem. I rebooted and
loaded WinXP like lightning. Took maybe 15 minutes. I got onto my
active desktop and loaded the LAN drivers and the VIA 4 in 1 drivers.
I then figured I'd enable the other SATA drive, my data drive. I
rebooted into BIOS and set the Promise to SATA. I saved and rebooted
and ended up with the same blank screen as when the two DVD drives
were on the same IDE channel. I went back into BIOS and made sure the
VIA array was the first boot drive. I rebooted again and got the same
blank screen after post. So, I went back into BIOS again and disabled
the Promise SATA and rebooted. It booted right into WindowsXP.
Rebooted to BIOS yet again and enabled the Promise SATA. Rebooted and
got the same blank screen. I thought maybe I should go through the
Windows install just to load the Promise SATA drivers so I set the
BIOS to boot from cd and rebooted. After post it got to the point
where it should boot from cd and it just hung there again like before.
I don't know what to do next to get both the VIA and Promise SATA's
to work at the same time. It appears they don't want to work at the
same time. What can I do? Help me please? Thank you for your help.

ps... all the components worked on an Asus board just minutes before I
put them onto the soltek board so I know everything is good.

 

[jcmartel75]

an update sorta... I took my raptors off of the VIA and put them on the promise raid and they wouldn't recognize. I did delete the array first in the VIA menu. The drives simply weren't recognized at all as being on the promise raid. I think this explains why when I had my data drive on the promis and my OS array on the VIA it would hang when I tried to boot. Weird thing is that the data drive was actually recognized on the Promise sata while booting. It just wouldn't access it. I was going to RMA the board but I really don't want to re-install my 754 and mobo and re-install everything just to have to do it again when a new Soltek arrives. I think I'm just going to try a pci SATA card and see how that works. If for some reason that doesn't fly then I'll just have to RMA the board. If anybody has any thoughts on this I'd appreciate them.

thanks

 

[timecop67]

Have heard that the promise and Via need to be dealt with separately as the two don't intertwine. At least that is the way it is on my soltek K890 pro. Did you load all new drivers for both the Promise controller and Via from the Soltek Website at the windows F6 prompt? Also are your jumpers set correctly to enable the promise controller. If you determine that both the Via and Promise controllers are okay on a non raid setup I would say it sounds like a bios issue, bios setup setting or controller driver issue.

 

[jcmartel75]

the Promise contoller is hosed. I tried doing a fresh install using just the promise controller and it wouldn't even recognize the drives to put them in a raid0 array. I didn't feel like RMA'ing the board so I went out and bought a PCI card that does SATA and installed that. Works no problem. In the past I used the Promise controller on my ASUS mobo and it was pretty slow so the PCI card is actually an improvement. Thanks for the replies... I'm just happy everything else works.