Inaccessible Boot Device.

My system recently died and I bought a new Motherboard, chip, and ram. Everything else is brought forward and was running fine on XP SP2 and later. Here is current setup:

Gigabyte GA-P35-S3G new motherboard
Intel E6750 core 2 duo 2.66 ghz new cpu
4 gig Ram as specified by Crucial.com for this board. (I've tried using only 2gig.)
160 gig Seagate EIDE HD
Matrox G200 MMS quad video card for up to 4 monitors (I run Esignal-stock quotes and charts across 4 monitors)
Sony IDE DVD 820a drive
The MB has Sata, but I have no Sata drives, HD and Dvd are master and slave on the one IDE connector.

I made a slipstream install cd with SP2. I get BSOD when windows is about to start, just like toodlesoodles above. Same error codes. This CD works in my laptop so it is okay.

So I made a slipstream install cd with SP1a, and it worked. I was able to do a repair install and get the new stuff working. I thought I had it made and reactivated. Then went to install the SP2 file I had downloaded. After rebooting, I get a quick flash of the BSOD just after the logo screen and it then reboots. It does this over and over. I believe the error codes are the same, but it goes by fast.

So I did repair install again with the SP1a cd and got going again. I have been able to back up to SP1a each time using the repair install. So then I did the usual download installation of SP2. Same results.

I tried using the slipstreamed SP2 cd with a different hard drive. A WD 60g, which I had deleted and recreated a primary partition, formatted NTFS. I hooked it up and still the install cd gets BSOD when starting up windows, before you even get to the install options. So it is not a drive problem, but maybe a driver or controller problem. This tells me it would not help to wipeout my Seagate and start from scratch. I don't want to do that since I already reactivated recently.

Per a local tech guy, I have run memtest86+ and Barts disktool and it all passed 100% okay. I have run Norton Windoctor, Diskdoctor, chkdsk, and a virus scan, and all is okay. I tried disabling USB controller per Mattman above, all to no effect.

I have the latest bios for this board, although there are two beta bios available. I have made various tweaks in the bios. I have tried the Sata channels with both Auto and None.

Running the SP1a, I looked at device manager to see what drivers are in use for the SATA channels, and it says the usual atapi.sys, pciide.sys, pciidex.sys. Now SP2 has updated files for these items, but should not cause a conflict.

So you probably will say I need to load a driver at the F6 prompt. Well I got a floppy full of drivers from the gigabyte website for this board. I don't know which one to use. And when you press F6, it looks for "txtsetup.oem ", which I don't have. That file tells it what driver and what to do with it apparently.

HELP!
Wayne.

 

Additional info for "Same Problem "

A driver cd came with this Gigabyte board, and I did install those drivers after I got the stuff working under SP1a, and all works fine that way. However, it has its own install program, and it would not work to insert it at the F6 prompt.

I have also sent an email to Gigabyte, but no response after 3 days.

Thanks,
Wayne.

 

Waynester048......

I think you have successfully hijacked this thread. Hopefully it will get split and your question can then get the attention it deserves.


edit: Waynester048 -----> It appears that a specific answer can be found on page 37 of your manual and requires that one correctly sets the BIOS configuration for SATA drive recognition. Note: this also varies by Operating System so read your manual carefully.

SATA AHCI Mode (Intel ICH9 Southbridge)
Enables or disables AHCI for the SATA controllers integrated in the Intel ICH9 Southbridge.
Disabled Configures the SATA controllers to PATA mode. (Default)
AHCI (Note) Configures the SATA controllers to AHCI mode. Advanced Host Controller Interface
(AHCI) is an interface specification that allows the storage driver to enable
advanced Serial ATA features such as Native Command Queuing and hot plug.
For more information about AHCI, please visit Intel's website.

SATA Port0-3 Native Mode (Intel ICH9 Southbridge)
Specifies the operating mode of the integrated SATA controllers.
Disabled Allows the SATA controllers to operate in Legacy IDE mode.
In Legacy mode the SATA controllers use dedicated IRQs that cannot be shared
with other device. Set this option to Disabled if you wish to install operating
systems that do not support Native mode, e.g. Windows 9X/ME. (Default)
Enabled Allows the SATA controllers to operate in Native IDE mode.
Enable Native IDE mode if you wish to install operating systems that support
Native mode, e.g. Windows XP/2000.

 

I apologize. I did not realize that was considered hijacking a thread. I have been searching for similar problems that would bring a solution, so I posted in that thread where the originator also had a gigabyte board and was getting the same error codes, the same BSOD, seemingly from the same problem.

And I did read the page 37 very carefully in my manual, previous to my posting here.

On the SATA AHCI mode, I have that disabled, because it says at the bottom of the page that only Vista supports having that enabled.

On the SATA port 0-3 Native mode, I have tried it both ways. Currently it is enabled since it says Windows XP supports it, even though I have the Sata/IDE channels 0-3 set to none rather than auto, which I have also tried both ways.

Believe me, since having this problem, I have been through that manual very carefully on each bios item.

New things I have tried last evening:

I came across an item that said some scanner drivers, particularly a UMAX scanner driver, could interfere with Service Pack 2. So I uninstalled completely everything to do with my Visioneer 8920 scanner, because the Visioneer website has no new driver for this item. It says end of life and the last available driver says it was good through SP1. Although this item has worked fine with my old system running SP2. Taking this out did not help.

But I am up and running on SP1a. I just can't load SP2. I know SP3 will be available anytime and I hope that will solve the problem, if no other solution arises. I like to have all the latest updates and not having SP2 prevents that. Even though it is running, I feel somehow crippled.

Thanks for your consideration of this. I hope others continue to read this thread and have some ideas.

Wayne.

 

Wayne ..... check out that other thread - it looks like Prince Spaghetti Day has arrived.

 

Other thread

I saw in that other thread about changing SATA to IDE, but I don't see any place to do something like that.

On the first bios screen, it shows all the drive channels. The first 4 would be for the SATA, as there are 4 SATA ports on the board. But they are labeled as IDE channel 0-3 in the bios. That is not a changeable field. My ide hard drive and dvd drive show as master and slave on IDE channel 4 on that same bios screen. They are plugged into the one and only IDE port on the board.

One tech person locally said that he thought these newer boards with only the one IDE port, had to have SATA for the boot device. In other words, he was trying to say that they weren't meant to boot to an item on the IDE connector. He was saying I would have to go out and buy a SATA hard drive. I have asked other tech people about that, and they had not heard of that.

But I didn't believe that because it is working fine with SP1a. It is only with SP2 that I am having a problem. But maybe I should do some searching on that possibility.

Going out and buying a SATA drive was one of my last resort options, because that means installing from scratch and reactivating again, when I just reactivated with the SP1a about a week ago.

Wayne.

 

Possible solution.

I just found a reference to a bios problem for this board on a review site. Here it is pasted in:

"Cons: For unknown reasons, F2 version BIOS sometimes displays a NTLDR error and will only boot from CD at that point. Clearing BIOS with a jumper and resetting the settings fixes the problem. New BIOS versions are currently in beta. "

I plan to try clearing the bios and resetting as soon as I can. Most likely will be tomorrow before I have time. Gotta catch up on some other things this weekend. I'll post the results.

Wayne.

 

Clearing the CMOS

Doing this did not fix my problem. I still can't load SP2.

I may try one of the beta bios that are available.

I'll continue to check in here, but I probably won't post again unless I find a solution or something changes.

In that other thread, about changing the SATA controllers to read as IDE, that is the setting discussed above that is on page 37 of my manual.

For the item SATA AHCI Mode, the disabled setting configures the Sata controllers to Pata.
And the SATA port 0-3 Native mode, the enabled setting allows the Sata controllers to operate in native IDE mode.

That is what these switches do, allow the Sata to work as IDE.

Wayne.

 

Have you found updated drivers for the major hardware? Look for Intel chipset "updates" and drivers for the Matrox card (then any others like audio and ethernet).

 

Reply to Mattman about drivers

Yes I have the latest driver for my Matrox card for XP. Also the audio, lan, etc.

In fact I was looking through device manager at the different hardware drivers, and most things have just one driver, except for the cdrom drive.

I believe there are about 4 drivers in there from Microsoft, and about 3 or 4 for Roxio. I have Roxio Easy Media Creator 7. I believe they have version 10 out now, but this one always worked fine for me. This worked fine with SP2 in my old system, so I really see no need to uninstall this.

Any thoughts?

Wayne.

 

You don't mention the chipset drivers/updates (but I take it you got them).

Inspecting the driver files does not mean much to me. I expect there are a lot of files in the background. Roxio, maybe, but I doubt it. I don't mind uninstalling programs if they might happen to be the cause.

Most of the problems I've seen installing SP2 are due to drivers. In your situation, I would consider reformatting (again sorry), upgrading the drivers and trying to install SP2 before installing any programs.

You said you tried disabling the USB in the BIOS settings, also look at disabling the audio, LAN, Firewire , etc, until it is safely installed.

See if you can put any relevant search terms into the KB:
http://support.microsoft.com/search/?adv=1

Matt

 

Just a PS.

Have you checked the drive/s with Error Checking (chkdsk)? You can also run a check with the HDD manufaturer "s utilities (Seagate DiskTools).

 

Hello Mattman

I have the latest drivers for the chipset as well.

I really don't want to uninstall any more programs at this point in time. However I might do it at some point. I consider it a closer to last resort option.

I have run chkdsk two different times, through the Norton disk doctor program. It schedules it to run on the next reboot. It finds no errors. I have partially run a program called Barts Disktool, which does a lot of checking/testing of the drive and controller.

This hard drive was brought forward from the old system, which SP2 was running on just fine. And I tried the install cd with another drive, freshly partitioned, freshly formatted NTFS, and the install cd with SP2 does the same thing. So I don't believe I have a drive problem.

I am up and running with SP1a, so I am trying different things on an as I have time basis. I have dropped my sense of urgency on the matter.

The next thing I plan to try is to try one of the beta bios that are available. If that doesn't work, I may just wait for SP3, which is due out anytime. If that doesn't work, I might uninstall some more things. If that doesn't work, I may think about buying a new SATA drive, but not immediately. There are still some things to try before I waste this installation I just reactivated.

Isn't there something about having to have 120 days before you reactivate again?

Wayne.

 

Wayne:

Bear with me - a few rambling thoughts to chew on but no decisive recommendations. When I first responded to your post in the noodles thread, I overlooked your specs which referenced an IDE HDD. Thus my page 37 RTFM reference. (should have no bearing on an IDE drive)

Looking through your more recent comments re: problems with installing SP2, gives one cause for some skull scratching. You referenced moving that 160 gig seagate from another system - did you follow with a repair install? And if the answer is yes, did you use an SP1 CD on the system drive which was running SP2? Of note, I have encountered a couple of limited problems moving drives with a previous installation to a new board whereby I could not remove the old (and conflicting) Northbridge drivers with a repair installation. Understand that these drivers are loaded before the operating system fires up. Again - just something to be aware of and think about.

You also reference trying a different drive that was formatted and partitioned which would seem to negate the above, however, what was the total capacity of this "new" drive and how did you partition it? I know you are aware of the capacity limits SP1 vs SP2 but my curiousity is geared more towards how you partitioned and whether or not this was a brand new drive or an older drive you reprovisioned using third party software.

More Off The Wall Rambling - I'm not an Intel expert by any stretch but I'll assume you are aware of the CPU software updates they pushed down the chain to correct some of the problems with their architecture and instruction sets.

I would urge further caution of using Norton instead of Windows Chkdsk. And, have you tryed fixing this using any other Norton Utilities? Although I used to be a big supporter of Symantec, I've personally jumped ship.

Now, for some real fun - Dave Fear has been experimenting with a couple of new tools he's developing and you can find a pretty interesting thread on the Test Posts forum. This may give you some insight or a clue as to start up sequence and what gets loaded when.

I will continue to follow your thread and regret that I can not offer any real guidance at this point but I would also be trying a clean installation with a slipstreamed SP2 CD on a drive that had been wiped and was then formatted and partitioned using the same SP2 Windows CD.

Good Luck & Regards,

 

Reply to Rockster2U

Yes the 160 gig Seagate, an ultra ata/100 drive, placed into service about May 2005, was from my old system. My old system was a Pentium 4, 3.2ghz, on a Tyan S5101 motherboard. It was a good system that died much too soon-apparently the board or the cpu overheated. It was running SP2 and all later updates.

The seagate drive should have booted right up with everything, and all I should have had to do was reactivate. But it immediately had a bsod on boot. It went by to fast to see and just went to booting over and over.

I only had an original xp home install cd. That original cd, would boot to the install options, but when I got to the repair install, it could not see my xp installation. This was odd.

So I made a slipstream cd with sp2. That cd got a bsod just as windows was loading, before getting to any of the install options, and still does this today. I tested the cd in my laptop and it works fine. It boots all the way to the install options in my laptop. Whenever I make a change that I think might help, I boot with this cd and see if it gets a bsod.

After that wouldn't work, I made a slipstream cd with sp1a. And thankfully, that one worked. It booted and I got to the repair install option, and did so, and got the system going. I thought I had it made then. I then did the usual download install of sp2. It got an error and halted during performing cleanup. I have read online about this and it apparently happens alot and is apparently right at the end of performing cleanup. But according to what I have read, SP2 is fully installed even though that happens. Of course the next thing is to reboot. Well I got the same bsod just like when I first booted the new system. It would not boot to safe mode either.

So I had to go back and do the sp1a repair install. I made several other attempts and got the same results. After that I just let it be with sp1a, and when I make some adjustment, I just test it with the slipstreamed sp2 install cd, to see if I can get to the install options.

One test I made was with an older Western Digital drive, 60gig. It was my main drive previous to the seagate. I put it in a mobile rack usb device I have, and attached it to my laptop. It was empty. I believe using windows diskmanager, I deleted the old partition, and set up a new primary partition. I did not format it. I hooked it up in place of the seagate, intending to run the sp2 install cd and let it format the drive. But I got the same bsod before the install options, with the same error codes. I also tried another seagate 120 gig that I have, but that drive was not empty-just various data stored on it. I just wanted to see if I could get to the install options. So with 3 different drives I get the same results. So I did not feel it was a problem with the drive.

But I have a theory that I may have to go to a Sata drive. I think I mentioned this before. One local tech guy said the he had never seen any of the newer boards with one ide connector, be able to boot to an ide device on that connector. He said I would have to get a Sata drive and let that be the boot drive. I have not been able to confirm that anywhere else, either online or another local tech guy I have discussed this with. And it is booting to the ide device using sp1a. What is different in sp2.

Now regarding chkdsk. In Norton diskdoctor, when you check make repairs, what it does is schedule a run of chkdsk /f on your next reboot. I have done this maybe 3 times now, and it finds no errors. I have had the Norton check free space, etc. I have run Norton windoctor, which goes through the registry, etc. Per a local tech guy, I ran memtest86+, and Barts Disktool, neither of which showed any problems.

I updated the bios yesterday to one of the available bios betas for this board. It made no difference. That slipstreamed sp2 install cd still gets the bsod at the same point, same codes.

So yes it may be something about those Northbridge drivers. Can you explain that to me. I really don't understand Northbridge, Southbridge, Canterwood, and whatever all that means. Why should it be a problem for sp2 and not for sp1a?

My reluctance to do a completely fresh install is due to the fact that I just reactivated with the sp1a repair install. Which is running fine.

Wayne.

 

Additional info-2nd post of the day

The only new stuff in the new system is the Gigabyte board, the cpu, and the ram. Everything else is brought forward.

I also had a Promise Ultra ata100 card to run 2 mobile racks, but I do not have that card plugged in right now. It was there on the very first boot of the new system, but then I pulled it out just to eliminate possible problems.

My power supply, Antec 430 watt, and case are the same as before.

Just in case it helps.

Rockster don't just come down to the last post. The message previous is a response to you.

Wayne.

 

Additional for Rockster-3rd post 04/17/08

The old Tyan board is a Trinity I875P S5101. It used Intel 875P for the North Bridge, and Intel ICH5 for the South Bridge. It also had Sata capability, although I did not use it.

The Gigabyte board uses Intel P35 Express Chipset for the North Bridge and Intel ICH9 for the South bridge. A part of the South Bridge is a JMicron 368 chip for the IDE connector.

Now after getting the new system going with service pack 1a, I installed drivers for this board by a driver cd that came with the board. And looking in device manager under system, I see stuff mentioned for the P35 chipset and the ICH9 chipset. I don't see anything mentioning the old chipset. But maybe the sp2 install cd doesn't see that.

But I don't really think that is the problem, because I tried the two other drives that had no system installed, no registry, no drivers involved. Only the drivers from the install cd.

Maybe it is seeing something and interpreting it wrong. Maybe it can't see the JMicron chip. I will do a search on this chip and see what comes up.

Now if it needs a driver, that F6 option, as I said before, is looking for a certain file first, called txtsetup.oem, which tells it what to do with the drivers. I have no such file for the drivers.

But I will keep looking for solutions.

Wayne.

 

Wayne:

Thanks for the detailed information. This is most helpful. Unfortunately, Intel is not my strength so I'm in the process of trying to educate myself a little more re: your system and this specific problem. I like your thinking and the approach you have taken thus far and am hopeful that I may be able to lend some meaningful assistance once I have "boned up" on a couple more things.

First misconception - Your old system drive should have booted right up in your new machine. Not so. A repair install is required because of the different hardware configuration and associated drivers. Despite this, your tests with the other two drives indicates something else is at play here.

Yes, this board was designed primarily to run SATA HDD's and use the single IDE header for opticals but as you've already proven with your SP1a installation, it can boot to an IDE drive. I don't think SP1a vs SP2 has any direct bearing on this but there obviously is an indirect bearing which I would speculate is driver related, focused on the CPU instruction set which has been modified by Intel. I'll go out on a limb and would sure love for any other poster to make additional comments (pro or con) but I think this is going to be related to memory read/write issues. Again - speculative on my part but that's one of the things I will try to investigate.

In an effort to rule something else out, I would appreciate your checking specific memory specs against the link for compatable memory found on this page.

You also want to run Dave's tool as discussed and here's a link This may provide us with a roadmap to a specific driver issue. I would further suggest you read that entire thread and we can certainly ask for his help (resident genius) after you've done an initial investigation.

I will continue to follow your efforts and make recommendations whenever possible, but I'm an AMD guy so a lot of this is foriegn turf. Today is a particularly busy one for me but I will get back to you again later.

Regards,

 

Reply to Rockster 4/18/08 #1

My ram is not on Gigabytes' list, but they point out they can't test it all. My ram is a 4 gig (2 modules-2 gig each) set recommended as best for this board by crucial.com. It is DDR2-667. Gigabyte shows no 2 gig chips under ddr2-667 for Micron on their list. Here is a link to my ram on crucial.

http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=27934F12A5CA7304

Memtest86+, which tests ram, showed no errors. I ran all the tests and it passed them all.

I believe it is likely a driver issue and I am looking into a way to slipstream drivers into the xp install cd. I will need some time to figure it out. I found a page about doing this and a program called Nlite. Here is a link to some information about this.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/wind...d-disk-drives-during-windows-xp-installation/

Sorry for the long url, I couldn't figure out how to embed it in word. I do it in email, but couldn't get it to work here.

I will run the dave's tool. There seems to be no instruction or description as to what it does. But I will do that.

I have a sneaking feeling that all this might be solved by getting a Sata drive. And its not the money, its the fact that I reactivated this installation. After the repair install with sp1a, it gave me 3 days to reactivate, so I did it immediately. That was back on the 5th or 6th and I have not resolved this yet.

Wayne.