Problems with CFX3200-DR? Post here (merged)

[ChkDsk]

Had a sleepless night reading the posts overthere. Summary: either a driver problem or a defective drive/cable.

 

Since there are too much problems we can state it's probably not a failing HDD, and everyone has tried differect cables.

 

Drivers are looking promising after my last bios changes, but been through this before.

 

ChkDsk

[Nemesis.ie]

Going to give the F_test/kill thing ChkDsk was talking about a go now (just moved my cpu cooler around the other way, lost a RAM slot (orange) now using 2 x yellows but the RAM is and PWM are MUCH cooler now).

 

However, on downloading the above files AVG announce there was a Trojan, it healed it OK but I'm wondering is it correct, have I now broken the KillCMOS by healing?

 

As it will come from the floppy not in Windows I might try it unhealed but could it also be the trojan has attached itself to the file and the uploader is unaware?

 

Or is it just classified as such because of what it does? :-)

[ChkDsk]

See this post about the KillCMOS thing.

 

http://www.dfi-street.com/forum/showpost.p...2&postcount=367

 

ChkDsk

[Nemesis.ie]

I figured as much.

 

So, I have done the sequence of f_tester, battery, F_t, killcmos and rebooted.

 

I currently have both LAN ports ON, ULI RAID on and being used to boot and the bottom option (RAID with 0, 1, 5 etc) enabled for the SII.

 

I get the ROM option message and never see the SII ROM during boot .... however the controller is detected in windows and indeed with the RAID enabled I can see my single backup drive which is on the SII controller.

 

I think the ROM message is from the BIOS telling us we can't have two boot ROMs enabled, but that's all, the two controllers are working.

 

I noted an option in the ASUS BIOS for setting which ROM to load first, SII or ULI, this I think is what we need so we can choose which ROM to boot from as it could be handy to boot from the SII without disabling the ULI so that one can use the ULI utility under windows to play with the array (this is exactly what I did with the ASUS to test stripe sizes etc when I got it 1st).

 

Anyway, so far all seems good but I still have the swap and app prefetch off.

 

I will run some tests as is (No OC, default BIOS and just USB KB/Mouse and RAID turned on and clock set as the changes I've made since reset).

 

Will then try enabling swap and then separately prefetch if all seems OK.

 

Note this is still with the array that was built on the ASUS and with the "beta driver" installed as an update (Naughty me! )

 

Subjectively things seem a little faster too but that may be because I had the HTT multiplier lower when OC testing).

 

Will let all of you know how I get on later.

[ChkDsk]

Also try 5x16DW + HPET enabled and upping all voltages a bit... Let us know.

 

ChkDsk

[Nemesis.ie]

Will try that later (have to go out).

 

Preliminary results:

 

Got freezes in HDTach long test.

 

Rebooted and set BIOS to HPET and max queue + prefetch (BIOS prefetch that is!) and then got a freeze in Win boot but HDTach seems to run OK, so despite DFI tech saying it is not related it does at least appear to make a difference.

 

Also, something I should mention as I've not seen it mentioned before, the lock/freeze is definitely on the PC side and not the drives (as it were).

 

i.e. I have the 5 in 3 bay per my sig and it has a light for each drive. I can tell when I have the freeze problem easily (and not just a busy machine/drives) as when it freezes, the boards HDD light is ON but the drive lights are OFF.

 

Normally when the RAID is reading and not at full saturation (e.g. copy to same array) I can actually see the striping of the drives on the bay lights while the board HDD ligh is solid.

 

Not sure if this is relavant but it does make it easy to see when it happens ......

 

More later no doubt! Has anyone heard from DFI since the beta driver was posted?

[poopshotgun]

More later no doubt! Has anyone heard from DFI since the beta driver was posted?

 

Here's my latest coorespondance:

 

Dear Sir

 

Thank you for your info. Your info will be very helpful for co-work with Uli to solve this issue.

 

So my suggestion is that everybody getting the error send in screenshots like the following:

[bmorgan98]

Edit: I reset my BIOS to defaults before the last install, which set the SATA drives to Emulated PATA. I tried to install without the drivers and I could not finish a format of the drive.

 

Then you got a serious issue there because if its in the bios its meant to work ("meant to work" hehe). How far does it get in the format? maybe if you jumper the drive down to sata 150 and then try to format.

 

a single 74 gb raptor formats fine in emulated pata mode, but that drive is sata 150.

[poopshotgun]

Gets anywhere from 12% to 30% before freezing up. I may just have an older Windows install CD. Like I said, if I use the drivers, everything installs smoothly, so in my opinion there is no problem.

[bmorgan98]

Gets anywhere from 12% to 30% before freezing up. I may just have an older Windows install CD. Like I said, if I use the drivers, everything installs smoothly, so in my opinion there is no problem.

 

 

Ahhhhh, is it a sp2 cd?

 

if it aint and its has no service pack then windows was limited to 137gb, try using data life guard tools or diagnostics (dos) to format it as ntfs.

[poopshotgun]

SP2 CD.

 

Sidenote: Used to have the aformentioned 137gb problem with Win2k. In order to fix it I had to reference a Japanese site to find the Microsoft Q-article. I couldn't find it when searching support.microsoft.com. Thanks for the great seach engine, M$.

[Nemesis.ie]

I tried the "Also try 5x16DW + HPET" chkdsk (with 1 increment extra on chipset Genie BIOS options (CPU at stock speed/volts) posted and it seems good!

 

HDTach did not freeze and the graph is MUCH smoother, just one dip by about 30% instead of 3 or 4 dips by 90%+.

 

Performance is also up a bit.

 

I will re-enable swap in a few mins and report back ....