First Build - Need Troubleshooting Help

[EllisD]

The jmicron controller is for the 2 eSATA ports on your motherboard. You should not have anything plugged into those ports unless you have some sort of external drive (HDD or ROM drive, and even if you do, they should not be plugged in until you are up and going as to simplify things). The drivers that you would want to install are the ones for the Intel 32-bit if you are going to use a 32bit Operating system, or the Intel 64-bit if you are going to use a 64bit operating system and want to setup hardware RAID. If you only have 1 SATA HDD plugged in, then installing them may not be necessary to install the OS. When it asks you to put a formatted floppy disk into drive A:/, it is looking for a blank floppy that it can write the drivers you selected on to, so that disk can be used at the beginning of the XP installation if you are using hardware RAID.

 

My system is ancient compared to yours, but to install to a SATA harddrive for me, I have to:

-Make sure that the only HDD that is plugged in is the one that i want to install the OS to.

-Set the BIOS to IDE mode for that SATA port.

 

Then I set the machine to boot off of CDROM (or dvd), pop my XP disk in, and let it run. When it asks to install 3rd party RAID drivers (F6) during the beginning stages of the XP install, i dont do anything and it picks my SATA drives up fine. If however, I have another HDD plugged in that is IDE, it will not see the SATA drive at all.

 

Now with everything that was learned to get your system bootable, what happens if you just pop in your OS CD?

[Guest KrankyOldLady]

The jmicron controller is for the 2 eSATA ports on your motherboard. You should not have anything plugged into those ports unless you have some sort of external drive (HDD or ROM drive, and even if you do, they should not be plugged in until you are up and going as to simplify things). The drivers that you would want to install are the ones for the Intel 32-bit if you are going to use a 32bit Operating system, or the Intel 64-bit if you are going to use a 64bit operating system and want to setup hardware RAID. If you only have 1 SATA HDD plugged in, then installing them may not be necessary to install the OS. When it asks you to put a formatted floppy disk into drive A:/, it is looking for a blank floppy that it can write the drivers you selected on to, so that disk can be used at the beginning of the XP installation if you are using hardware RAID.

 

My system is ancient compared to yours, but to install to a SATA harddrive for me, I have to:

-Make sure that the only HDD that is plugged in is the one that i want to install the OS to.

-Set the BIOS to IDE mode for that SATA port.

 

Then I set the machine to boot off of CDROM (or dvd), pop my XP disk in, and let it run. When it asks to install 3rd party RAID drivers (F6) during the beginning stages of the XP install, i dont do anything and it picks my SATA drives up fine. If however, I have another HDD plugged in that is IDE, it will not see the SATA drive at all.

 

Now with everything that was learned to get your system bootable, what happens if you just pop in your OS CD?

 

Somehow i got the feeling its something more.

Aney mobo, with a bios that unfit, do they really sell them like that?

[EllisD]

When the first 45nm chips were released, lots of boards were advertised as "45nm ready" but needed to be flashed to the latest BIOS before the 45nm chips were actually usable and detected properly.

 

I definetly think there is a little bit of misunderstanding here and this seems a little more complicated than it needs to be.

 

Now that the machine is bootable though, i would just try to install the OS and see if it picks up the harddrive when selecting an install location. If it doesnt, then look into install the raid drivers or altering the controller properties in the BIOS to see if that is a problem.

[shatteredsteel]

Kranky,

 

yes ...yes they do you usually don't see this from asus though I've had to fix a couple of MSI boards that had a problem similar to this.

 

 

J7227 have you checked the PSU voltages? I know it sounds wierd, but too low of voltage can cause some weird things to happen. And what you're describing sounds like one of the symptoms I've come across doing repairs. Plus it never hurts to check esspecially if *when* you start overclocking.

[j7227]

When the first 45nm chips were released, lots of boards were advertised as "45nm ready" but needed to be flashed to the latest BIOS before the 45nm chips were actually usable and detected properly.

 

I definetly think there is a little bit of misunderstanding here and this seems a little more complicated than it needs to be.

 

Now that the machine is bootable though, i would just try to install the OS and see if it picks up the harddrive when selecting an install location. If it doesnt, then look into install the raid drivers or altering the controller properties in the BIOS to see if that is a problem.

 

 

Okay, finally got a free minute.

 

So I failed to mention that I had tried all of the drivers before the JMicron. I have made many changes since then though and was thinking while getting ready for work that I should have tried installing the Intel driver again. No time to do that so I had to wait.

 

I finally got to play with my system again and here's the end result. With the P5E3 Premium I could not install the drivers no matter what I did. If I inserted the OS instead of the driver disk and hit Retry, I would still get error message.

 

But, when I configured the SATA drives for RAID (not IDE) and popped in the OS before the driver disk, I was prompted to choose a driver and this time the system recognized the OS. I just sat back and watched my Windows being installed. Such a simple thing but it took a lot of little changes to get it right.

 

I knew this would be the hardest part for me so thanks for all the help! This discussion really helped me think through this one.

 

Cheers!

 

Oh, didn't see that last question. Shatteredsteel, I agree with you on the possibility of low voltages being a potential problem. I work with Power Systems and no the importance of those levels. The voltage looks good for now but I will definitely be paying attention to that when I begin my oc.

[EllisD]

Awesome! Glad its all sorted.

 

You are going to have a lot of fun playing with a system of that calibur