linderman

Simon:

I did see a thread in this forum / maybe under hard drives where there was a hard drive compatibily issue with a mobo / bet you got one too


have you loaded win xp service pack 2 / tech magazines say there are as many new features and "fixes" in service pack 2 as the main OS itself!


Bravo finding the culprit though / you havent lost your touch!! A+ for you


Regards:


Joe

Monbart

...i have seen something about my HDD having issues with ICH5R chipset on the board however the people having the problems couldnt even install windows on drive from what i can remember. And yes I have SP2 installed, however there could be a fix for my problem so I will have a look. I'll also check out the HDD forum to see if there are any answers..

Thanks again Joe

Finally getting there lol


Simon

whodat

good morning
firstly: did you disable usb legacy in your bios before you ran memtest?
secondly: did you test1 stick at a time
thirdly: did you pump the voltage to 2.75 on those modules

fouthly: i dont know

regards and good luck

PDonahoe

There have been many posts on this forum regarding compatibility issues between Maxtor DiamondMax10 Hard Drives and the ICH5R controller. The usual problem is that on boot-up, the system freezes and you can't get to the BIOS setup. You are the first person so far to get past this and actually get Win XP installed! I've been waiting until you get your system fully operating until I asked you how you did this ... if you are successful, you might be able to help many of us with this Maxtor-ICH5R problem.

Monbart

Well its taken some serious amounts of time to get it running, and its running VERY well....

I have upgraded my bios to 1007 and although it still seems to act funny on a fresh boot sometimes, insted of unpluging the sata cable and putting it into the other SATA port all i need to do now is reboot it and it works fine. Not perfect I agree, but at least it works until ASUS (who really DO NEED TO SORT THEIR WEBSITE OUT!!!) give us all a decent BIOS that fixes this problem 100%.

I would be happy to share my findings with anyone else, its the least I can do as everyone on here has been so damm helpfull!!

However, as any PC minded person will understand, not one PC is the same!
I cant say if what I have done will work for anyone else.

As I went along, i kept a log on my laptop of what I did. I will finalise this and publish it on here for everyone to see.

I must say a BIG THANK YOU to all of you that tried to help and suggest things. You all played a vital part in getting my machine to the "BEAST" status that it now is (well, until have have to reboot it again hey ) lol

I will speak to you all soon

Best wishes

A VERY happy monbart (AKA Simon)

linderman

Thanks Simon:


Glad to help and maybe in the future you can assist someone struggling in here too. Two heads are better than one and so on!~




regards:



joe

whodat

yes the asus site is something of a disapointment to say the least.
regards

Monbart

...Ok, this is for ALL owners of a ASUS P4P800E-Deluxe MotherBoards trying to run any SATA drive with NCQ on the intel IHC5R chipset.

You'll need BIOS version 1007 (I managed to install my OS with bios 1006) you can get this from ASUS's website, However their site isnt the best in the world. Keep trying, you will get there eventually.

This SHOULD...

A:) Make your drive availible in the BIOS
B:) Make windows XP installer work better
C:) Give better support for NCQ drives running on the intel ICH5R Chipet.
D:) Kind of sort out problems using SATA NCQ drives in windows..

HOWEVER....Its still NOT perfect, there still are problems. Sometimes I boot to windows from off and my machine goes mental. I reboot and it sorts it out.

I have read on this forum somewhere (Search for SATA P4P800E Deluxe and NCQ) that someone was having kind of the same problems as me. If they powered their Computer from an off state the drive would stop working, yet a reboot makes it work fine. They upgraded their BIOS to a beta version 1021
and it sorted the problem out.....

HOWEVER....

This BIOS is for the ASUS P4C800E-Deluxe NOT the P4P.

Is there anyone else who has flashed this bios to a P4P800E-Deluxe???
Does it work?

I dont want to flash a bios that isnt for my board!

Hope this clears things up for a few people.

If anyone has any questions just shout for MONBART on the forum.

linderman

Thanks Simon:

We appreciate your sharing your findings.


regards:


joe

PDonahoe

Simon,

I appreciate your post as well. Although the 'solution' isn't final, you have helped a lot in explaining what's going on, and what needs to be done.

Asus, are you listening?

Christophfer

i also have the p4p800-e deluxe board and this thread just saved my computer. my experience is almost identical to Monbart's except that my board had been running fine for 6 months up until three weeks ago when all of a sudden major slowdowns set in. i first noticed audio ALWAYS skipping, especially when extra "load" (such as opening a browser window!) occurred, but then noticed an increase in video encoding and file transfer time. (even dvd burning was taking over twice as long, because the hard drive could no longer keep up with the burner) i've been living with it until i could get a day off (today), and Monbart's "pull the SATA plug" solution worked PERFECTLY on my machine. I pulled it, turned on the comp, turned it off, plugged it into the other SATA connection, powered it on, and right away i knew this did it because xp loaded significantly quicker. oh man i had been dreading tackling this problem, because going over it in the back of my mind over these three weeks i was coming up with jack crap.

i upgraded to bios 1007 before switching SATA connectors and tested that, and that was not the resolution in my case. it was switching connectors.

my relavent setup is:
P4P800-E Deluxe
p4 3.2ghz 800mhz fsb (prescott?? i don't know, whichever is the hot one)
Maxtor MaXLine III 250GB SATA


i like this board when it works, however that's not all the time. every two weeks or so there is a lockup which i've always traced back to trouble between the board and the maxtor sata drive. this isn't even my first one of these boards, this is a replacement asus gave me when my first one's ich5r chip burst into flames upon plugging in an ipod!

oh well, at least i know what to do six months from now when it slows down again. =)

Thanks!

linderman

I am dying to know if this problem occurs with a Western Digital.
For my money boys the SCSI still is champ / dont have no where NEAR the problems with them and they are the daddy of speed, but then again a good SCSI set-up is going to pinch the ole wallet at first to get it set-up.

I am looking forward in the near future to playing with a sata or two on my P4P800-E just so I can pull some more hair!

hehehe


regards

joe

Monbart

...well im glad I helped....However, its back to the drawing board for me. I've found out that my system degrades as time goes on and it gets worse and worse. I think this is all down to the SATA/ICH5R chipset issue. It works fine on a fresh install, but give it a few days and it screws up windows. In fact its gotten so bad now ive scraped my SATA drive and im now using an old 40 gig IDE drive!!

This has REALLY p***ed me off now. After thinking ive found a solution and putting all my software back on there (and theres a lot of it) it goes back to donkey mode.

The only problem now is convincing the store I bought it from about this. Might have to give them the adress of this forum

So, there you have it..even Ive given up on SATA. If only I knew this before!

PDonahoe

I had problems with a Maxtor DiamondMax10 250 GB SATA drive (on a P4P800E Deluxe ICH5R), and could never get the system to boot (although it worked on the Promise controller). I now have a Western Digital 160 GB SATA drive on the ICH5R, and have absolutely no problems (and I am using the original BIOS).

However, one difference between these two drives I've used is that the Maxtor supports NCQ, but the WD does not. I've always suspected this is the problem, but can't prove it. I'm hoping someone will try a WD with NCQ.

koffie

Here's my reply of 22 June to the same problems

Asus Motherboard SATA Hard Drive Problem PLEASE HELP

Maxtor = Sad story

Best of luck to all

Koffie

Monbart

Maxtor = Sad story
..........................................

..If only it was that simple..Basically, if you have ANY SATA drive with NCQ it simply wont work on the ICH5R chipset. And even if it does, it will eventually mess up anyway. Who we should be blaming here is ASUS. Even though they do make good boards (Once they are working) they still need to make available to all ASUS motherboards owners, drivers, software or even SOMETHING ON THEIR WEBSITE telling us all about it. If it wasnt for forums like this there would be a lot more unhappy people out there.

So, with that said, rule of thumb for the ICH5R chipset.................
Use IDE or use a SATA drive WITHOUT NCQ.....Simple hu

Monbart

linderman

Simon:

I thank-you for the updating of your findings / I have been seeing alot of such issues in here lately / and I bet you hit the nail on the head. I wish there was a way you could get your computer parts guy to swap the mator drive for a WD with the "correct specs" as you have stated and see if that corrects the problem. I must admit ? I am VERY disappointed in ASUS not having such info in the support knowledge base / even if it were a waring such as "potentially reported incompatability" thats just like finding out dont use EZ-flash on a P4C800-E on a bios version higher than 1010 / why do we (end users) need to learn that the hard way In HERE !!!!!

I have always been a loyal Asus end user / running your board now p4p800-E / but if they dont wake up in the near future I will have an open eye for another "favorite" come next upgrade

regards


joe

koffie

but maybe this works?

I contacted Maxtor with the following question:

Why is there no info on the incompatibility issue of the dimaondmax 10 with NCQ with the ICH5 southbridge? It is all over the internet. I have bought a 300GB Diamondmax10 for use with my ASUS P4P800 Deluxe motherboard. The PC will not even pass the boot sequence, I cannot even enter the BIOS.

They answered:

Please update the BIOS to the latest version that should slove this problem, check the ASUS website for the latest update.
If you have any questions please don't hesitate to contact us.
Kind Regards,

Eric Zheng
Technical Support Team, Maxtor Ireland Ltd.

So, did anyone try the latest BIOS 1021_3 beta yet? Did it resolve anything with the diamondmax 10?

PS. downloaded by ftp from

ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/Socket_478/INTEL_Chipset/i865pe/P4P800/

At least this ftp site is accessible. Zjeesus, does their web site suck or what?

regards
Koffie

Monbart

The latest BIOS for my board, the P4P800E Deluxe is ver 1007. There is nothing above that currently available. There ARE other "BETA" BIOS's out there but they ARE NOT for the P4P800E Deluxe. I wouldn't update my BIOS with one that isnt for that board as you'll only have to flash it back to the old bios when it breaks. And I've seen people on this forum that have done this and the system doesnt even post with a bios which isnt for that board.

Also, ive now got a Maxtor Diamondmax 10 200gig IDE drive (exactly the same as my sata drive only the IDE version) and it works FINE!

What does this tell us?

EG_Nazgul

For whatever it is worth.........

Just built a new PC with the following:

P4P800 Deluxe
2 x 512 MB Corsair PC3200
500 Watt Ultra x-connect PSU
Asus 6600GT video card
1 WD 160GB IDE HDD (had previously on my other machine, want to use as a backup on this new machine)
1 WD 200GB SATA HDD (WDC WD2000JD) (want to use as primary)
Pentium 4 3.0Ghz

Ordered the Mobo, CPU, and Memory from mwave.com. Came assembled and tested. (ie, jumpers set, etc)

I got all the pieces for this machine in the mail, except for the SATA hd and started putting it together. Got everything plugged in and the OS (SP!) installed on the IDE HDD. Used default BIOS settings except I turned off the RAID controller since I wasn't going to use this. I then patched the OS with SP2. Installed a couple of games (Men of Valor, joint ops), my mp3s, and WinDVD. Everything ran ran fine. No slowdowns when I was playing music and doing other tasks. Basically, I tried to load the system as much as possible and it seemed to run fine to me. Granted, this is the first time I have put a machine together so I have no insight into how to gauge performance other than just seeing how everything is performance within the OS environment.

When I got the SATA drive in the mail a couple days later, I took out the IDE drive and put in the SATA drive (plugged into SATA port 1). Got the OS with SP1 installed. When I tried patching the OS with SP2, the installation failed. I've tried several times, thinking I did something in the wrong order, but with no success. Upon looking in the P4P800 User Guide (yes, I actually browsed through this) I saw on page 2-26 in the "Serial ATA connectors" section these "Important Notes on Serial ATA":

1. In a legacy OS, environment, using the Serial ATA connectors will disable the ICHR chipset support to one of the IDE channels (either primary or seconday channel)

Ok, not a problem here

2. The Serial ATA RAID feature (RAID 0,1) is available only if you are using windows xp and windows 2000.

Ok, not a problem

3. Hot plug support for Serial ATA drive and connections are not available in this motherboard.

still no problems with this

4. Install Windows XP Service Pack 1 when using Serial ATA

When I saw this, I figured I found my problem. As I am writing this response I have the IDE hard drive working with SP1 and all the patches for this service pack. I am going to try to see if the XP OS SP1! will install on the SATA drive. If not, I will use the IDE unless I hear about some BIOS fix or something that corrects this seemingly common problem of using SATA drives with this board / OS combination.

Hope this was worthwhile. Please let me know if this helped and if you have any suggestions.

thanks

Eric