A8N-SLI Problem booting with any device on Secondary IDE

  • Thread starter Thread starter Baldy
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Baldy

After hours and hours of troubleshooting and swapping out hardware
over and over again, I've been able to trace the source of a problem
in booting on this new motherboard to when any device is connected on
the secondary IDE channel. The system is a A64 3000+ CPU not
overclocked, and is non-Raid and non-SATA. All the BIOS settings
appear to be correct and this is about the 30th system I've built so
I'm not a newbie but can make mistakes just like anybody.

The problem occurs when the WinXP logo on the black screen first
appears, the video freezes, and then the system reboots. This can
happen two or three times in a row and then Windows will boot just
fine. Once Windows is running, the system is stable. Try to restart
Windows and the multiple attempts will happen all over again. Its not
a PSU issue as even that was swapped out with a known good PSU and
hardware monitor shows all voltages well within a 5% tolerance.

The strange thing is that the reboot or freeze always occurs at the
same point at the logo screen when Windows is loading so that tends to
make one believe that a driver is corrupt or a registry file or
setting is corrupt. However, disconnect all devices on the secondary
IDE channel and the system works perfect every time. So now I'm
stumped: is it a bad controller on the mobo or is it a Windows
problem?

Any ideas?
 
Baldy said:
After hours and hours of troubleshooting and swapping out hardware
over and over again, I've been able to trace the source of a problem
in booting on this new motherboard to when any device is connected on
the secondary IDE channel. The system is a A64 3000+ CPU not
overclocked, and is non-Raid and non-SATA. All the BIOS settings
appear to be correct and this is about the 30th system I've built so
I'm not a newbie but can make mistakes just like anybody.

The problem occurs when the WinXP logo on the black screen first
appears, the video freezes, and then the system reboots. This can
happen two or three times in a row and then Windows will boot just
fine. Once Windows is running, the system is stable. Try to restart
Windows and the multiple attempts will happen all over again. Its not
a PSU issue as even that was swapped out with a known good PSU and
hardware monitor shows all voltages well within a 5% tolerance.

The strange thing is that the reboot or freeze always occurs at the
same point at the logo screen when Windows is loading so that tends to
make one believe that a driver is corrupt or a registry file or
setting is corrupt. However, disconnect all devices on the secondary
IDE channel and the system works perfect every time. So now I'm
stumped: is it a bad controller on the mobo or is it a Windows
problem?

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

Tried swapping the IDE cable? I've seen behavior like this when the
cable wasn't connected to the drive properly (actually it was one of the
pins on the CD drive that was pushed in). It would hang up about where
you described, though it would eventually come up after a long time (in
the neighborhood of 10 minutes..)
 
Baldy said:
After hours and hours of troubleshooting and swapping out hardware
over and over again, I've been able to trace the source of a problem
in booting on this new motherboard to when any device is connected on
the secondary IDE channel. The system is a A64 3000+ CPU not
overclocked, and is non-Raid and non-SATA. All the BIOS settings
appear to be correct and this is about the 30th system I've built so
I'm not a newbie but can make mistakes just like anybody.

The problem occurs when the WinXP logo on the black screen first
appears, the video freezes, and then the system reboots. This can
happen two or three times in a row and then Windows will boot just
fine. Once Windows is running, the system is stable. Try to restart
Windows and the multiple attempts will happen all over again. Its not
a PSU issue as even that was swapped out with a known good PSU and
hardware monitor shows all voltages well within a 5% tolerance.

The strange thing is that the reboot or freeze always occurs at the
same point at the logo screen when Windows is loading so that tends to
make one believe that a driver is corrupt or a registry file or
setting is corrupt. However, disconnect all devices on the secondary
IDE channel and the system works perfect every time. So now I'm
stumped: is it a bad controller on the mobo or is it a Windows
problem?

Any ideas?
Click to expand...
In addition to Robert's suggestion, have you tried different devices
connected to the secondary IDE, or is the problem always with the same
device? If you have spare drives try them. Are the drive jumpers set to
master/slave or cable select? Whichever it is now, try the alternative. I
have one PC here that had problems until I set cable select instead of
master/slave. I know I'm belaboring the obvious, but you are sure the
jumpers are set correctly, right?
 
In addition to Robert's suggestion, have you tried different devices
connected to the secondary IDE, or is the problem always with the same
device? If you have spare drives try them. Are the drive jumpers set to
master/slave or cable select? Whichever it is now, try the alternative. I
have one PC here that had problems until I set cable select instead of
master/slave. I know I'm belaboring the obvious, but you are sure the
jumpers are set correctly, right?
Click to expand...

There are/were two devices connected to the secondary channel. Both
were properly set: one Master and one Slave. I tried a differeent
cable: no joy. I tried swapping the two devices: no joy. I then tried
one device at a time connected as Master: still no joy. Remove both
devices and there is joy. Both devices are always properly seen in
BIOS. Puzzling....

The strangest part is that the reboot always occurs at the same exact
spot as Windows is loading. That usually points to a driver problem.

The one thing I didn't try is using Cable Select....will let you know.
 
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