Asus P5GDC problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Chris M
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Chris M

I am trying to build a new system for my kids to play RCT3. I've always had
good luck with ASUS motherboards, so I went to newegg.com and got the
"P5GDC Deluxe" along with a Prescott P4 3.4GHz, and an MSI GeForce6600
video card. Everything went together just fine, but when I go to install
Windows 2000 from CD, it says that no hard drives were found. The hard
drive is a regular ATA 40GB, so nothing special there. It's plugged into
one of the red RAID connectors, but in the BIOS setup, the RAID connectors
are configured to be regular ATA. The BIOS seems to detect the HD when it
does its weird "IDE Scan" at startup, but if I hit Delete to go into the
BIOS setup, there's no sign of my HD. The CDROM shows up on the Primary IDE
controller in both places, and boots the W2K CD just fine.

I've done a little searching in Google, and found that others have had
similar problems, but I could not find a solution that worked. I'm also a
little surprised that the 4 reviews posted on newegg.com are all 5 stars
with no mention of any problems like this whatsoever. I've been building my
own computers for over 10 years, and aside from the occasional master/slave
misconfiguration, I've never had any issues with IDE hard drives being
detected. This is just slightly frustrating. Any ideas?

thanks,
Chris
 
I am trying to build a new system for my kids to play RCT3. I've always had
good luck with ASUS motherboards, so I went to newegg.com and got the
"P5GDC Deluxe" along with a Prescott P4 3.4GHz, and an MSI GeForce6600
video card. Everything went together just fine, but when I go to install
Windows 2000 from CD, it says that no hard drives were found. The hard
drive is a regular ATA 40GB, so nothing special there. It's plugged into
one of the red RAID connectors, but in the BIOS setup, the RAID connectors
are configured to be regular ATA. The BIOS seems to detect the HD when it
does its weird "IDE Scan" at startup, but if I hit Delete to go into the
BIOS setup, there's no sign of my HD. The CDROM shows up on the Primary IDE
controller in both places, and boots the W2K CD just fine.
Click to expand...

The red connectors on that motherboard are connected through the
integrated ITE RAID controller and they require a driver to be
detected by Windows. The only controller that Windows can see at boot
time is the one built into the chipset, ie the blue connector.
 
I am trying to build a new system for my kids to play RCT3. I've always had
good luck with ASUS motherboards, so I went to newegg.com and got the
"P5GDC Deluxe" along with a Prescott P4 3.4GHz, and an MSI GeForce6600
video card. Everything went together just fine, but when I go to install
Windows 2000 from CD, it says that no hard drives were found. The hard
drive is a regular ATA 40GB, so nothing special there. It's plugged into
one of the red RAID connectors, but in the BIOS setup, the RAID connectors
are configured to be regular ATA. The BIOS seems to detect the HD when it
does its weird "IDE Scan" at startup, but if I hit Delete to go into the
BIOS setup, there's no sign of my HD. The CDROM shows up on the Primary IDE
controller in both places, and boots the W2K CD just fine.

I've done a little searching in Google, and found that others have had
similar problems, but I could not find a solution that worked. I'm also a
little surprised that the 4 reviews posted on newegg.com are all 5 stars
with no mention of any problems like this whatsoever. I've been building my
own computers for over 10 years, and aside from the occasional master/slave
misconfiguration, I've never had any issues with IDE hard drives being
detected. This is just slightly frustrating. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

I don't know that mbrd but I'd think you need to look in the BIOS Setup for
an option to enable BIOS Support for the ITE controller and then make sure
the drive connected to it is listed in the boot device list.. and in the
correct order.
 
The red connectors on that motherboard are connected through the
integrated ITE RAID controller and they require a driver to be
detected by Windows. The only controller that Windows can see at boot
time is the one built into the chipset, ie the blue connector.
Click to expand...

Yep, you're right. I figured it out myself last night. I had to set the
controllers to "compatible" mode in the BIOS, and put both the CD and the
HD on the single non-RAID IDE controller. I installed Windows (slowly) and
all the drivers and service packs like that. The key was the driver for the
ITE RAID controller, which I downloaded with some difficulty from ASUS'
intermittant web page. The CD that ASUS sent with the MB was scratched
badly, and couldn't be read. After I installed that, I shut down and moved
the HD to one of the RAID connectors, and set the controllers back to
"enhanced" in BIOS. And it works perfectly! I am happy that my expensive
toy didn't turn out to be a complete lemon. But it would have been nice to
see this procedure documented somewhere.

Chris
 
Yep, you're right. I figured it out myself last night. I had to set the
controllers to "compatible" mode in the BIOS, and put both the CD and the
HD on the single non-RAID IDE controller. I installed Windows (slowly) and
all the drivers and service packs like that. The key was the driver for the
ITE RAID controller, which I downloaded with some difficulty from ASUS'
intermittant web page. The CD that ASUS sent with the MB was scratched
badly, and couldn't be read. After I installed that, I shut down and moved
the HD to one of the RAID connectors, and set the controllers back to
"enhanced" in BIOS. And it works perfectly! I am happy that my expensive
toy didn't turn out to be a complete lemon. But it would have been nice to
see this procedure documented somewhere.
Click to expand...

Following up to myself, I retract this last post. While the machine was
impressively fast for the few hours it was working, it corrupted the HD every
10 boots or so. I've reinstalled Windows 2000 twice in the last 48 hours. Same
error message each time, at the very beginning of loading windows:

\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEMced startup options for Windows 2000, press F8.

Sure that makes no sense. This ASUS is a dud. So what other brands are good
these days? Gigabite? MSI? ECS?

Chris
Click to expand...
 
Following up to myself, I retract this last post. While the machine was
impressively fast for the few hours it was working, it corrupted the HD every
10 boots or so. I've reinstalled Windows 2000 twice in the last 48 hours. Same
error message each time, at the very beginning of loading windows:

\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEMced startup options for Windows 2000, press F8.

Sure that makes no sense. This ASUS is a dud. So what other brands are good
these days? Gigabite? MSI? ECS?
Click to expand...

Quite honestly, you can get a dud from any mfr. What diags have you run?
I normally run memtest86+ for a couple of hours, www.memtest.org and the HD
mfr's diags on a system first, before even attempting an OS install. After
Windows is installed a futher memory check with Prime95's Torture Test,
www.mersenne.org is a good final check on system integrity.

With your symptom I'd run a HD diag and then focus on memory and power
supply. Are you running DDR or DDR2 memory, and which brand?... did you
check for a compatibility list at Asus' Web site? Does your power supply
have the 24-pin ATX12V 2.0 connector and what are the max amps on the +12V?

As for brands, I currently like MSI but they make the odd dud too
apparently.:-(
Click to expand...
 
Following up to myself, I retract this last post. While the machine was
impressively fast for the few hours it was working, it corrupted the HD every
10 boots or so. I've reinstalled Windows 2000 twice in the last 48 hours. Same
error message each time, at the very beginning of loading windows:

\WINNT\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEMced startup options for Windows 2000, press F8.

Sure that makes no sense. This ASUS is a dud. So what other brands are good
these days? Gigabite? MSI? ECS?
Click to expand...

Forgot to mention in my previous post: have you checked the Event log for
ATAPI failures and warnings?
Click to expand...
 
Forgot to mention in my previous post: have you checked the Event log for
ATAPI failures and warnings?
Click to expand...

The HD corruption prevents me from booting the computer at all, so I
cannot get to Event Viewer. I'm not even going to try installing Windows on
this ITE RAID controller again. I've ordered a $15 PCI to ATA133 controller
card instead. Hopefully that will solve my problem. No more ASUS
motherboards for me, though.

Chris
 
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