P4C800-E Deluxe...No longer have RAID

  • Thread starter Thread starter Craig Burke
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Craig Burke

THE BACK-STORY...
I flashed the BIOS using EZFlash. Seemed to work fine. On boot-up it said
something about wrong CMOS settings. I hit F2 to load default settings and
continue, and it located my RAID drives and booted to Windows like normal.
Windows must
have seen some hardware that the old BIOS didn't recognize, and installed
the software for it, and did a reboot. I remembered someone telling me to
clear the CMOS after BIOS flashing, so I cleared it. But, I don't remember
if I let the system try to boot to Windows first before I tried it, or if I
cleared the CMOS because of my problem.

And the problem is...After the BIOS comes up on boot-up, the MBFastTrak378
BIOS doesn't come up to scan the drives like it use to. I have put an old
IDE drive with Windows back on, that's how I'm accessing the internet right
now. I need to get the FastTrak BIOS to come back up after the BIOS runs,
and I don't know how. I've looked in every nook and cranny on my BIOS, and
everything needed to have an S-ATA RAID is enabled. I just need that
FastTrak BIOS to come up and see it. Anyone know a way to enable the
FastTrak BIOS? It just skips that step now.

Thanks for you help,
Craig

OK, this is the second time I've wrote this. Everyone keeps pointing me to
the BIOS and telling me to enable RAID, and enable bootrom. It is, and was
enabled. One guy told me to check the boot order...But, since the FastTrak
BIOS isn't coming up, it isn't scanning for the RAID array. Like in the
regular BIOS, it scans the floppy, IDE hard drives, ext...So, I can't put it
as a choice, because it isn't one. This isn't meant to be a cut against the
folks who tried to help the first time, just wanted to cut down on repeat
advice. Oh, also did a repair install of XP, and loaded the FastTrak driver
back in during installation to make sure that wasn't it.
 
"Craig Burke" said:
THE BACK-STORY...
I flashed the BIOS using EZFlash. Seemed to work fine. On boot-up it said
something about wrong CMOS settings. I hit F2 to load default settings and
continue, and it located my RAID drives and booted to Windows like normal.
Windows must
have seen some hardware that the old BIOS didn't recognize, and installed
the software for it, and did a reboot. I remembered someone telling me to
clear the CMOS after BIOS flashing, so I cleared it. But, I don't remember
if I let the system try to boot to Windows first before I tried it, or if I
cleared the CMOS because of my problem.

And the problem is...After the BIOS comes up on boot-up, the MBFastTrak378
BIOS doesn't come up to scan the drives like it use to. I have put an old
IDE drive with Windows back on, that's how I'm accessing the internet right
now. I need to get the FastTrak BIOS to come back up after the BIOS runs,
and I don't know how. I've looked in every nook and cranny on my BIOS, and
everything needed to have an S-ATA RAID is enabled. I just need that
FastTrak BIOS to come up and see it. Anyone know a way to enable the
FastTrak BIOS? It just skips that step now.

Thanks for you help,
Craig

OK, this is the second time I've wrote this. Everyone keeps pointing me to
the BIOS and telling me to enable RAID, and enable bootrom. It is, and was
enabled. One guy told me to check the boot order...But, since the FastTrak
BIOS isn't coming up, it isn't scanning for the RAID array. Like in the
regular BIOS, it scans the floppy, IDE hard drives, ext...So, I can't put it
as a choice, because it isn't one. This isn't meant to be a cut against the
folks who tried to help the first time, just wanted to cut down on repeat
advice. Oh, also did a repair install of XP, and loaded the FastTrak driver
back in during installation to make sure that wasn't it.
Click to expand...

Ok, I'll try not to offer any advice :-)

The BIOS stores information in two places. The BIOS actually rewrites
part of the flash chip, any time a hardware change is detected. When
you flash the BIOS, this area should be erased and the detection process
starts all over again.

The second place info is stored, is in the CMOS well of the Southbridge.
The Southbridge has a real time clock and 1KB of SRAM, powered by +5VSB
or the CMOS battery. The "clearing the CMOS" procedure is designed to
remove all power from this circuit, thus erasing its contents.

If any of this information is incorrect, or inconsistent, this can cause
BIOS malfunctions. From the description above, that would suggest that
flashing the BIOS, then immediately shutting down the computer and doing
a clear CMOS, should make the motherboard "fresh as a daisy", as then
both information stores would be blanked.

If the BIOS is like any other software, sometimes a setting may need
to be toggled (enable, re-POST, disable, re-POST, enable), in order for
the thing to get set up properly.

Other elements of the problem have o do with resources. If there are
any resource conflicts between what the Promise needs and what some other
plugin PCI card needs, that can prevent an onboard device boot rom from
being loaded. There have been posts in here in the past, where if you have
two or more SCSI cards, there isn't enough room in DOS low memory for their
memory requirements, causing one of them not to load. So, that is another
reason for a boot rom not to load.

Obviously, if the interface doesn't detect any drives, that is another
reason why the boot rom code will bow out.

HTH,
Paul
 
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