"unmountable_boot_volume"<whimper>

  • Thread starter Thread starter Skal Loret
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Skal Loret

I have an A7N8X-VM/400 here that is giving me the above message. I have
performed every sensible trick in the book, to no avail. I have Run the
Recovery Console tools, I have chkdsk'ed till my nose bled, I have changed
drives, I have disconnected everything on the drive bus but the one drive,
I have bought a new drive.I have re-jumpered drives.I have repartitioned.
I have changed drive cables. I have even considered blood sacrifices. To
no avail.

Does ANYONE have any suggestions or is this a MB with dead drive control
electronics? I hope it isn't, because that would mean that this is the
SECOND Asus MB to go naff in the drive controller section in less than a
month.

Oh, this started with no warning. Just turned the box on, one morning,
there the message was.

Next question: Is Asus getting sloppy in its QA? Two MBs bad in a month?
This don't look too good.

-skal
 
Skal Loret said:
I have an A7N8X-VM/400 here that is giving me the above message. I have
performed every sensible trick in the book, to no avail. I have Run the
Recovery Console tools, I have chkdsk'ed till my nose bled, I have changed
drives, I have disconnected everything on the drive bus but the one drive,
I have bought a new drive.I have re-jumpered drives.I have repartitioned.
I have changed drive cables. I have even considered blood sacrifices. To
no avail.

Does ANYONE have any suggestions or is this a MB with dead drive control
electronics? I hope it isn't, because that would mean that this is the
SECOND Asus MB to go naff in the drive controller section in less than a
month.

Oh, this started with no warning. Just turned the box on, one morning,
there the message was.

Next question: Is Asus getting sloppy in its QA? Two MBs bad in a month?
This don't look too good.

-skal
Click to expand...

Did it occur to you that your disk drive is killing motherboards ?
If I lost two motherboards, I'd be wondering what was up with the
drive. It could even be a bad cable. Make sure you mark the cable
and drive with a marker pen, so you can keep track of the
suspect components. (I've seen duff components get put back into
production systems, only to do more damage :-(

I don't know of an easy way to test drive electronics. At a minimum,
I'd need an oscilloscope to examine the signals on the cable, to see
if something isn't right. For now, I would "retire" the drive in
question, and RMA the motherboard.

You could pick up a second hand PCI IDE controller, and use
that to transfer the data from the suspect drive, to the new
one. There is no guarantee though, that the suspect drive won't
kill a channel on that PCI card too. Since cards like that have
two connectors, use a separate cable for the suspect drive and
the new drive, so the suspect doesn't damage the new one if they
share the same cable.

Also, are the power supply voltages good ? Have you checked the
power monitor page in the BIOS lately, to see if the supply
voltages are within 5% of their nominal values ? I don't know of
a damage mechanism related to the power supply, but maybe if you
see something weird there...

HTH,
Paul
 
do you happen to have a ati videocard?

Paul said:
Did it occur to you that your disk drive is killing motherboards ?
If I lost two motherboards, I'd be wondering what was up with the
drive. It could even be a bad cable. Make sure you mark the cable
and drive with a marker pen, so you can keep track of the
suspect components. (I've seen duff components get put back into
production systems, only to do more damage :-(

I don't know of an easy way to test drive electronics. At a minimum,
I'd need an oscilloscope to examine the signals on the cable, to see
if something isn't right. For now, I would "retire" the drive in
question, and RMA the motherboard.

You could pick up a second hand PCI IDE controller, and use
that to transfer the data from the suspect drive, to the new
one. There is no guarantee though, that the suspect drive won't
kill a channel on that PCI card too. Since cards like that have
two connectors, use a separate cable for the suspect drive and
the new drive, so the suspect doesn't damage the new one if they
share the same cable.

Also, are the power supply voltages good ? Have you checked the
power monitor page in the BIOS lately, to see if the supply
voltages are within 5% of their nominal values ? I don't know of
a damage mechanism related to the power supply, but maybe if you
see something weird there...

HTH,
Paul
Click to expand...
 
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