Trying to set up my new HD. Seagate SATA, running on a Silicon Image 3512 PCI card with an ASUS mbo and XP. Cloned the old boot drive, but cannot get the system to boot with the SATA drive and the secondary IDE drive. It will boot with the IDE disconnected. XP recognizes and properly identifies the controller and drive. In the bios, the auto detect doesn't detect the SATA drive with auto-detect. I have loaded the latest drivers for the mbo and controller, also updated the Bios.

Couldn't locate any drivers for the HD, but everything I found said with XP SP2 that I shouldn't need them unless I'm running multiple Sata's with a Raid controller.

First thing that comes to mind is the C:\boot.ini file may not be setup properly to boot the drive.

As for auto-detect in BIOS, I think auto-detect only works for the primary and secondary IDE controllers - I doubt there is an auto-detect for external cards.

Typically speaking, all of the PCI cards I have encountered automatically load some kind of configuration utility where you press a key sequence (like CTRL + H or CTRL + R or something similar) that will let you setup boot options so you can boot from the PCI card.

This will be a tough one for me to help you diagnose. If I were there, it would be a lot easier :D But, not having any knowledge of the card itself, it's tough.

Does your motherboard not natively support SATA?

Motherboard is ASUS A7N8X-X Socket A (Socket 462) NVIDIA nForce2 400 ATX AMD. It does not have a Sata connector. Purchased in 2003.

I was going to post a link to the manual, but the Asus site is overloaded, as usual. Would it help if I e-mail you the pdf, it's about 2 MB.

I also have the instructions from the card, which basically says to download the drivers using exe files on the cd, which I did.

If you want to email the PDF over, I don't have a cap on my personal email. send it to 68chevy at shiftydotorg. I'm sure you can figure that one out :) I will check out the instructions from the card and the mobo manual.

E-male sent.

I am heading out for a run to pick up some things I need to pack for vacation.

I hope to check this out tonight before taking off, but can't make any promises :)

hey Fred, just did a brief once-over of the readme file you sent for the controller - if I were you, i would:

1) Install the old IDE drive that was originally in the machine.
2) Follow step #3 on that readme.
3) Shut down the machine after vrifying the installation as given in the lastt step of the #3 section.
4) Boot up and ghost the content of your IDE drive to the SATA drive.
5) Remove *both* IDE drives from the IDE controllers on board so only the SATA drive exists.
6) Boot up again, immediately enter BIOS (press DEL key), go into the Advanced BIOS Features section and under the Boot Devices section make sure "Boot Other Devices" is checked. You may also, if boot fails, attempt to changeup the boot order, such as trying HDD-3 or HDD-2 or even HDD-4 as the boot devices.
7) Save settings in BIOS and exit, then watch after the BIOS POST beep for some dialog/menu/whatever (if any) that will allow you to configure that PCI SATA drive controller. You may be able to boot up either way....

If you just can't get the dang thing to work, I would try installing your XP installed IDE drive back into the machine with the PCI drive and work it out that way. You may also consider contacting the support department of that PCI card manuf'er and ask them. Chances are, they might be able to tell you what's up with it.

Also, I will leave you with this resource on the boot.ini file : http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=289022

That will explain how to determine what Windows is trying to boot, based on the boot.ini file which is located on all Windows 2000/XP/etc. hard drives, typically at C:\boot.ini

Thanks, Shifty. I'll give it a try. Have a good trip.

Last thought: If my suggestions above do not work, I would consider:

Putting only the IDE XP disk and the cloned SATA XP disk into the computer.
Booting to the IDE XP disk.
Determine what rdisk/partition the SATA disk is so you can rebuild the boot.ini (using bootcfg command as described in link above).
Rebuild/edit the boot.ini using Notepad or Bootcfg.
Copy the new boot.ini to the SATA drive.
Disable the IDE drive (unplug data cable and/or power cable).
Try again to boot to the new drive - if it fails, dork around with the boot order in BIOS.

I don't know how applicable this is, but I had one controller card that would only boot if the mobo BIOS was set to "boot from SCSI" first on the boot sequence.

Slonaker

Slonaker gave to answer that works! Asus has not updated their bios to recognize Sata. Found one other place that said to try Scsi instead of HDD-x on the boot sequence. This is not my first problem with Asus and software compatability. I know who won't be making my next mobo.

Woohoo! :)

I love my ASUS boards, but my newest one (and my fastest computer) is 5 years old. I think it might be time for an upgrade... :)

Slonaker

They make a good board, from what I've heard. But I've had more than one software compatability problem, and have had no help from their support. I bought this board almost 3 years ago.

Asus generally makes decent stuff, and I also don't generally buy their product (one too many bad boards for me). Lots of people swear by them. I build a lot of computers, and have had nothing but bad luck w/Asus :)

Glad you got it fixed.

I assumed that XP would need to recognize the controller before installing. I was hoping that playing with the boot order would help, would have never thought to plug in the SCSI as boot first option :D

I tried it out of desperation once when putting a promise controller card into an old Asus P3b or whatever their big 440bx board was. It worked.

I have had to do the same thing on my current Asus board to run a Promise controller card for drives over 113gb or whatever it is. That one is REALLY a mess because it already has an onboard IDE controller for RAID and ATA 100 that does not like to play nice with the add on card. I fought it for a day once, and got it working. Having 6 ide connectors was cool. :) I finally just put the new drive in a USB enclosure when I had some problems with the card after reinstalling windows XP.

/rambling :)

Slonaker