AFter my last thread it seemed my computer problems might be linked to a weak power supply. I decided I was going to bite the bullet and upgrade the motherboard so I could use a SATA drive I had waiting for a home so I bought a new power supply (620W) and a DFI Lanparty RX200 motherboard.

Build went fine but for now I left the old IDE drives in place. I prepared to install WinXP. During the install routine I reformatted the old C: partition and the install copied the first lot of files into it. On reboot if failed to recognise that this had happened and it all started again from the beginning. This time however, it said the C: partition "does not contain a WinXP compatible partition". I deleted it and recreated it but the same message.
I removed the old hard drive and put a brand new IDE drive in its place. Same problem of not recognising it was WinXP compatible and I also didn't get the chance to repartition it.

Took drive out, installed in another pc, partitioned it and formatted it. Returned it to the new PC - same message.

Thought it might be because WinXP CD was original and couldn't cope with 300+GB. Slipstreamed SP2 onto it and created a fresh WinXP SP2 install CD.
Success. Install of windows took place and pc ran fine for about 2 hours. Came home from work tonight and on boot reports hard drive failure.
Tried to reinstall windows and back to square one. Drive does not contain Xp compatible partition.

tried with original drives, same problem. Tried to install to SATA drive - not recognised although drivers added during install process.

Other than the motherboard is screwed is there anything else that could be causing this?


Maxim

Everything about that post is painful...painful, and hours of watching crap load\ reboot crap, hate that lol, sorry m8

If the install routine creates just one more partition then tells me it is not windows compatible, the whole lot is going to find the true meaning of pain during an appointment in the garage with a 14lb sledge hammer and the warm glow of a blow torch:smash3d::weeping:

And just when you think it can't get worse, there's no beer in the fridge !

Times like this I think Basil Faulty had it right all along.

i had a similar problem but i found after a bit of research that the problem is the sata drive. i installed xp onto the sata II drive and when i rebooted it told me the NTLdir (or something like that) could not be found and to press ctrl+alt+del (that only reboots the pc and doesn't fix the problem) to make a long story short.........it was the jumper configuration on the ide drives i had installed. so i changed them to slave (even the drive that was on the master ide channel) and rebooted then boom i was in xp booted up and i was good to go. sata can be tricky and you will have to fiddle about with the jumpeer configuration (on the back of the drives) until you get a stable boot.

hope this helps you m8

I didn't think SATA drives had (master/slave) jumpers anymore? One of the idea of SATA was to move that selection into a physical connection on the board, hence you have twice as many SATA ports but only one drive per cable.

i got the same "does not contain a WinXP compatible partition", but all i had to do was remove the IDE disc, and install on the SATA..

i'm sorry to hear you're having problems.. nothing sucks like having hardwaretrouble!

Quote from Bob Smith :

I didn't think SATA drives had (master/slave) jumpers anymore? One of the idea of SATA was to move that selection into a physical connection on the board, hence you have twice as many SATA ports but only one drive per cable.

although that's true, he is also using ide hard drives (probs for ackup purposes) and thos hard drives need to have the jumpers in the correct configuration.

Ah. One of my mates had big problems installing windows on his SATA drive when he had a PATA drive present, the PATA drives are usually listed before SATA drives.

Yep, the BIOS detect order influences the default letter assignments. That was the point of my last post although I didn't make that clear what-so-ever.

Any program that can't handle with changing the drive letter to install to has been poorly programmed though, so it's not your fault really.

Before you are getting your MoBo RMAed, MaximUK, you shloud try following. Firstly update you BIOS if there is any newer release, that might help most.

As the next step you should carefully check you BIOS settings. Try to enable/disable 32bit access and see if it can help. If there are ASPE/ALP options for SATA drives, disable it. Connecting device to another port on MoBo might also help.
If possible, try to install on 100% OK HDD fresh WinXP and then put HDD to your PC and lets see if it works.
Did you try to use another IDE Conductor? Some time ago I read about similar problem caused by faulty cable.

BTW, are other devices like CD/DVD, Floppy and so detected flawlessly? It might be a CD-ROM that is faluty and messes up IDE bus.

EDIT: Realised this right now, also try to get updated "F6" SATA driver and BE SURE you load it when WinXP pre-install lets you do so. Also check BIOS for any unwanted enabled RAID options.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I didn't have the SATA drive in there for most attempts other than the times I was attempting to install to it. I have tried all combinations of hard drives that I could think of and also tried changed cables but nothing seemed to have any effect. I tried the hard drives in another pc and none had any trouble in the new pc.

The bios always detected them ok and for those times I had SMART enabled they all reported themselves as ok. I haven't tried flashing the bios or getting newer SATA drivers although for the majority of my attempts.

I enabled/disabled all combinations of things I could think of in the bios, including things like LAN and sound just in case but none seemed to have any effect.

At the moment the motherboard in back in the box it came in and the pc is happily running on the old motherboard with all the other hardware the same including cables.

I might give it another go at the weekend if I feel I can face another frustrating waste of time. I don't want to RMA it until I am sure it isn't something I have done but I am running out of ideas and patience.

Maxim

done a bit more research and it seems I am not the only one to have trouble with this motherboard.

Quote :

After reading promising reviews about this board and admiring many things about it such as its layout which I thought looked good and active cooling of the Northbridge I decided it looked like a good bet for my new X2 4600 powered monster. WHAT A MISTAKE!!! After 50 failed windows installations using both SATA and IDE to boot from and both X64 and XP Pro 32bit I admitted defeat and decided to ditch this board completely. As a bonus it managed to corrupt an IDE partition with all my backed up data on it resulting in quite a few 4 letter words on my part. It also has a weird habbit of failing to initialise at all or preventing you from entering BIOS immediatley after pressing the reset button on your case. Others have also noticed this online.

I immediately replaced it with the ASUS A8R32-MVP Deluxe SKT939 RD580 ATX which worked like a charm and did everthing first time without faff. X64 is now on and flying using everything that wouldnt work with this hideous board. It is also laid out badly and problematic to fit and has a poor manual to boot (which is more than I can say for Windows on IDE or SATA)

This board is as effective as a cat flap in an elephant house and don t even consider it if planning to use SATA. Check the online forums for countless tails of woe regarding putting windows on. Wish I had!!! Get the better ASUS alternative. Save your time, your sanity and your data as its only about £10 more and it actually works which is usefull.

But this post may hold a clue

Quote :

Jusy built a PC for a customer and this Mobo caught me out. Thanks to Richard the Teccy the problem was solved. Disconect all power cables and pull out the battery. Also switch the Cmos jumper to off for twenty minutes. Reverse this action and switch it on.

I used an AMD Venive Athlon 64bit 3200 CPU and two sticks of Kingston DDR (512mgs each matching pair) at 400FSB.

One more problem - the IDE strap was faulty.

Overall this MOBO runs like a dream after the first hiccup (which may be designed to trip up the Lamerz) and my customer took posession. He is as happy as a sandboy. I didn't overclock it, just left it running at 2Gightz. Nice board.

According the second post seemes to me that MoBo IDE detection can lockup something in the BIOS and cause probles you have described. Complete MoBo reset than can do the job.

But IMHO it wouldnt work in all cases. Im still considered that the part of microcode controlling the IDE controller or even IDE controller itself has bad design causing a lot of problems.

If you are up to try it, let us know if it solved your problem. We are curious

Taking the battery out didn't work as it then hung before I could even get into the bios. However, it must be linked to the build process as I tried it again after assembling it into a spare case and this time it seemed to work and windows installed correctly. It could also be memory linked as I also moved the single 1GB module at the same time so I can't tell if either of these had an effect. It currently has one IDE drive and one CD drive so I don't know what will happen once I populate the other channels and add a SATA drive.

I am not counting any chickens yet and it is in the wrong case so I have to decide if I want to continue and switch it into its intended home. I will probably try loading the IDE channels in the current case and add the other memory module and see how it copes before removing it and transferring it over.

I need to get this sorted now as my new 22" LCD (£234 inc VAT ) is due to arrive today and I feel the need to test it

Thanks to all for the moral support which helped keep my sanityillepall

Maxim