Winfast NF4SK8AA "detecting array"?

Associate
Joined
23 Oct 2003
Posts
229
Ever since I first got this motherboard years back one thing about it has annoyed me slightly. Every time I start up the PC I get a screen at the start which says:

""Nvidia RAID IDE ROM BIOS 4.83
Copyright (c) 2004 NVIDIA CORP

Detecting Array...

SiL 3132 SataLink BIOS Version 7.2.11""

That screen takes about 15 seconds to disappear. I don't use RAID and have all RAID settings I can see disabled in the BIOS.

Obviously 15 seconds is hardly important when my PC used to take nearly 2 minutes to start anyway. But recently I bought a OCZ Vertex SSD and now my PC starts up in 1 minute, so I'm finding that 15 second pause is now very annoying considering its now a quarter of the system boot time.

Does anyone know if this screen just has to be their with this motherboard or if there's a setting I may have wrong? Like I said I made sure I'd disabled all RAID options in the BIOS. Then I thought maybe it was doing it because I had my SATA drives on auto, so I tried to enter their settings manually, but found that the BIOS won't see to let me do that for any SATA drive.

Anyway ideas?
 
Last edited:
Soldato
Joined
9 Apr 2008
Posts
19,696
Location
Bedford
Wow that was the very first motherboard i had in a pc that i built my self! And more importantly i remember having that screen for the first day i had it! I couldnt install windows onto a raid array with only one hard drive (supprisingly...)

Took me ages to find the bios setting that turns off the bios raid controller (this was a bit over 4 years ago now and the board is long gone to ebay). Have another poke around the bios and there should be a raid option somewhere that gets rid of it and just boots straight to the hard drive.

If not scream at it, that seemed to help....
 
Soldato
Joined
11 Oct 2007
Posts
3,111
Location
London, UK
disable the onboard/nvidia raid controller, make sure all settings are not on raid or raid + ahci or raid + sata etc modes. It will be there, but without knowing the board i cant tell you where.

edit:probably in onbard devices or something similar.
 
Associate
Joined
23 Aug 2007
Posts
1,699
Location
Rothesay
i have this board and untill recently run a 4400+ on it
if i remeber corectly you have to disable show rom and set the controller to IDE only
if you are not using the silicon sata ports they can be switch off in onboard devices via the bios
 
Associate
OP
Joined
23 Oct 2003
Posts
229
Thanks for the help. Unfortunately I'm still unable to remove the screen. I've gone over the BIOS and can't find anything to do with RAID that I still have enabled. I also can't find an option for "Show ROM" and I use two Sata ports for my two HDD's so I can't turn SATA off completely.

What I'm going to do is post up my entire BIOS, I realise 99% of it is irrelivant but I thought posting it all was better then just posting stuff I think is relivent considering I can't find the right option to sort this out myself.
 
Associate
OP
Joined
23 Oct 2003
Posts
229
BIOS Feature:-

Superboot - Enabled
SuperBiosProtect - Disabled
SuperRecovery - LSHIFT+F12

SuperSpeed-
CPU Clock Multiplier - Startup
CPU Vid Control - Startup
HT Clock Multiplier - 5x
CPU Frequency - 200
Memclock index value - Auto
DRAM Config - [PRESS ENTER]
PCIE Frequency 100Mhz
CPU Vcore Voltage Select - Default
VDIMM Voltage Select - 2.50V

Advanced BIOS Features:-

Bootable Devices Priority - Vertex 1.3
Init Display First - PCIEx-Master
USB Keyboard Support - Disabled
USB Mouse Support - Disabled
DRAM ECC Feature Control - Disabled
Boot Up Floppy Seek - Disabled
Boot Up NumLock Status - On
IDE DMA transfer access
AMD K8 Cool 'n' Quiet control - Disabled
IDE HDD Block Mode - Enabled
Security Option - Setup
Full Screen LOGO Show - Disabled
Small LOGO(EPA) Show - Disabled

Advanced Chipset Features:-

HT Width - 16-16
Err94 Enh - Auto
CPU Spread Spectrum - Disabled
SATA Spread Spectrum - Disabled
PCIE Spread Spectrum - Disabled
SSE/SSE2 Instructions - Enabled
S/W memory hole Remapping - Disabled
H/W memory hole Remapping - Disabled
MTRR mapping mode - Continuous
System BIOS Cacheable - Enabled
SLI Broadcast Aperture - Disabled

Intergrated Peripherals:-

Raid Config (RAID Enable) - Disabled
OnChip IDE Channel0 - Enabled
OnChip IDE Channel1 - Enabled
Serial-ATA 1 - Enabled
Serial-ATA 2 - Enabled
SiL3132 RAID Mode - SATA (other option is RAID)
OnChip USB - V1.1+V2.0
AC97 Audio - Auto
Onboard PCIE Lan - Disabled
Onboard PCIE Boot ROM - Disabled
MAC LAN - Auto
MAC LAN Boot ROM - Disabled
MAC Media Interface - Pin Strap
Onboard FDC Controller - Enabled
Serial/Parallel Ports Config - Enter Setup

Power Management Setup:-

ACPI Suspend Type - S1&S3
Power Management - User Defined
Video Off Method - DPMS Support
HDD Power Down - Disabled
HDD Down In Suspend - Disabled
Soft-Off by PBTN - Instant-Off
WOL(PME#) From Soft-Off - Disabled
MAC Resume from S5 - Enabled
Power-On vy Alarm - Disabled
Power On Function - Button Only
PWRON After PWR-Fail - Off

PnP/PCI Configuration:-

Reset Configuration Data - Disabled
Resources Controlled By - Auto(ESCD)
PCI/VGA Palette Snoop - Disabled
Maximum Payload Size - 4096
 
Associate
OP
Joined
23 Oct 2003
Posts
229
Right I decided that if the problem couldn't be sorted in the BIOS I'd see what could be done with the hardware. I thought I'd remove my second HDD and DVDRW temporarily just to get rid of the screen and see if relocating them would keep it away. After all how can the PC try to detect an array with only one drive in the system right?.. It still does it though! :lol: One drive in the system and all RAID options off in the BIOS and its still sitting their "detecting array" :confused:
 
Associate
OP
Joined
23 Oct 2003
Posts
229
Tried disabling them, all it does it disable the IDE channels completely.

I thought it might possibly be due to the specific ports I've used to plug the drives in, so I unplugged every drive in the system, I still get "detecting array" though :(

One thing I did notice is that since I removed my IDE DVDRW the PC now boots in 45 seconds (Windows takes 15 seconds less time to start then before). But 15 seconds of that is still waiting for that detecting array screen.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom