Anyone here still running XP on a Sata HDD with ICH7 controller ?

neoglow

neoglow

neoglow

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Ok, this problem has been driving me nuts the past week.

Ive got an Asus P5QPL-AM Socket 775 mobo and 2gb DDR2 ram.

The southbridge chipset is Intel ICH7 for the SATA storage.

Ive got installed 1x WD 160gb SATA HDD. No RAID.

The mobo has no floppy disk connector at all. (No F6 during fresh XP install)

So, I turned to nlite to slipstream the ICH7 drivers from the ASUS mobo CD into the XP SP2 Pro CD. Burn it off, plonk it in.

All 'seems' to go fine, format the HDD, install fresh XP. Once in Windows, check Device Manager and the ICH7 SATA storage driver shows up under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Cool.

Install the rest of the drivers from the ASUS CD - Chipset, Audio, Lan etc.

Do a reboot and BAM! Windows could not start blah blah blah, choose safe mode, last config or start normally.

No matter which one I choose, I never make it into Windows, it just reboots.

Have tried multiple Bios setups, lotsa reintstalls, same thing, every time.

What the hell is my pc doing, this has to be the worst pain the ass problem Ive ever come across on a system build.

Any help anyone? :(
 
Turns out the new WD SATA HDD was borked, busted, shot aka faulty. Had to RMA it.

Plonked in a different HDD, XP all installed fine now.

Heres my conclusion from another thread about this damn system build, finally sorted now thou :)

All done now :)

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18279307&highlight=startername_neoglow

Cheers for replies guys.

Heres something funny which just goes to show how Mobo manufacturers make these boards and sometimes not tell you what the hell some Bios settings mean.

I used Compatible mode in the Bios for the SATA HDD and SATA DVDR.

Used the same old XP SP2 Pro cd I have used a thousand times, DID NOT use the F6 during installation, XP install found the HDD, formatted it and installed XP. Got into Windows for the first time and did a restart WITHOUT installing the chipset/audio/lan drivers just yet.

Entered Bios, changed 'Compatible' mode to 'Enhanced' mode for the SATA and restarted expecting it to BSOD or Disk boot error and.......worked fine! Straight back into XP, did another restart to see if the Bios had automatically changed itself back to Compatible. Nope, still on Enhanced.

So, back into Windows, checked ATA/ATAPI in device manager and it didnt show the chipset drivers, I cant remember what it said but it definatley wasnt the Intel ICH7 SATA driver.

Installed the drivers for chipset/audio/lan. Lotsa reboots and has been working ever since. Device manager now shows Intel ICH7.

So, go figure. Basically Compatible and Enhanced seems to mean nothing with an XP install. Why cant they just explain this stuff in manuals???
 
neoglow said:
So, go figure. Basically Compatible and Enhanced seems to mean nothing with an XP install. Why cant they just explain this stuff in manuals???
Click to expand...
It's been a while since I used an ICH7 board, but IIRC "compatible" doesn't mean "IDE compatibility mode" in the sense you'd use it as an alternative to AHCI/RAID, it's simply one option for enabling various ports and the order in which they're enumerated (the "enhanced" option lets you run with the full complement of IDE and SATA ports together). All your SATA drives will be in IDE... errr... compatibility mode on the vanilla ICH7 regardless of the "compatible" or "enhanced" BIOS settings, you'd need the ICH7R chipset for AHCI/RAID options.

So I guess in this case it's a (somewhat confusing) BIOS semantics thing rather than than XP failing to recognise the hardware correctly. :)
 
In my own experience and seeing a few threads on here there seem to be quite a few duff WD drives around at the moment.
 
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