Long, complicated and abritrary mobo/hdd/sata problem.

Pete.Dakota

Pete.Dakota

Pete.Dakota

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2 days ago I got a random blue screen. Restarted and it wouldn't load windows. It would freeze just before the W7 swirly logo started to appear. POSTs fine and still does.

I tried moving around some RAM, swapping out for some old sticks and eventually it booted back up. I went abot my evening, turned it off and went to bed. Wake up, and it's not loading again.

I've been working on it all day. I've been trying to boot also from a restore disk I made. Now, earlier today, the boot disk worked and I did a fresh install. Everything was up and running, installed my stuff, did a restart and.... it didn't boot - again. I noticed the two times that it did boot, in the BIOS the hard drive was called "SATA WDC WD3200AAJS-22L" in the list of SATA devices. Whenever it doesn't boot, it's simply called "WDC WD3200AAJS-22L".

Something about how the mobo recognises the HDD affects whether or not it boots windows.

I've tried a seperate hard drive and the exact same problem occurs. Also with booting from disk and my main hard drive unplugged from the mobo.

Often after the Windows screen, I'll get BSOD. Here's the stop messages I can remember:

IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL
Attempt made to write to read-only memory
BAD POOL HEADER

There are at least two more, but I can't remember them. I've run a memory diagnostic when dos has allowed me to and my RAM is fine.

I've tried flashing the BIOS.
I've tried reseating SATA and power cables.
I've tried safe mode, last known good...

I hadn't installed any new drivers or software to my knowledge. All I can think is that a Windows update may have installed something.

I think the problem is my mobo's sata controller/driver. AFAIK the sata driver isn't reinstalled when you flash the BIOS and it has to be done seperately, in Windows.

Really giving me a headache. Until I can get into Windows and re-install the sata drivers, I can't troubleshoot further. I'm relatively certain it's a firmware problem, but I dread having to return this mobo as I've only had it a few months.

Any help would be appreciated
 
i had a similar problem... Sometimes my DVD drive (sata) wouldnt show up in windows or bios, but on some bootups it will. Then later my SSD disapeared and i could only boot into my Normal HD which were raided.

What i had to do was use different sata ports. I pulled out the DVD drive one and moved it. everything is all good now. Maybe some kind of weird conflict with one sata port affected everything else. You may want to try:


1.) What mobo is it

2.) try moving sata ports on the problem drive.

3.) try booting up with just the HD and gfx card plugged in. So no DVD no sound card, just one HD, GFX and 1 stick of ram.

See if that helps.
 
Noto said:
i had a similar problem... Sometimes my DVD drive (sata) wouldnt show up in windows or bios, but on some bootups it will. Then later my SSD disapeared and i could only boot into my Normal HD which were raided.

What i had to do was use different sata ports. I pulled out the DVD drive one and moved it. everything is all good now. Maybe some kind of weird conflict with one sata port affected everything else. You may want to try:


1.) What mobo is it

2.) try moving sata ports on the problem drive.

3.) try booting up with just the HD and gfx card plugged in. So no DVD no sound card, just one HD, GFX and 1 stick of ram.

See if that helps.
Click to expand...

In my sig :)

I have tried a load of different combinations with the cables and ports.

I'll try number 3 now.

Thanks.
 
If you have done a full reinstall of Windows, then there really isn't much else you can do I'm afraid, other than RMA the motherboard. If you really didn't want to do that you could pick up a pci sata card somewhere on the cheap.

That may sort out your problem. Then again it might not.
 
Buchanan0204 said:
If you have done a full reinstall of Windows, then there really isn't much else you can do I'm afraid, other than RMA the motherboard. If you really didn't want to do that you could pick up a pci sata card somewhere on the cheap.

That may sort out your problem. Then again it might not.
Click to expand...

I was thinking about doing this as a means of troubleshooting. Or if Asus give me trouble trying to return it under warranty; I'm sure they're gonna get me to try a heap load of stuff first, most of which I've probably already done.

I tried starting it with only the GPU and HDD in, also without any USBs - even the mouse/keyboard - to see if it would load, and still nothing.

Would it be possible to put a Ubuntu boot on a USB stick and make any driver changes that way?
 
Pete.Dakota said:
I was thinking about doing this as a means of troubleshooting. Or if Asus give me trouble trying to return it under warranty; I'm sure they're gonna get me to try a heap load of stuff first, most of which I've probably already done.

I tried starting it with only the GPU and HDD in, also without any USBs - even the mouse/keyboard - to see if it would load, and still nothing.

Would it be possible to put a Ubuntu boot on a USB stick and make any driver changes that way?
Click to expand...

To be honest with you I don't think it's a driver problem. If you did a fresh installation of Windows 7, everything worked fine, then the next day it wouldn't boot again.

You said you tried another hard disk to eliminate that. I would however try and install a copy of ubuntu or something similar to see if that has problems booting. If this continues to boot fine over a period then you know the problem lies with windows. I'm not sure about altering drivers within Ubuntu, I doubt you could do that to be honest. Most drivers these days are all installer packages... not a lot of 22KB .sys drivers floating around.

I would install it to hard disk rather than running it as a live cd or off a usb, as this won't be utilising the hard disk or it's controller at all.
 
The problem is, I think, is it's a firmware problem on the mobo - not a windows driver issue. I did a fresh install of 7 and the problem still occurred. This install of windows has been fine for a long time, then it just suddenly stops working.

Is there a sata driver within windows, or is it all on the bios for the controller on the mobo?

EDIT * Also, with no spare rig, I won't be able to install Ubuntu onto an HDD. Admittedly I need to get a second test rig to test the HDDs on.
 
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Pete.Dakota said:
The problem is, I think, is it's a firmware problem on the mobo - not a windows driver issue. I did a fresh install of 7 and the problem still occurred. This install of windows has been fine for a long time, then it just suddenly stops working.

Is there a sata driver within windows, or is it all on the bios for the controller on the mobo?

EDIT * Also, with no spare rig, I won't be able to install Ubuntu onto an HDD. Admittedly I need to get a second test rig to test the HDDs on.
Click to expand...

Install it onto a partition then, alongside windows 7. Then when Windows 7 stops booting, you can refer to Ubuntu to see if it's doing the same thing. You will soon eliminate whether the problem lies with your hard disk and motherboard or a software problem.
 
It can't be booted into windows. And I can't boot from my 7 disc. I'm guessing I also won't be able to use any disc-based partition/hard drive manager as the problem seems to be firmware, not drivers on the hdds themselves. :(
 
Ah sorry, I was tired last night and not reading you properly.

I've taken your advice and managed to install Ubunto on the HDD, not in a different partition, mind - I used the whole disk. Ubuntu boots fine.

I used Ubuntu to format and wipe a second hard drive of mine, and then tried using my Windows boot disk to install W7 onto that and... it didn't work. So something appears to be wrong with my boot disk. But I don't understand how I was able to use it a few days ago, and without changing the CD at all, it's not not functioning.

Thanks so far, real progress today.
 
I'm starting to think now the problem lies with my hard drive. The boot disk hasn't been changed since it last worked, but I'm getting intermittent problems trying to install Windows from it onto the same hard drive.

I do have this second hard drive, but annoyingly the boot disk can't see it and doesn't list it has a possible install drive, even though it can be seen by the BIOS. Think I'll have to go buy a new HDD.
 
sounds silly but have you tried pressing the boot loader button at boot to see if it boots ok that way? if it does then it might be a boot priority issue.
 
OK, I've been working on the problem for a while now. I think I have a physical fault on my HDD. However it sometimes works fine, and will them seemingly randomly start to misbehave.

Using GParted a few health checks encounter a read problem at a specific LBA. It's the same LBA everytime and the test stops.

However GParted isn't smart enough to allow me to set specific LBA parameters for a partition, so I can't avoid it. Are there any advanced partition utilities out there that can?
 
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