PC won't boot when multiple PCI-E cards installed.

philjayj · 31 Oct 2009 at 16:50

Hi, I have an MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard. Currently installed in one of its four PCI-E slots is a cheap PCI-E graphics card. When I install a PCI-E x4 RAID controller card in to one of the other PCI-E slots, the PC won't boot, it doesn't POST and the monitor stays blank.

As soon as I remove the RAID controller, it boots in to Windows.

Any suggestions on how I can solve this?

Many thanks

Phil

jbloggs · 1 Nov 2009 at 10:41

What "cheap" RAID controller is it?

Have you tried it in all 3 PCI-E slots?

Is your boot HDD attached to the SB600 cont. and what mode is it in, have you tried IDE mode?

philjayj · 1 Nov 2009 at 12:07

Hi, thanks for replying. The controller is an LSI MegaRAID SAS/SATA 9260-8i.

Yes, I've tried all three slots and still nothing. Also, yes, the boot HDD is connected to the SB600, to be honest, I'm not sure of the mode or how to change it.

Thanks for your help.

Edit: I managed to find the settings to enable IDE mode - it was already set to that.

jbloggs · 1 Nov 2009 at 15:11

Try disabling the Promise SATA5/6 (SAS ready) and Promise eSATA ports, also remove all HDDs from SATA 2-4 on SB600, just have your boot HDD on 1st SB600 SATA port and see what happens...

Does your your LSI MegaRAID SAS/SATA 9260-8i have the latest firmware?

philjayj · 1 Nov 2009 at 19:31

Hmmm, I followed all your instructions and still nothing. I've disabled as much as I can, if I disable anything more relating to hard drives, the machine simply wont boot.

Could it be a case of the PCI-E slots are only meant for graphics cards?

Thanks

edit: I've just put a "cheap" RAID controller in one of the spare PCI-E slots that I had lying around, and it boots fine.

jbloggs · 1 Nov 2009 at 21:09

Well then that would seem to suggest some incompatibility with the LSI raid card and your motherboard, is the LSI flashed with the latest firmware and does your mobo have the latest BIOS?

Can you try the LSI card in another mobo?

It would be worthwhile to drop LSI a support note re this problem.

philjayj · 2 Nov 2009 at 00:48

I managed to borrow a PC and updated the controller's firmware, and the PC still doesn't pick it up. The motherboard is flashed to v1.8, but v1.9 is available. However, the flashing instructions say i require a floppy etc, and I don't have one.

edit: @jbloggs - a couple of months ago, you replied to a post of mine, where I asked about Dell Perc 5/i cards and their compatibility with an MSI K9A2 Platinum motherboard. You pointed me to a forum which showed a trick of covering connectors 5 & 6. As a last resort, I gave this a shot last night, and what d'ya know, it worked!! So in a round about way, you solved my problem. So thank you for all your help

Le Samourai · 28 Jan 2010 at 21:18

Thought I'd search for some LSI threads...

Cheap you say... I've got the 9260-4i (just got the BBU today) and, ahem... it's not that cheap!

Anyway, I'm sure you've gathered it's not too compatible with all motherboards out there.

LSI support didn't offer any advice since it wasn't running on server hardware.

Before I found a working mobo for my AM3 setup, I tried the SMBus pins 5&6 fix... obviously didn't do it well enough as I couldn't get it to work.

My motherboard odyssey started off with a Gigabyte UD4P, then tried an MSI GD70, then thanks to an OCZ forum thread, found an ASUS M4A79-T Deluxe works out of the box.

If you can find the OCZ thread, they've got there's (the 8i version) loaded up with about 6-8 vertex SSDs and, naturally, it flies!

Edit: Ahh, you have a cheap one as well as the not-so-cheap LSI!

I went from on-board controller, to an Adaptec 1430sa (no Win7 drivers), then splashed out for the LSI... and then all the motherboards!