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

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.

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.

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