PK5 : Cant install OS :Wont see Windows CD

Draeger

Draeger

Draeger

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Finally got my new ASUS P5K into my case and everything else connected up.

It POSTS fine but although I have the Windows disc in the DVDR drive, it doesnt appear to detect it and boot from it.

In the BIOS, I have it set to boot from CD first, although the BIOS detects the drive but not as a Pioneer 110, its detecting it as ATAPI CD?.

Am I just missing something obvious here?.

How do I get it to boot from the CD/DVD?. :confused:
 
Darn, meant P5K in thread title!!!. :p

I forgot to mention - The hard drive I am trying to install Windows onto is a 250Gb SATA and it has my old install of Windows on it from my previous system. I intended just sticking the vista disc in and formatting straight away for a fresh install.

Apart from not detecting the disc is in the drive, its going straight to the "Windows did not start normally" screen so its obviously "seeing" the old install.

The Pioneer DVD drive is a 110 PATA IDE drive, not an optical SATA.
 
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Yes, in the BIOS the first boot device is selected as "ATAPI CD", second boot device is the SATA HD.

There's no details as such, nothing specific like make etc in the BIOS to denote its a Pioneer DVDR drive, a 110. It is only about a year old, if that.

JMicron is enabled and controller mode is set to "IDE".

I've not touched anything else within the BIOS except for changing the boot order to boot from CD first.

*EDIT* Just tried a MinePE boot disc in there and it wont detect that either.

I'm sure its something simple that I'm missing!!!
 
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Havent got another CD option in there, just ATAPI CD, the hard drive and floppy drive options.

Does that mean its not seeing the optical drive, should it actually give it a label/name in the BIOS if it sees it properly, such as Pioneer DVDR110D which is how it showed up in my old systems BIOS?.
 
Just tried another DVDR drive, again, PATA IDE but a newer one, a Pioneer 112 which is only a few months old.

Still no joy and the BIOS still wont detect anything other than an "ATAPI CD" instead of actually naming the optical drive connected to the IDE channel on the board.

Could it be some sort of setting in the BIOS I'm missing?. Something along the lines of running a PATA IDE optical drive along with the SATA hard drive?.

Or could it be that the P5K doesnt like Pioneer optical drives?.:confused:

Very annoying, i was hoping to have this system up and running this evening.:(
 
Done a bit of Googling and found this:-

"Be sure to purchase an optical drive with a SATA interface instead of UltraATA, because the Intel chipset doesn’t support UltraATA anymore. Though most enthusiast motherboards offer an additional UltraATA controller to enable the user to connect legacy devices, you will want to disable all unused components."
Click to expand...

:confused:

I will grab a SATA optical drive tomorrow and at least that eliminates one possibility of the PATA Pioneer drive not being compatible.

It seems to be that way anyway, if the BIOS is showing it as an ATAPI CD then its not going to boot from a Vista DVD I would imagine?.

And I thought IDE was as IDE does!!!. Thought any recent IDE device would get recognised in the ASUS BIOS.

Missus now moaning even more since she just found the OcUK receipt from this mornings delivery of this kit and now I'm telling her I need a new SATA DVD drive....lol. :p

*EDIT* Realist, I have tried the jumper in Master, CS and slave modes, still no joy.
 
Well, I think I'm getting somewhere. :D

How strange is this though?.

Via Google, I found a post on some obscure US forum where the bloke said he had removed the USB and Firewire cables from his case that were connected to their respective headers on the P5K, same as mine were.

He said that cured the problem and as soon as he restarted his PC and went into the BIOS, JMicron detected his Pioneer optical drive on the IDE channel.

So I thought "What the hell..." and tried it and lo and behold, it worked!!!. :D

Now in the process of installing Vista.

/looks at clock

Think its gonna be a late night for me......:rolleyes: :p
 
Dont think there's anything different or non standard about the case, no.

It's a Chieftec Black Dragon.

The wires for the front USB & firewire come off the case inputs and terminate in blocks rather than individual wires, yes.
 
Well, hit another brick wall. :confused:

Vista install appeared to be going ok, although it was taking a bit longer than I thought it should have done.

It looked like it was stuck at "Completing Installation" and the progress bar had not moved for some time. So I decided to call it a night last night and go to bed but thought I would just leave the thing to continue and check it in the morning.

Woke this morning to find it on the black screen with the green bar going from left to right. It sat like that for 40 minutes and by that time I had to leave for work.

Will try a fresh install tonight when I get home and this time I'm going to format the hard drive properly via a boot disk with Partition Magic 8 on it. Incidentaly, when I chose to "format" the 250Gb SATA hard drive last night at the start of the installation, it took literaly seconds to do so, which to me, didn't look right at all. :confused:

Any ideas why the install of Vista appears to be freezing?.

Nipping out later to get a SATA DVDR drive, but I dont think thats the issue stopping Vista installing as the Pioneer PATA one seems to be working ok now that I've done as I mentioned previously re: the USB and Firewire cables.

Is there somewhere in the BIOS where I can disable PATA altogether if I just hook up a SATA optical drive or would that be pointless and am I barking up the wrong tree?.
 
Yes m8, that's the P5K I have.

Kit installed along with it was all from my previous build which worked perfectly.

CPU is a C2D E6300, HD is a Maxtor 250Gb SATA which is about 3 months old. PSU is a Coolermaster 520W modular, brand new from OcUK along with the mobo.

Memory is the 2x 1Gb Geil DDR2 Ultra low latency stuff I linked to in my previous thread about choosing a mobo.

GPU is an Connect 3D ATI X1900XT 512Mb PCI-E.

The Pioneer DVDR 110D drive was also out of the previous build, and then as I said earlier I tried a brand new Pioneer DVDR 112 last night.

Once I had removed the USB and Firewire cables though, the older Pioneer drive appeared to be found and working. It was this drive that I was attempting to install Vista with last night.

The hard drive had my previous Windows Installation of XP on it and as I said I attempted to format it during the Vista install and do a fresh install but the format only appeared to take seconds which was a bit strange for a 250Gb drive.

I've now got a brand new SATA ASUS 2014 DVDR drive here which I will fit when I get home.

I would assume disabling the JMicron controller wont cause any problems now that I dont really have anything that will be connected to the IDE slot on the mobo?.

I'm hoping I get home, stick the ASUS DVDR in, hook it up to the second SATA port ( red one, right? ) , format with PT8 and then install Vista and bobs your mothers brother!!!.

But you know what PC's are like, won't be as simple as that!!!.
 
Cheers for the replies m8, appreciate it.

I'll try Memtest from a boot disc once I get home shortly.

As far as the Geil RAM goes, when you say it isn't set up correctly could you expand a little on that?. I didn't touch anything in the BIOS relating to RAM, just installed each stick in the yellow slots on the mobo and that was it.
 
Wayne - The memory kit was brand new out of the packet from OcUK and never used before. I had DDR400 in my old system. The Geil stuff was bought for use in the P5K.

I'm just home from work so am about to try your previous suggestions and fit this new SATA DVDR drive. Will disable the JMicron controller and see how that goes.

I wouldn't have a clue where to start as far as adjusting memory settings in the BIOS for the Geil RAM though. This is my first "enthusiast" motherboard, previous mobo's have been pretty basic as far as BIOS settings go. :cool:

V|per - Yeah, I managed to find that little snippet via Googling and was running out of ideas so thought I would try it anyway. Was quite surprised when it worked ( to some degree at least!! ).
 
No idea m8, sorry.

I did however get mine to recognise my Pioneer DVDR drive by removing the USB and Firewire cables from the headers on the mobo to the case front connectors.

How do you change the RAM voltage on this board in the BIOS?.

*EDIT* Found it.

Stickers on the side of the Geil RAM say "2.1v" and there's a little leaflet thing that comes in the box saying to change in your motherboard settings the voltage for the DRAM to the modules recommended settings.

I have no clue about the timings settings though, everything else is set pretty much to "Auto".

After mucking about with it tonight for hours, I'm still no closer to getting Vista installed.

It's going through the motions but to try and explain whats happening - once you press a key when it says after the post "Press any key to boot from CD" it takes ages to move between each stage of the Vista install. First Vista splashscreen comes up - egg time appears for about 5 minutes and then it goes to the screen where you select keyboard and language etc.

Once that's selected, again, egg timer appears and it moves to the next screen with the hard drives and format options. Go through that and again, egg timer appears for minutes on end and it starts installing vista but it's still taking forever once it gets to "Completing installation", no DVD drive activity ( light is off ) although the hard drive activity on the case is still flashing away.

God this is so frustrating and I'm sure its something silly in the settings I'm overlooking or it might be as wayne suggested - a RAM settings issue.

I just dont know.
 
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Success!!!! :D

Cheers Wayne, you were spot on with the DRAM settings.

Changed it from default in the BIOS to the Geil recommended 2.1v, booted up and let Vista run through its set up.

Worked a treat. :cool:

Now I'm going to plug the USB and Firewire headers back in and see what happens.

Oh I'm so chuffed now I've actually got it working.

Mind you, a bit miffed about the hoops I've had to jump through and hassles I've gave you guys with helping me out with advice, but then again, its the first venture of mine into this sort of thing with a mobo that isn't exactly "plug and play" for idiots ( like me !!! ) , so I suppose that's acceptable to some degree.

It's sat at default 1.86ghz E6300 speeds just now, but once I get the system all sorted out and running as I want it to, I'll be looking to push it up to 3.0Ghz.

Away to install Chipset, LAN and sound drivers now.

Many thanks again to everyone who has replied and assisted me here.

You guys rock. :)
 
I reckon if I had kept the IDE Pioneer 110 DVDR drive in there it would have installed Vista fine.

But I bought an ASUS SATA DVDR today and used that.

I haven't refitted the USB or Firewire front panel connectors yet, so dont know if that will affect anything as it is now, but I'm thinking it wont.

I reckon you will be fine to install via a PATA IDE DVDR drive m8, think it was simply my volts on the DRAM bumped up to the required Geil settings that did the trick for me, dont think it had any bearing when it came to the IDE/PATA drive, just coincidence I think.

Just make sure you adjust your RAM voltage in the BIOS to whatever is needed for your memory sticks when you attempt your install tomorrow, seems to have done the trick for me.:cool:

I've got a 160Gb PATA HD here that I used to back all my data up from my previous system last week, so I'm going to have to re-enable the JMicron controller again tomorrow and connect that up to the single PATA connector on the mobo in order to move a load of important stuff back over to this one.

We will see how that goes, I'm keeping my fingers crossed!!!.

Post back and let us know how you get on tomorrow m8.

Best of luck for it all!!!. :)
 
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