Ic7-g board problems with Raptor 74gb

[nas]

Hey ,
mmm
just got my dad's new comp here , got it all built up and running ...

installed win xp pro sp2 , mobo, gpu drivers some of thier working porgrams ...
since its a presscot i installed mbm5 , restarted and then the party got all pooped.

im 90% sure its a problem with the HDD , this is whats wrong:

after the comp boot , it looking for IDE drives , after about 20(!) sec he founds them , some times it get stuck there..
ok , passed that , now it gets to the msg "verfying dmi pool data" or smt like that , again stuck for 30-40sec.
passing that , we get to the screen where u can choose same mod and the other micro**** crap , no matter what u choose , the win get stuck about it the mid of its load time and reset the system ..

is it a dead hdd ?
im 100% sure i built it perfectly , its not my first nor my 10th comp im building :\

the guys at the store where i bought it recommended for me to update the bios , though i have bad expirence from it :P .. any other thoughts ?

sys specs:

abit ic7-g
p4-e 3.2
2gb ddr ram
r9600 pro 256mb
nec 3500A
raptor 74gb
and a TT 430W psu

help ? >_<

[Karnivore]

Have no issues here with either of the Raptors on IC7-G.. You might want to check the Official Abit forums, probably the best place to look for hardware specific problems/solutions if it involves Abit mobo's

[nas]

no luck there aswell ...

i did made some progress thought , the raptor isnt the problem , tested it on my nf7-s and it works fine.

on the bios , i changed the raid to read the slot 1 sata as IDE 3 master , reinstalled windows include the raid drivers (that f6 thingy)...

now , the problem is that i have 3 situations:

1. all works perfectly , comp boots with no problem.
2. comp boots but it cant find the drive ... cant see it on the bios aswell.
3. computer boots , it finds the drive after the boot it loads that F8 screen to choose how to load windows (safe mod and etc...) , no matter what i choose , it gets stuck on the mid of the load and reset .. when system boots again it cant find the drive (same as 2).

im kinda lost here .. have no idea what can couse the problem..
any ideas ?

[masterofpuppets]

My suggestion: don't use RAID. It is not for the unexperienced or the impatient. You will have a much easier life without using any sort of RAID systems.

[nas]

im not even sure i am using it .. connected it on the SATA1 port ... it shows on the boot as IDE 3\4 wich is raid on the bios.

i think the problem might be abou the bios seettings .. anyone with ic7-g bios 23 around here ? :)

[lalPOOO]

I have had so many problems with drives and my ic7. I'd suggest messing around with the boot order, of the drives. Not the setting of which thing to boot off first, but that other little menu, of which order the drivers go in. Try setting bootable ad in device as the second one. Another thing which worked for me for about a week was disabling the floppy drive (I didn't have one in anyways) and then setting it as the first thing to boot off of... really weird stuff.

[nas]

i've tryed messing up with the bios raid and sata setting , no luck ...
i've tryed using the dvd with the sata convertor and then set it as Sata only , also didnt fixed the prob ..

now i have a diff problem , then it used to boot to windows some times and some times reset ..
now it find the drive on the bios , i can see it as ide3 , but it says there are no bootable device .. same msg as when u format and forgot to set up to boot from the cd ...
no matter what i set up on the boot priorety on the bios , its not booting from the drive ...

[masterofpuppets]

I have my raptor set up in the same way. IDE3.

Pri Ms.: CD-RW
Pri Sl.: None
Sec Ms.: DVD-RW
Sec Sl.: None
IDE 3: Raptor 74gig (Debian 3.1 Sarge)
IDE 4: Raptor 74gig (Testing drive (for custom built linux and freebsd kernel tests))

It initializes IDE 3 which brings up LInux LOader which initializes my other disks and allows me too boot from Silicone Image Controller (winblows), Debian 3.1 or FreeBSD. No problems booting from IDE3 at all. My suggestion is to reset CMOS, clear all of your HDD's and delete RAID config. Then attach your drives to the SATA1 and 2 connectors. Setup ICH5 built in RAID or if you want connect it to 3 and 4 and setup onboard Silicone Image. Whatever one you prefer. If that doesnt work, reset CMOS, delete RAID info and just try with 2 seperate disks. If that still doesnt work, maybe you have flakey raptor or flakey mobo.

[nas]

i have only one raptor(sata) , and one dvd-rw(ide) drives so i guess the raid isnt the problem here ..
i also start to think the mobo is :banana::banana::banana::banana:ed up abit :S

[nas]

OK , here is a new issue.
dont ask me how , but windows is now runnig quite fine loaded up for about 15 trys in a row ...

but ATM we looking at a diffrent problem.
when the comp start working on smt hard it gets stuck , either stuck or i get the blue screen of dead.
from the blue screen i get this msg : "0x000000f4 ( 0x00000003 , 0x89733020 , 0x89733194 , 0x805fa7a8 )"

one time after it got stuck and i reseted , it asked for error report , done thats and it directed me to a microsoft page , it said its a hard drive problem that could have been coused by several stuff , one of them that cought my eyes was jumpy power values or smt like that ..
so i've opend abit HQ looking at the +12V values while running prime95.
the V range when prime wasnt runnig was: 11.8-11.73
when prime was runnig i got thouse values: 11.13-10.07
could that be the problem ? im gona look how are the values on my machine with enermax (the blue one) 430w for now and see if there is a big diff :S

[masterofpuppets]

When my HDD cant recieve any power from the 12v line, it powers down and causes blue screens. Try another PSU and see if you get the problem.

[nas]

well , my enermax EG465P gives out 12.10-12.16 reading from mdm5 , thats some major ass diffrence ... im gonna try replacing them tonight ..
i knew TTs psu wasnt that great but i didnt expect them to suck that bad ;x

[GuN]

I made a post a few days ago pertaining to this on the abit forum and only got one reply ... that my system is screwed up from overclocking.

Not the case as I just made a discovery.

I built this IC7 G box two years ago and put two 37 GB Raptors with the 8 MB cache in it on the ich5 - no problems. (Overclocked from the start, this comes to play in following paragraphs).

I just bought two more Raptors a couple weeks ago - the newer 74 GB with the 16 MB cache. I put them on the ich5 and moved the 37 giggers to the SiI3112 (both RAID 0). Still no problem.

A couple days before making that Abit forum post, I was having trouble with a program and was told to return to stock clocking to make sure that wasn't the cause of my problem.

I reset the bios, loaded the optimized defaults and bingo, the same problem as post #1 in this thread.

To make a long story short, all you have to do is choose "User Defined" in the soft menu cpu settings, leave everything alone but the agp ratio ... change it to "Fixed" and it will boot normally. (This is where the overclocking comes into play, I have had it set to "Fixed" from the git go due to overclocking - that's why I didn't have a problem when I originally installed the new raptors).

There is a problem between the new Raptors and the ich5 controller, as I can switch the sets around (New raptors on the SiI3112 and old ones on the ich5) and all is fine ... swap them back and can only boot with the agp ration set to fixed.