Quote Originally Posted by jagt View Post
Well well, I've found out what makes my system BSOD on cold boots -- it's because of my external HDD connected to the eSATA port! I noticed the other day that that every time the system BSODs upon boot, I could hear the external HDD was active. So I tried disconnecting it the next day, and voilá! No BSOD. So I've come to the conclusion that Windows BSODs when the external HDD (WD MyBook2 1TB) turns itself on, which happens when Windows is half-way done loading. When the system reboots the HDD is already running, so Windows loads fine. I tried enabling boot ROM for the Marvell IDE/eSATA controler in the bios, but that just makes the system hang after POST, and will not boot until I've restarted the sytem around 3 times.

So yeah, after all this time spent trying to figure out what it was, it was the damn eSATA controller. I guess my only option is to buy a PCI controller and use that instead? I'm a bit disappointed that this Marvell controller is that bad, because I hoped it was better than the Jmicron controller that was on my previous motherboard (but alteast that didn't make my system BSOD!).
Did you install the Marvell driver? eSATA will work without it, but worth a try if it's not installed yet.

Re: using a pci controller.... I spent several weeks troubleshooting BSODs using a Promise SATA300 TX4 and a couple Highpoint controllers. Looks like the Promise SATA300 may have some sort of driver or irq conflict with the onboard controllers. Ended up using a Highpoint 2300 (pcie x1) and Highpoint 2310 (pcie x4)... so far no BSODs.