Nagging Biostar M7VKQ Pro Problem

KingFishKingFish
edited July 2004 in Hardware
I have enough parts to make two more farm nodes but I have a problem with my hard drives. I have about seven hard drives, all of them about 2 or so gigs and three different Biostar motherboards, all the same model as in the title. I have two different amd procs and two different sticks of pc2100 ram. The problem is that when I go to install win xp, it'll get to the part of the install where it goes to format the ntfs partition. Sometimes it'll get to 2%, sometimes 5%, sometimes nowhere at all before it just doesn't format anymore. It stays stuck and doesn't progress any further. If I choose to bypass the standard format for the quick format, errors occur later in the install that state file X wasn't able to be copied to the hard drive. All three motherboards behave the same way. I've tried using 40 pin cables, 80 pin cables, putting heatsinks on every chip on one board, etc. I know the hard drives are working fine. The firmware is read just fine and all of them behave in a similar fashion. Anyone have any ideas on this? The bios's were already the most recent release and were all the latest revisions to the board that were released. Anyone have ideas on this? I'm fresh out at this point and I have two aussies to try to fend off before I become jihad roadkill. Thanks in advance, you are all the greatest.

KingFish

Comments

  • JBJB Carlsbad, CA
    edited June 2004
    well, first advice would be memtest...but have you tried formatting with FAT32 rather than NTFS? just a thought...good luck!
  • JBJB Carlsbad, CA
    edited June 2004
    also, can you run any low level tests or zero out the hard drives to make sure they are ok?
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    I can delete, create partitions with no probs whatsoever. I haven't tried with fat32 but don't see why it wouldn't format correctly with ntfs. I haven't run memtest on either stick of the ram but have no reason to believe either is bad. I'll do it to eliminate another variable though. Thanks.

    KF
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2004
    KingFish, how about installing the drive into a working computer and formatting it from Windows with ntfs and then installing it on the Biostar mobo and just installing the os on the already made partition?
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    It appears that it is a file transfer problem as I run into IO errors with all the motherboards. I can just do the quick format option but I run into files that simply won't copy correctly about halfway to two thirds into the OS install. It's weird because all three motherboards I have do the same thing with several different hard drives. I'm totally stumped at this point in time.

    KF
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited June 2004
    Have you tried setting all of the performance related items in the BIOS to gimp level? (e.g. Memory Timing, Disk Caching, etc.) I've had systems which couldn't get through an install at their rated speed work fine when I turned off all of the performance enhancing features. In nearly every case, once the install finished I could then crank everything back up to "Turbo" speed.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2004
    How about trying another cdrom drive? Maybe for some reason the Biostar boards don't like the cdrom drive you are using. I'm just shooting in the dark though here. :confused:
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    The cdrom drive performance is actually fine. I can boot off the cd with no probs and it loads the files quite well from it. After I finish the install I take off the cdrom anyway as it's my workbench cd rom drive.

    Prof, that's what I'm doing right now to see if any of those performance settings are actually hindering the read/write process to the hard drives. There's so many settings in the bios though that this type of troubleshooting will take an extremely long time. I may even try flashing the bios to an older revision to see if that works. The only thing that I can come up with is that these biostar boards don't like the old small capacity hard drives. I have four bigfoot hard drives, a seagate medalist, and two fujitsu hard drives. They all act the same. Weird, very weird.

    KF
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited June 2004
    KingFish wrote:
    ...The only thing that I can come up with is that these biostar boards don't like the old small capacity hard drives...
    Do you have a larger drive to try? If it works, maybe you can copy an image to the drives for the other two boards and bypass the nasty installation process.

    As far as downgrading the settings, I just go through and downtweak them en masse. If a setting looks like it's supposed to boost performance I disable it. Once done with the install I boost them back up to high-performance a few at a time so if something goofs I have a short list of suspects.
  • JBJB Carlsbad, CA
    edited June 2004
    Can you try another CD-Rom like Mud said? How about the CD itself...is it scratched? Do you have another XP CD to try to install off of? If all the hard drives and boards perform the same way it sounds like the disc or the CD-Rom.
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    That was covered way back when I burned a fresh copy of win xp from nero. I can guarantee it's not a cd rom problem. It's not a memory problem either, I'm running memtest again although I've tested this memory before in a different setup. It's on test #8 of the burn in loops without a single failure yet. It's prolly something specific to the eide settings in the bios or some kind of strange incompability with the hard drives. It'll read the firmware just fine on all the different hard drives I've tried. I'll keep poking away at the bios settings and report back later. Thanks for all the suggestions so far.

    KF
  • JBJB Carlsbad, CA
    edited June 2004
    just a long shot...but did you try new cables on both the CDROM and hard drive? very strange problem you have there...
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2004
    Like prof said, try downgrading to UDMA2 or PIO4 and see if they work then.
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    I've disabled just about every performance enhancing thing I can think of pertaining to hard drive IO. I went down to PIO 3 (also tried PIO 4), disabled ide burst mode, and disabled UDMA. I tried loading default settings in the bios and going from there too. It seems relegated to the hard drive IO settings or something closely related. I've tried numerous cables the other day including 40 pin and 80 pin cables. I'll grab a utility that checks the disk for bad sectors that boots and see if there are any bad sectors on any of the hard drives I've been trying.


    KF
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited June 2004
    Yeah, run the diagnostic utlities from the drive manufacturers on the drives, both on the Biostar boards and if they give an error message, then on another brand mobo. If they show error-free, then try the image trick like prof said and see if it will work.
  • profdlpprofdlp The Holy City Of Westlake, Ohio
    edited June 2004
    Can you copy the WinXP CD to the HD and install from there? That would eliminate any cdrom drive issues.
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    What I'm thinking is happening here is that there is something really screwy going on with the communication between the mobo and the hard drive and I can't seem to get it nailed down. From the way the hard drives act the data transfer is really sluggish which affects the length of time it takes to fully format one of these drives. I was able to successfully format (not quick format) the seagate today but it took an excruciating length of time to do. The OS install later failed with a BSOD when the hard drive appeared to not respond to a file that setup was trying to install. I'll d/l some hard drive diagnostics from seagate and fujitsu, run them, and see what comes of it. I'm just ready to start banging my head against a wall at this point.

    KingFish
  • DonutDonut Maine New
    edited June 2004
    KingFish,
    Any solution to the problem yet?

    I had something similar on my NF-7 board and a couple old 1.2 gig drives, the only way they would work was in the Bios, set the Delay IDE initial to 3 secs. This worked for me until my new drive arrived. I don't know if this is an option for you.

    Hey it's a thought.
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited June 2004
    No, up to this point I haven't found a solution yet. I bought two 8.4 and a 6.4 gig hard drive on ebay that I'm hoping will rectify the problem. I haven't had time to try to implement those recently acquired hard drives to see if they solve the problem. When I get time I'll try to use one of those 2 gig hard drives to see if the 3 sec trick works. Thanks, and I'll be sure to report back on my results!

    KingFish
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited July 2004
    I dug around in the bios yet some more and didn't see an option for putting in a delay time for ide Donut. I recently acquired some more higher capacity drives from ebay in the 6-8 gig range. They all have worked like a charm thus far so I'm back in business. I guess I can chalk it up to an incompatibility although it is weird. Two farm nodes up and running now. Whew, what a PITA.

    KingFish
  • DonutDonut Maine New
    edited July 2004
    Glad it's fixed. :thumbsup:
  • fvsjrfvsjr
    edited July 2004
    Hi guys.. I recently bought an Athlon XP 2000+ Tbred... but I don't know if it will work on the biostar m7vkq motherboard... I haven't tested it because I didn't have time, but i'm asking here if someone have tested before if m7vkq support the athlon xp 2000+ THROUGHBRED, and not the palomino core.

    Thank you.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited July 2004
    I just looked at Biostar's website and while the processor compatibility chart only shows it good for pally procs, the latest bios update is listed as being released on 3/03/03, which is after the Tbred B procs were introduced and says it updates the "CPU source code". I would guess that with the latest bios update that it will support Tbred 266fsb procs from that listing, but I'm not positive.
  • fvsjrfvsjr
    edited July 2004
    muddocktor wrote:
    I just looked at Biostar's website and while the processor compatibility chart only shows it good for pally procs, the latest bios update is listed as being released on 3/03/03, which is after the Tbred B procs were introduced and says it updates the "CPU source code". I would guess that with the latest bios update that it will support Tbred 266fsb procs from that listing, but I'm not positive.
    thank you man... my processor will arrive in few hours... i will put it in the mobo and try to power on the pc.... if it recognize , good, if not.... i'll try an update bios :) thank u again =)
  • KingFishKingFish
    edited July 2004
    I use 2400+ thoroughbred's in my farm and they work great. I even have two 2400+ thornton cores and they work too. Short answer, yes, they will work.

    KingFish
  • fvsjrfvsjr
    edited July 2004
    KingFish wrote:
    I use 2400+ thoroughbred's in my farm and they work great. I even have two 2400+ thornton cores and they work too. Short answer, yes, they will work.

    KingFish
    Ok, and u obviously use the 2400+ thoroughbred in a Biostar M7VKQ, right? With which bios? Thank u.
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