Gigabyte 7VAXP Ultra BIOS warning!
Straight_Man
Geeky, in my own wayNaples, FL Icrontian
On the main page of BIOS setup, in the BIOS rev 190 and back, there is a Top Performance setting. DO NOT USE if you run XP and have no SATA bootable drives connected. This thing turns on SATA, leaves boot order to IDE-0 and leaves XP hung without being able to find the file in /SYSTEM32/DRIVERS/ called ntfs.sys-- HD flow rates demanded (by an IDE\SATA\ATA RAID settign rework followed by an immediate reboot) are so skewed upward that file access is compromised on XP boot from an ATA\100 Western Digital Caviar 1000BB drive.
Restoring Optimum or Failsafe and reseting settings as otherwise needed (SATA to off, I turned off ATA RAID also as it was not used ATM),lets XP Pro boot fine (this is an SP1 reload as some idiot(friend of boss who knows just enough about triple boot to be positively DANGEROUS) tried to put a triple boot of Bootmagic on computer and did it three times and wiped THREE MBRS and resized THREE BOOT SECTORS as Boot MAgic lives there). Version 190 IIRC, I flashed three BIOSs in last four days from different boards and might be off but it was latest flash on Gigabyte-Taiwan for this precise board as of about four days ago.
John-- with the results of today's fun story, and who KNOWS the HD is perfectly functional with WD diag tests and successful zero-packing after the um, person, mashed its data structure beyond belief. Other relevant to this thing-- Boot Magic cannot yet reside on an XP Pro boot HD, but CAN chain to an XP Pro install. Easier to alternate boot with a Cold-Swap IDE setup (removable trays in an exterior accessible bay mount carrier with power and fan and then three inexpensive trayed HDs (trays VERY cheap at NewEgg-- put drives in CABLE SELECT mode if single HD in box at a time and round ATA\100\133 cables used).
John.
Restoring Optimum or Failsafe and reseting settings as otherwise needed (SATA to off, I turned off ATA RAID also as it was not used ATM),lets XP Pro boot fine (this is an SP1 reload as some idiot(friend of boss who knows just enough about triple boot to be positively DANGEROUS) tried to put a triple boot of Bootmagic on computer and did it three times and wiped THREE MBRS and resized THREE BOOT SECTORS as Boot MAgic lives there). Version 190 IIRC, I flashed three BIOSs in last four days from different boards and might be off but it was latest flash on Gigabyte-Taiwan for this precise board as of about four days ago.
John-- with the results of today's fun story, and who KNOWS the HD is perfectly functional with WD diag tests and successful zero-packing after the um, person, mashed its data structure beyond belief. Other relevant to this thing-- Boot Magic cannot yet reside on an XP Pro boot HD, but CAN chain to an XP Pro install. Easier to alternate boot with a Cold-Swap IDE setup (removable trays in an exterior accessible bay mount carrier with power and fan and then three inexpensive trayed HDs (trays VERY cheap at NewEgg-- put drives in CABLE SELECT mode if single HD in box at a time and round ATA\100\133 cables used).
John.
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