Silicon Image SATA Driver = XP Hang

MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
edited November 2005 in Science & Tech
My mobo is the Gigabyte GA-K8N Pro
http://www.giga-byte.com/MotherBoard/Products/Products_GA-K8N%20Pro.htm

According to the deatiled spec's it's using a Silicon Image sil3512 controller.

Okay well... I have to find a driver to download and use the floppy to get XP installed, great. Everything is running fine and I'm proceeding to install all my drivers and software.

So I notice that on the CD that comes with my mobo has a driver that specifically says Silicon-Image Serial-ATA Driver.

Okay great, I install it and on the next boot with the blocks loading on the windows xp screen it just stops all of a sudden. So I hard reboot and do last known good config, which lets me get back into windows.

I search everywhere trying to find a different driver (off Gigabytes website also) and they all do the same thing. Freeze booting up, when the blocks are going accross the screen.

So I figure yea okay I'll goto Silicons website and download the driver directly from them. Oh great I can't find jack diddly squat from their website.

Can someone please help me solve this problem. I just totally setup this new hot rig, and it's driving me crazy that in device manager theres my SATA controller with a big yellow exclamation point and whenever I install a driver windows won't boot.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you.
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Comments

  • PreacherPreacher Potomac, MD Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Did you install the SI controller driver on XP initial install by pressing F6? Or are you attempting to update to the latest version?

    BTW, no reason to post the same question twice.
  • MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
    edited January 2004
    I did install the drivers, but when XP finished installing in device manager it comes up as a Mass Storage Controller with a yellow explamation point.

    So I try to install a driver for it and everytime I try... it will lock up during the XP startup (ie. bar going across the screen with the big XP logo in the back).
  • MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
    edited January 2004
    Oh yea sorry bout double post also... I wasn't sure which thread to put it in.
  • primesuspectprimesuspect Beepin n' Boopin Detroit, MI Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Are you sure you don't have another mass storage controller in there? In your device manager, does the SiI controller show up?
  • MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
    edited January 2004
    No it doesn't until I install the Silicon SATA Driver
  • PreacherPreacher Potomac, MD Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Have you tried older and newer versions of the drivers? Have you gone to Gigabyte's Forums and search for "Silicon Image SATA Driver problems"? More than likely others have the same problem and possibly a resolution. That's how I fixed all the little gremlins in my Abit board.

    Are you also sure that the current BIOS of the SI controller and your Windows driver are compatible?
  • MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
    edited January 2004
    I can't even find Gigabyte's main forums.

    I call Gigabyte and I end up talking to some korean person that can't say my name.

    I have tried older and newer versions of the driver and get the same problem.
  • LawnMMLawnMM Colorado
    edited January 2004
    If its the same raid controller as included on the NF7-S I can post the drivers for you, I had XP hanging trying to install it too, then I downloaded the drivers off I think it was the Silicon Image site and those worked.
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited January 2004
    Ok, did you put in the BASE driver from the /other folder on CD onto your floppy, or did you pull another Silicon Image driver from elsewhere on the CD onto floppy???

    Try looking here:

    http://www.motherboard-forum.com/gigabyte/How_do_I_setup_SATA_w8knxp_45619.html

    The second post has a reasonable set of things to do, if you still have no luck after doing that I do not know what to say. I CAN tell you that the XP internal Silicon Image driver is for an earlier Silicon Image RAID chip.

    John.
  • MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
    edited January 2004
    Thanks I just got from class I'll check the site out.
  • MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
    edited January 2004
    LawnMM wrote:
    If its the same raid controller as included on the NF7-S I can post the drivers for you, I had XP hanging trying to install it too, then I downloaded the drivers off I think it was the Silicon Image site and those worked.


    Can you post that driver for me please :-)
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited January 2004
    The most common SI SATA drivers can be found in the downloads section here at Short-Media, your controller is sil3512 if I'm not mistaken, the one on the NF7-S is the sil3112, but there is one driver package for both.

    So this one in the Short-Media downloads is the one you want: http://www.short-media.com/request.php?171

    ...and here's the official download link: http://www.siimage.com (type in 'drivers' into the search box)

    If you continue to have problems with those drivers (the ones here at Short-Media are the latest). Then make sure your SATA BIOS is the uptodate. If you're not sure if it is, or how to find out, let me know and I'll make you a BIOS file for your board with the latest one.

    Cheers
  • SARRASSARRAS Sydney, Australia
    edited January 2004
    "Mass Storage Controller with a yellow explamation point"

    Your board also has a GigaRAID PATA RAID controller on it doesn't it? If so this could well be the driver you need, not the Sil SATA one. SEE Again on your mobo CD - look for GigaRAID drivers.
  • MrCheerio212MrCheerio212
    edited January 2004
    SARRAS wrote:
    "Mass Storage Controller with a yellow explamation point"

    Your board also has a GigaRAID PATA RAID controller on it doesn't it? If so this could well be the driver you need, not the Sil SATA one. SEE Again on your mobo CD - look for GigaRAID drivers.


    I disabled that in the BIOS already.

    Anyways just an update. I got it working after I reformatted it and used a different set of drivers when setting XP up. This time it went through the process of actually installing the device after Windows first boot.

    I used the drivers from silicon's website.

    There was a problem the first time I tried this getting an error when I pressed F6 and then told it to look on my floppy for a driver, but I rebooted and recopied the drivers on the floppy and tried again and it worked.

    I'm all up and running now, thanks for your help guys.
  • DeaconDeacon
    edited February 2004
    Hello there.. same Problem withe the new GA-7n400 Pro 2 (Rev. 2) Board here:

    http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/22202/

    Same SATA Chipset AND NO Drivers avaiable! WHY is Gigabyte releasing Chipsets without Driver Support?? This cost about 10 Hours testing and finding the Problem.. poor Gigabyte never again

    :-(
    Deacon

    WHERE are Drivers for the 3512 Chipset?
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited February 2004
    Deacon wrote:
    Hello there.. same Problem withe the new GA-7n400 Pro 2 (Rev. 2) Board here:

    http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/22202/

    Same SATA Chipset AND NO Drivers avaiable! WHY is Gigabyte releasing Chipsets without Driver Support?? This cost about 10 Hours testing and finding the Problem.. poor Gigabyte never again

    :-(
    Deacon

    WHERE are Drivers for the 3512 Chipset?

    The drivers Gigabyte have on their website, supposedly just for earlier revisions of your motherboard, do in fact support the SATA controller on your board (version 2). I downloaded the driver from Gigabyte (listed for controller 3112) and had a look at them, and you'll notice that in the release notes, the drivers are in fact for '3x12' i.e supportive of both the 3112 controller and the 3512 controller. The reason you may have encountered problems with them is simply because they are very old versions of the driver, v1.0.0.28. You can get the latest version either [link=http://www.short-media.com/request.php?171]here[/link] from the Short-Media downloads section, or direct from [link=http://12.24.47.40/display/2/searchDirect/?searchString=drivers&searchType=allwords&searchby=keywords&r=0.8473932]Silicon Image[/link]. The latest version is v1.0.0.40. That should solve your problems.

    Gigabyte had posted drivers for your controller, they just didn't label them correctly, and of course, hasn't kept them as up to date as they should have.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited February 2004
    Also, I took the liberty of modding that FB bios with the latest Serial ATA BIOS for your controller. The one contained as part of the FB bios was again a little out of date. The BIOS version I've attached to this post now carries the latest Silicon Image 3512 controller BIOS v4347. That should insure you get the best out of your controller.

    Let me know if it works okay, and welcome to Short-Media. :)
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited February 2004
    Speaking of XP hanging when using your RAID controller, my NF7-S would always hang (or appear to hang, it would start eventually, but it would take 30+ minutes) at a black screen when using the latest BIOS (which contains the latest RAID controller BIOS). Has anyone had this problem? Would a BIOS modded with a newer version of the RAID controller BIOS (assuming there IS a newer version (?)) fix this?
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited February 2004
    TheSmJ wrote:
    Speaking of XP hanging when using your RAID controller, my NF7-S would always hang (or appear to hang, it would start eventually, but it would take 30+ minutes) at a black screen when using the latest BIOS (which contains the latest RAID controller BIOS). Has anyone had this problem? Would a BIOS modded with a newer version of the RAID controller BIOS (assuming there IS a newer version (?)) fix this?

    I've used a variety of versions of the SATA BIOS for the 3112 controller on my NF7-S, and never had any problems. I'm currently using version 4.2.47 with the v1.0.0.40 drivers and BIOS version 22. Where exactly does it hang?
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited February 2004
    It would hang right before the first windows load screen, before anything fades in. Even the Windows XP install CD would do this, but it gets stuck for around 30 seconds, rather than 30 minutes. The problem would go away entirely when either the array was deleted, or the RAID bios itself was disabled.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited February 2004
    What's drives are we talking about here? Is XP on the array or on another PATA disk? Let me know more about your setup. Considering it does it even before any drivers are even loaded (e.g early in the boot process and even when running XP setup), it would be fair to conclude it is some sort of hardware conflict, or dare I say it, malfunction.

    Does it still do it if there are no disks plugged into the SATA controller, but the controller itself is still enabled?
  • WoonWoon
    edited February 2004
    TheSmJ wrote:
    Speaking of XP hanging when using your RAID controller, my NF7-S would always hang (or appear to hang, it would start eventually, but it would take 30+ minutes) at a black screen when using the latest BIOS (which contains the latest RAID controller BIOS). Has anyone had this problem? Would a BIOS modded with a newer version of the RAID controller BIOS (assuming there IS a newer version (?)) fix this?

    Hi, I have this problem too! Mine is Abit NFS-V2. I thought by updating my motherboard BIOS to 2.2, the problem would go away, but it didn't. It is not only slow in booting up my WinXP, in fact, even after booted into the windows desktop, my applications ran even slower than from my IDE hard drives! I am really very sad... can anyone help me? :werr:
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited February 2004
    Spinner wrote:
    What's drives are we talking about here? Is XP on the array or on another PATA disk? Let me know more about your setup. Considering it does it even before any drivers are even loaded (e.g early in the boot process and even when running XP setup), it would be fair to conclude it is some sort of hardware conflict, or dare I say it, malfunction.

    Does it still do it if there are no disks plugged into the SATA controller, but the controller itself is still enabled?


    These are 2X WD800JB drives. Windows XP is infact installed onto the array. The fact that only the new RAID bios causes this problem seems to rule out the possibility of a hardware conflict. More like a BIOS bug.
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited February 2004
    Hi, I have this problem too! Mine is Abit NFS-V2. I thought by updating my motherboard BIOS to 2.2, the problem would go away, but it didn't. It is not only slow in booting up my WinXP, in fact, even after booted into the windows desktop, my applications ran even slower than from my IDE hard drives! I am really very sad... can anyone help me?

    What BIOS version you start with? Mine work fine with version 20
  • WoonWoon
    edited February 2004
    TheSmJ wrote:
    What BIOS version you start with? Mine work fine with version 20

    Mine was 2.0 before I updated to 2.2. Please help...
  • TheSmJTheSmJ
    edited February 2004
    So this was a problem even with 20? Strange.

    Is the array running with default settings (16K)? What drives are you using? What SATA-PATA adapters are you using?
  • DeaconDeacon
    edited February 2004
    I now flashed my GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev. 2 to the newest Bios "FB" from the Gigabyte Homepage.. and it runs also like the FA very buggy.. only one out of 10 times it boots up.. 9 times it hangs on blank screen. Win XP runs very instable and gives Blue Screen after few minutes:

    IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or
    PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

    very poor for Gigabyte.. i will return this MB and never buy Gigabyte again..
    Deacon
  • Straight_ManStraight_Man Geeky, in my own way Naples, FL Icrontian
    edited February 2004
    Either RMA board or make BOOT drive an IDE drive if it not already booting from IDE. XP does not like SATA Boot right now, with Silicon Image.

    There are multiple mode options, probably. And, for XP running the combined drives as an IDE map is probably easier than trying for a pure SATA box-- with XP, that is.

    Second, when you choose the combined modes, be careful. An active BIOS can remap drives some. For example:

    I have different board, but it has a Silicon Image 3114 on it. You can run the SI with IDe like this:

    2 IDE and two true SATA. 6 IDE as far as Widnows is concerned, with secondary IDE not available and primary available with 4 SATA hookups mapped as IDE (SI chip handles which mech would be accessed when secondary IDE master is invoked by Windows, Widnows does not know there are TWO drives on channel that feed basicly as one drive to Windows). I run an Abit board, it is an active BIOS, and I had to redo Window's drive maps in recovery console to be able to have drives mesh to real mech right becasue I added drives AND changed BIOS mapping. BIOS did a logical remap of boot order when I did this pair of things-- what Windows "saw" as what drive it should have as C drive, CHANGED.

    Board or RAM most likely, or timings of RAM, you are getting low and high RAM violates. Possible strained PSU, possible device mapping violation and that last is in the manual. Possible also you have RAM that is mismatched and is being misdetected and set to wrong speeds-- a RAM pair with a bad place in low RAM can cause this chaotic RAM error thing, so can a marginally overloaded PSU. So can a radically corrupted installation of Widnows, and bad RAM or worms (malware) can corrupt things like this. MyDoom.f is also a worm, for example, though unlike other worms it does not replace .exe files and leaves DLLs alone. Bad RAM can cause a defective (corruptly built on the fly as you install) windows and\or driver install, so can not grounding board right with studs. So can a bad HD or HDs, or HDs not getting powered right due to a PSU overload that is bad enough that the PSU is unstable.

    Now, also think about this--- say CMOS battery is low on juice, active BIOS gets to reconfigure itself every time it is booted from "cold state," ie when box has been off for over 10-15 minutes to an hour(time off to trigger fault is inversely proportional to how dead CMOS cell is). Does this happen mostly from a cold start, with box off, but after box has been up will it only wamr boot??? Then look at CMOS cell replacement, they run $1.00 to $2.00 and a CR2023 or a DL2023 will normally work on these boards.

    That is the basic "laundry list"....

    John D.
  • SpinnerSpinner Birmingham, UK
    edited February 2004
    Deacon wrote:
    I now flashed my GA-7N400 Pro 2 Rev. 2 to the newest Bios "FB" from the Gigabyte Homepage.. and it runs also like the FA very buggy.. only one out of 10 times it boots up.. 9 times it hangs on blank screen. Win XP runs very instable and gives Blue Screen after few minutes:

    IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL or
    PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

    very poor for Gigabyte.. i will return this MB and never buy Gigabyte again..
    Deacon

    Well firstly, did you not try the BIOS I made you? the one with the latest SATA BIOS on? Regardless, after what you've said now, it seems the motherboard or at least your computer, has a few other issues over that of getting the SATA controller to work. However, if the machine posts okay, and your only problems are getting XP to boot up, I suggest you re-install the OS before sending it back, just to make sure. Try the BIOS I made ya, and see if that helps. Make sure after a flash you fully clear the CMOS, i.e reset it, remove the battery and power cord from the machine for a good few minutes. Also if you do decide to re-install again, make sure you use the latest SATA drivers as well. (v1.0.0.40).

    http://www.short-media.com/forum/showpost.php?p=109064&postcount=18
  • brian_rbrian_r
    edited February 2004
    Hi, I'm having much the same problem with a GA-7VAXP Ultra. I recently purchased 2 x Maxtor 6Y120M drives. I created a raid 0
    installed XP (yes using the F6 option) and all looked well. The system
    would intermittently (1 in 3) not reboot, it would shutdown and not come
    back up. In the system logs I am getting SCSI timeouts.
    OK so i trying installing on one disk with no raid, using the SATALink
    drivers. Again, installs no problems but am still getting timeouts.
    So, I try the same on the other disk and am still getting the same errors.
    The system board is a Rev1.2 and I'm running bios F6. I presume my settings
    in the bios are correct or I would not be able to install in the first
    place.
    I have also installed the SATA as a secondary drive while using an ide as
    the system but still get timeouts.
    Have i got a duff motherboard ? But then why can I install in the first
    place. I have also been able to format both SATA drives from the ide booted
    system. Cables?
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