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22 September 2005

A8N-SLI Premium + Windows x64 Pro

Ok, so the last blog entry was about this too, and one of the machines is going to be FreeBSD, but I thought I better start keeping notes somewhere other than gmail. I also though that, instead of just commenting on the last post, I would make the title something obviously identifiable when searching for my notes. I'll do the FreeBSD install in a seperate one.

Now, to start off with, firmware/drivers. I have the following:
  • Silicon Image 3114 Driver Disk v1.1.0.1 [Asus]
  • nVidia CK804 SATARAID chipset driver disk v6.66 for xp64 [Asus]
  • A8N-SLI Premium bios v1007.002 [Asus]
  • nVidia CK804 PATARAID chipset driver disk v6.66 xp64 [Asus]
  • A8N-SLI Premium bios v1008 [Asus]
  • Silicon Image 3114 Driver Disk v1.2.3.1 for Win64 [SI]

Originally, I used the bios 1007.002 and the 3114 v1.1.0.1 drivers. After getting windows running (about 10 attempts to format it until I cut the size of the C partition in about 1/2), the silicon image controller was 'unknown' in device manager. I noticed updated bios (v1008) and upgraded it.

Upon reboot, I noticed one of the RAID5 set was missing, and windows did the constant-reboot-panic.

Downgraded the BIOS, booted noticing the RAID5 drive was still missing. Windows loaded, and I upgraded the 3114 driver to 1.2.3.1 and the chipset to CK804. Upon rebooting, noticed that still no drive#3 (out of 4). Also noticed that the raid utility was reporting that I had the same amount of hard drive space available, with one less drive. Sounds to me like a likely candidate for hosing my filesystem at some point.

Upgraded the BIOS again, again not bootable.

Decided to try reinstalling Windows from scratch (they are hosed anyways, right). At the F6 prompt, used the SATARAID and 3114 v1.2.3.1 drivers. Wouldn't get past 'Starting Windows'.

Downgraded the BIOS again.

Tried to reinstalling Windows again. Complained that the drive could not be formatted at about 98%. Tried again, locked up at about 40%.

Hmm, ok. Tried latest bios, latest chipset, asus 3114 driver. Said that line 35 (which shouldn't have even been in use) of TxtSetup.oem wasn't valid. Hmm, ok.

Now I am trying v1007.002 bios, latest chipset from asus (SATARAID version), and the Asus v1.1.0.1 3114 drivers. We'll see.

I was debating whether to upgrade the BIOS after getting Windows running -- but maybe it isn't worth it.

20 comments:

  1. no such luck. after it was done formatting and copying files, it had me reinsert the floppy to install the chipset drivers, then said it couldn't find them even though I verified they were there.

    going to try no chipset drivers, 1007-002 bios and the asus 3114 drivers.

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  2. Well, that time it got to the point for me to enter the registration key. After I did, blue screen of death. Upon reboot, said drive not found.

    Now trying asus 3114 driver and the asus chipset driver from the mobo cd (v5.10.2600.0475)

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  3. hmm, blue screen of death after confirming that format isn't working. maybe I need to reflash the bios down to what it originally was?

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  4. hmm, the motherboard contains the following BIOS files:
    A8N-E.BIN, A8N-SLI.BIN, A8NSLI-B.BIN, A8N-SLI-P.BIN....

    The manual had told me to download new firmware and name it A8NSLI-B.BIN, but maybe the -P makes more sense for Premium board... I am going to try to flash the bios with A8N-SLI-P.BIN, redo the raid set, reboot onto windows CD and use the chipset and raid drivers from the cd.

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  5. just to make sure it wipes the old raid, change it to 8K chunks instead of 32K

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  6. well, that didn't get past 1% formatting. going back to firmware 1007-002

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  7. going to try 1007-002, v6.66, v1.2.3.1

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  8. well, before doing that, we can across this on the asus support site:


    Question


    I'm using Hitachi 80G SATAII HDD on my A8N-SLI Deluxe. After installing NVIDIA chipset driver, I can only see HDD with SATA1 support (150MB/s) under Device Manager. Why?

    Answer

    This is because the HDD vendor will often set SATA1 as default value for their new SATAII HDD. Hitachi also releases a tool named "Feature Tool" for changing the settings to SATA II. Please refer to the following link on Hitachi 's website for detail.
    http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/download.htm

    So, I ran it, and tried to set the drives to SATA 3Gb/sec and it said the settings couldn't be changed!

    What the hell? Why buy a motherboard with SATAII and buy SATAII drives if I can't enable SATAII????

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  9. Well, fucking A. So Asus sold me a board based on the Si3114 controller doing RAID5 on SATAII.

    And guess what? they lied.

    you can choose either RAID5 on the Si3114 or SATAII on the nVidia. Damn it. That means in order to get the 3Gb/sec, best raid I can do is going to cost me 1TB of hard drive space.

    DAMN it.

    Ok, well if we are going to change drivers and everything, might as well try newest bios first.

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  10. well, that didn't work. now trying the nvidia controller, 1007-002 bios and the v6.66 drivers. since I don't actually have anything plugged into the si3114, not going to bother with that driver right now.

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  11. shit. well, windows installed, but as soon as I rebooted the first time (after installing drivers), blue screen of death.

    did last known good, reinstalled drivers. blue screen of death.

    not sure which driver did it.

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  12. well, keep having problems. get into windows but then it either blue screens or just keeps rebooting.

    this time, I am trying v6.66 and 1.2.3.1 and then have to remember to NOT install older versions from the CD>

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  13. don't install the Asus VGA driver disk either - that sucked. Limited me to 4-bit color. You think it would do better, what with it coming with an nVidia graphics card.

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  14. things seems to be running ok... I was able to share yesterday, but as of today I am getting errors when I try to access my shares from another computer.

    going to try the irpstacksize reghack found at http://www.chicagotech.net/neterrors.htm#Not%20enough%20server%20storage%20is%20available%20to%20process%20this%20command.%20error.
    because Event Viewer also mentioned that the value was too low.

    wonder what value to set it to. hhm, doesn't exist yet... will set it to...

    per http://www.dslreports.com/faq/4817
    trying 20

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  15. ok, now I am getting the error next on the list.. max registry size? don't see that option. how about this, will change virtual paging to System Controlled.

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  16. well, one of the machines seems to be able to access it after I rebooted.

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  17. well, not sure if I screwed myself yet but I went ahead and downloaded the latest nvidia video and mobo drivers.... v6.66 of the mobo... v78.01 of the video... we'll see.

    well, it boots... says SLI is enabled now. haven't tried any games yet. we shall see...

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  18. this is interesting... ran the nVidia mixer, and even though I have 2.1 speakers, it optimized it as 7.1 speakers. wierd.

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