Abit KV7 SATA boot problem

lost eden · 10-18-2004, 02:04 PM

I have an Abit KV7 mobo with an onboard VIA SATA RAID controller. I have SATA channel one connected to a 60GB diamondmax plus 9 SATA hard drive. This is the only hard drive in the computer. I want to install Windows 2000 professional to this drive, and boot from this drive.

Before, I didn't notice the option in the bios that allows booting from the onboard SATA contoller, so I was booting from a 3GB IDE drive. But now that I can boot from SATA I would much rather boot from the SATA drive and do away with the noisy IDE drive, wires and power drain.

I booted the Windows 2000 professional CD, and loaded the SATA drivers for windows 2000 provided along with the motherboard on a floppy disk. This allows the setup program to see the SATA drive and access/write to it. So I format the drive using NTFS, Windows leaves 8mb for itself as 'partition information storage' which I don't mind, then it installs all of the files to the disk. The computer reboots, I remove the USB floppy disk drive, it then tries to boot from the SATA hard drive and says that it cannot read the boot sector, so cannot progress any further in the loading of the OS. However the first time I installed to the drive, it did recognise the boot sector, but the install was messed up so I had to re-install.

Personally, I think that the boot sector is messed up(possibly because of the above reason), and could do with wiping then re-writing, but I haven't found ANY program that I can use to wipe the boot secotr. The Windows 2000 install only gives you partitioning options and doesn't seem to overwrite the boot sector during its install, Partition Magic 5 doesn't recognise any hard drives attached to the computer so closes, Acronis Partition Expert doesn't even start-up. Even my tried & tested method of knocking out boot secotrs doesn't work - take the SuSE linux 9.0 live evaluation CD, boot up, go into YAST, and there is then an option to replace the boot sector with 'generic code'. This has always worked on IDE hard drives, and replaces the boot sector with a new one easily recognisable by Windows 2000. But when I tried to do this with the SATA drive, Linux didn't even get past the hardware scan.

So unless I can knock-out the boot sector on this disk somehow, I can't use it. I'm going to have a look around the Microsoft Knowledge Base and some Abit resources of some sort, but I could really do with your toned hardcore trouble shooting skills. And don't just say use a search engine, thats what I'm trying now. Come to think of it I know that there is somebody on these forums who has a KV7, but I can't think who...

firemachine69 · 10-18-2004, 02:17 PM

Get rid of the 3 gigger for now.

Get the Maxtor utilities (I'll find the linky in a bit), and do a low-level format to the SATA drive. Same may apply to the 3 gig if you really want to.

<EDIT>

MaxBlast in ISO format (you'll need a blank CD)

http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=19

lost eden · 10-18-2004, 02:23 PM

Yeah I am loosing the 3gig job, that was just because I didn't think that the mobo even allowed booting from SATA.

I'll download and try that utility, but its no use at all if it only formats the main volume and not the boot sector. The main volume of the drive is fine, its just the boot sector that needs wiping. But you never know, it might do it.

I'll get back when I've tried it, but that'll probably be 20-ish hours.

EDIT: okay make that a bit lnger than 20-ish hours, I can't download 50+ megs on dial-up so I'll have to wait until my dad goes to his office where he can use the multi megabit connection.

kraig · 10-18-2004, 03:07 PM

have a windows XP cd lying around??. if the windows 2000 cd has recovery console, then go into that, and type fixboot and fixmbr. if not, get a windowsxp cd and do that.

otherwise its up to using the maxblast utility. if i remember correctly, there is a floppy maxblast utility you can use. not 100% sure on that either

lost eden · 10-18-2004, 03:49 PM

Okay, since my last post, I managed to use the Windows 2000 CD (which allowed me toload the SATA drivrs off the floppy) then go to the 'recovery console', got to a command line, and used fixboot that (supposedely) re-wrote the boot sector. So I then rebooted,and re-installed Windows 2000, but stillit won't boot. It just comes up with the message "invalid system disk - insert correct system disk and press enter".

If you ask me, the thing isn't even trying to read the SATA hard drive. Even though I've told it to on the bios. Themaxblast utility will not help anymore than fixboot. Maxblast will format the entire drive, andmay even miss out the boot sectoe, when all I was after was the boot sector. But now fixboot supposedely did fix the boot sector, I think there isn't a problem with the drive any more, and its a matter that the thing isn't actually trying to read from the SATA drive....

I'm gonna do some more searching.

Flunk · 10-18-2004, 04:10 PM

does the sata controller bios detect the drive properly on boot? Do you have the Onboard SATA Bios enabled and the system set with Onboard SATA or SCSI or whatever the right bios option is?

lost eden · 10-20-2004, 08:04 AM

Got it.

Took two things, one fairly obvious really, the second not really related at all...

1.) Flashed bios from version 10 to version 17 (can't believe I didn't think of that first...)
2.) It appears that if either/both of bios USB keyboard & mouse support are set to bios not os then the SATA controller is completely knocked out. Why in heaven's name I don't know.

Anyway, all is fine and dandy now, thanks for the advice.

Flunk · 10-20-2004, 04:51 PM

Good to hear it worked out. Sometimes the solution is something that sounds crazy and nonsensical at first and sometimes it's something obvious but whatever works, works. nes pas?

firemachine69 · 10-20-2004, 07:36 PM

That makes...

no sense...

Anyways, glad you figured it out.

10-18-2004, 02:04 PM	#1
lost eden mini-tower rocker Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Midlands, England Posts: 692	Abit KV7 SATA boot problem I have an Abit KV7 mobo with an onboard VIA SATA RAID controller. I have SATA channel one connected to a 60GB diamondmax plus 9 SATA hard drive. This is the only hard drive in the computer. I want to install Windows 2000 professional to this drive, and boot from this drive. Before, I didn't notice the option in the bios that allows booting from the onboard SATA contoller, so I was booting from a 3GB IDE drive. But now that I can boot from SATA I would much rather boot from the SATA drive and do away with the noisy IDE drive, wires and power drain. I booted the Windows 2000 professional CD, and loaded the SATA drivers for windows 2000 provided along with the motherboard on a floppy disk. This allows the setup program to see the SATA drive and access/write to it. So I format the drive using NTFS, Windows leaves 8mb for itself as 'partition information storage' which I don't mind, then it installs all of the files to the disk. The computer reboots, I remove the USB floppy disk drive, it then tries to boot from the SATA hard drive and says that it cannot read the boot sector, so cannot progress any further in the loading of the OS. However the first time I installed to the drive, it did recognise the boot sector, but the install was messed up so I had to re-install. Personally, I think that the boot sector is messed up(possibly because of the above reason), and could do with wiping then re-writing, but I haven't found ANY program that I can use to wipe the boot secotr. The Windows 2000 install only gives you partitioning options and doesn't seem to overwrite the boot sector during its install, Partition Magic 5 doesn't recognise any hard drives attached to the computer so closes, Acronis Partition Expert doesn't even start-up. Even my tried & tested method of knocking out boot secotrs doesn't work - take the SuSE linux 9.0 live evaluation CD, boot up, go into YAST, and there is then an option to replace the boot sector with 'generic code'. This has always worked on IDE hard drives, and replaces the boot sector with a new one easily recognisable by Windows 2000. But when I tried to do this with the SATA drive, Linux didn't even get past the hardware scan. So unless I can knock-out the boot sector on this disk somehow, I can't use it. I'm going to have a look around the Microsoft Knowledge Base and some Abit resources of some sort, but I could really do with your toned hardcore trouble shooting skills. And don't just say use a search engine, thats what I'm trying now. Come to think of it I know that there is somebody on these forums who has a KV7, but I can't think who... __________________ Tsunami Sagittarius mini-tower Abit kV7 athlon xp-m 2400+ @ 2357MHz 512mb DDR400 5900xt @ 460/985MHz Shuttle SK41G athlon xp 1700+ 512mb DDR266 MX440 Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop mobile P2 233MHz 128MB RAM Joshua Foundation Oz Experience - please donate!

10-18-2004, 02:17 PM	#2
firemachine69 hCw~junkie Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 13,832	Get rid of the 3 gigger for now. Get the Maxtor utilities (I'll find the linky in a bit), and do a low-level format to the SATA drive. Same may apply to the 3 gig if you really want to. <EDIT> MaxBlast in ISO format (you'll need a blank CD) http://www.maxtor.com/portal/site/Ma...&downloadID=19 __________________ Last edited by firemachine69; 10-18-2004 at 02:19 PM.

10-18-2004, 02:23 PM	#3
lost eden mini-tower rocker Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Midlands, England Posts: 692	Yeah I am loosing the 3gig job, that was just because I didn't think that the mobo even allowed booting from SATA. I'll download and try that utility, but its no use at all if it only formats the main volume and not the boot sector. The main volume of the drive is fine, its just the boot sector that needs wiping. But you never know, it might do it. I'll get back when I've tried it, but that'll probably be 20-ish hours. EDIT: okay make that a bit lnger than 20-ish hours, I can't download 50+ megs on dial-up so I'll have to wait until my dad goes to his office where he can use the multi megabit connection. __________________ Tsunami Sagittarius mini-tower Abit kV7 athlon xp-m 2400+ @ 2357MHz 512mb DDR400 5900xt @ 460/985MHz Shuttle SK41G athlon xp 1700+ 512mb DDR266 MX440 Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop mobile P2 233MHz 128MB RAM Joshua Foundation Oz Experience - please donate! Last edited by lost eden; 10-18-2004 at 02:28 PM.

10-18-2004, 03:07 PM	#4
kraig Avg. Geek Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: Halifax NS Posts: 4,669	have a windows XP cd lying around??. if the windows 2000 cd has recovery console, then go into that, and type fixboot and fixmbr. if not, get a windowsxp cd and do that. otherwise its up to using the maxblast utility. if i remember correctly, there is a floppy maxblast utility you can use. not 100% sure on that either __________________ I believe that the very act of believing in something causes us to distance ourselves from that thing. Now since we all know that in order to fully understand a thing one must be that thing, it seems obvious that the state of believing in something inevitably causes us to not truly understand it. This leads to all sorts of difficulties. "I believe in love" has a better than even chance of leading to divorce, while "I believe in God" seems to end in variations on the Spanish Inquisition -CLP

10-18-2004, 03:49 PM	#5
lost eden mini-tower rocker Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Midlands, England Posts: 692	Okay, since my last post, I managed to use the Windows 2000 CD (which allowed me toload the SATA drivrs off the floppy) then go to the 'recovery console', got to a command line, and used fixboot that (supposedely) re-wrote the boot sector. So I then rebooted,and re-installed Windows 2000, but stillit won't boot. It just comes up with the message "invalid system disk - insert correct system disk and press enter". If you ask me, the thing isn't even trying to read the SATA hard drive. Even though I've told it to on the bios. Themaxblast utility will not help anymore than fixboot. Maxblast will format the entire drive, andmay even miss out the boot sectoe, when all I was after was the boot sector. But now fixboot supposedely did fix the boot sector, I think there isn't a problem with the drive any more, and its a matter that the thing isn't actually trying to read from the SATA drive.... I'm gonna do some more searching. __________________ Tsunami Sagittarius mini-tower Abit kV7 athlon xp-m 2400+ @ 2357MHz 512mb DDR400 5900xt @ 460/985MHz Shuttle SK41G athlon xp 1700+ 512mb DDR266 MX440 Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop mobile P2 233MHz 128MB RAM Joshua Foundation Oz Experience - please donate!

10-18-2004, 04:10 PM	#6
Flunk Henshin a go go baby! Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Toronto, ON, Canada Posts: 4,775	does the sata controller bios detect the drive properly on boot? Do you have the Onboard SATA Bios enabled and the system set with Onboard SATA or SCSI or whatever the right bios option is? __________________ Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Value must be 1 or below' in \www\hardcoreware.net\forum\index.php:623 Stack trace: #0 \www\hardcoreware.net\forum\index.php(12): checkNum(28) #1 {main} thrown in \www\hardcoreware.net\forum\index.php on line 623

10-20-2004, 08:04 AM	#7
lost eden mini-tower rocker Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: Midlands, England Posts: 692	Got it. Took two things, one fairly obvious really, the second not really related at all... 1.) Flashed bios from version 10 to version 17 (can't believe I didn't think of that first...) 2.) It appears that if either/both of bios USB keyboard & mouse support are set to bios not os then the SATA controller is completely knocked out. Why in heaven's name I don't know. Anyway, all is fine and dandy now, thanks for the advice. __________________ Tsunami Sagittarius mini-tower Abit kV7 athlon xp-m 2400+ @ 2357MHz 512mb DDR400 5900xt @ 460/985MHz Shuttle SK41G athlon xp 1700+ 512mb DDR266 MX440 Toshiba Tecra 8000 laptop mobile P2 233MHz 128MB RAM Joshua Foundation Oz Experience - please donate!

10-20-2004, 04:51 PM	#8
Flunk Henshin a go go baby! Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Toronto, ON, Canada Posts: 4,775	Good to hear it worked out. Sometimes the solution is something that sounds crazy and nonsensical at first and sometimes it's something obvious but whatever works, works. nes pas? __________________ Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Exception' with message 'Value must be 1 or below' in \www\hardcoreware.net\forum\index.php:623 Stack trace: #0 \www\hardcoreware.net\forum\index.php(12): checkNum(28) #1 {main} thrown in \www\hardcoreware.net\forum\index.php on line 623 Last edited by Flunk; 10-21-2004 at 07:36 AM.

10-20-2004, 07:36 PM	#9
firemachine69 hCw~junkie Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Ontario, Canada Posts: 13,832	That makes... no sense... Anyways, glad you figured it out. __________________

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