Problem with Silicon 3112a Raid controller

[Firehawk]

Hi All,

I am new to this website and forum. I did a google search for my problem and this was one of the sites I got so I signed up in hopes that I can become a community member and that you guys might be able to help me with my problem.

Basically I have the same problem as Tailspin and Pickbaby. I have an Asus A7N8X DELUXE and I am running Windows XP PRO SP1. I recently purchased my first SATA Hard Drive (Western Digital 74gig 10000 rpm Raptor). (I only have this 1 HD on this mobo) I installed the drive and installed XP PRO, everything runs smoothly now. Unfortunatly I have a yellow question mark next to my raid controller in my devise manager. I clicked update driver and it seemed to be ok but when I rebooted my pc froze at the windows loading screen. after 20 min I hit reset and chose to use "the last settings that worked". I checked the devise manager and the yellow question marked was still there. Now I got fed up and went to my local comp store and purchased a new A7N8X Deluxe. Again i installed win xp and everything works fine but the yellow questin mark is still there. When I install the raid controller drivers sure as sh*t windows locked at the windows loading screen. Now I have the latest bios (1007) and I have tried 3 different drivers for the raid controller (the disk my mobo came with, the silicon image web site's driver and the asus driver) all giving me the same locking of windows. This never happened with my IDE HD. So I thought maybe my HD is defective so I went to the western digital webite , downloaded the diagnostic tool and ran it. Everything seems ok, no errors. I HAve no option in bios to enable/disable the raid controller so I cant do anything there and im sure the jumpers on the mobo are set to enable.
Ok so not only am I out of Ideas but now Im getting worried that I'll never get this to work on this expensive machine.
So can you guys please help me, I am really desperate here I'll take anything you guys give me lol.

thanks

ps I apologise for not making my own thread first :P

[C_deck]

this was posted by tailspin.

"Ok...i seem to have fixed my problem as well today..apparently...i needed to have the RAID controller set to enabled in my bios, and my SATA controller set to "raid", and not set to "Base" in my bios for the SIL 3112 drivers to work and not hang XP at the logo screen...why this is i dont know?...i do not use raid...i only have 1 sata drive...so i just assumed that i would not need the raid controller enabled....just the sata controller..but i guess one controller need's the other to be enabled for the drivers to work properly? beats me...but once i did this, XP booted just fine, and everything was listed in my device manager.
"

[Firehawk]

unfortunatly I dont have the option to disable/enable my raid controller in my bios. the A7N8X Deluxe does not have this for some reason. The only thing I have is jumpers on my mobo to enable/disable my raid controller and I am sure it is set to enable. I tried the other setting a while back and it just said no haerd disk detected so im sure that was disabling my raid controller.

[C_deck]

when the comp first boots, you'll see a prompt like "press S to enter raid or sata utility". tailspin said to set it to raid from base.

[Firehawk]

The only option i have are to create raid set, delete raid set, resolve conflict. When I click on them it tells me (Respectively) not enough single drives to create raid set, no raid set to delete, no conflics exist.
When I install the raid drivers and reboot and go into this raid utility it also gives me an option to do a low level format which I did not know what its for so I did not do it. I did not want to wipe my HD clean if i dont have to. I didnt think this format would help me tho... what do you think?

btw thanks for your help so far

[Firehawk]

pickbaby posted this:

I have solved my problem. Apparently, I installed the Silicon Image IDE driver by mistake at the beginning of my winxp install. This allowed windows to see my sata drive on the raid chip but as an ide drive. There was no way to correct this situation without reinstalling winxp. I went to Silicon Image and downloaded the latest raid drivers, .32, and extracted to disk and used this for the new install. Everything works great including the scsi/raid controller. Also my sata HD seems to be faster.
Take care.

what do you think? I did not install the raid drivers like this.... all i installed at the windows installation was the drivers to allow win xp to see the sata HD because it first said no HD detected.
Perhaps if I press F6 and install the raid drivers this might help?