Going crazy with Asus P5K-E and SATA installation

I just received parts for a new system, and I am going crazy trying to set up hard drives using ACHI with the Intel ICH9R controller.

The crux of the problem is that I cannot get WinXP Pro SP2 installed on the new hard drive with the ACHI mode enabled. I read a number of threads about this, and I cannot find a solution to my problem.

I followed the instructions provided with the motherboard, and on the forums. I created ICH9R driver floppy disks using the drives provided by Asus. Then I put in the WinXP32 SP2 disk. I hit F6, installed the ICH9R ACHI SATA driver (first one on the list) and proceeded to install. I created a completely new partition (no other partitions viewable), proceeded to install XP. I can get through the first round of XP install, however as soon the system restarts I get the BSOD with the System Failure messages along the lines of a "c000021a" failure.

Going in my BIOS and changing the mode to IDE I can proceed to the next set of installation screens, however anytime I change to ACHI I would get BSOD. If I leave it on IDE, it would boot 3 out of 4 times, but then get ntdll.dll BSOD error.

As of now I have a single WD Raptor drive attached. The EIDE NEC drive is attached to JMicro EIDE/RAID controller and is in IDE mode.

The BIOS is 1004 (I flashed it), I did memtest on the Corsair RAM entire night with no errors. Everything in the BIOS looks good, I reseted to default many times.

One could point to my rather weak powersupply, but I think these errors are associated to the P5K-E and the ICH9R controller as people have played around with this issue.

I have tried playing with the WinXP install for hours and hours. Any help is much appreciated.

I am on the verge on an RMA.

Kind regards,
George

a list of exact hardware would be good.

As i understand it ACHI sata is flacky on these lower end boards. I suggest installing windows from scratch in IDE mode first up. That should stop ntdll.dll error. Once in windows is installed then track down drivers from intel for the ICH9R south bridge and update them. then switch to ACHI and see if it boots. Thats all i can think of, i have the same board but i used RAID which has been working flawlessly since i installed it.

GL (and i seriously doubt its the PSU, too many people blame PSU's for everything)

The specs are as follows:

Asus P5K-E wifi
Enermax Noisetaker 425watt Power Supply
Corsair XMS2 w/DHT 4gig ram PC800 (2 x 2gig)
MSI 8800GT 512MG OC Video Card
WD Raptor 150 X SATA Drive
NEC EIDE 3550 DVD-R drive
Cooler: Zalman 9500, 72mm and 120mm Zalmans inside Lian Li basic case

1) I downgraded the bios to 0906. I have not tried OC as I cannot even get the system stable as is.
2) I created two disks of the Asus BIOS CD now, one for the JMicro, one for the Intel ICH9R.

For all I do a flat install, delete the partitions (Note I another WD74 gig Raptor drive for data (and old installations) but it's currently disconnected while I am troubleshooting.

I suggest installing windows from scratch in IDE mode first up.

Click to expand...

I presume w/o iostor.sys and drives of the F6 boot, just use clean ATAPI drivers that come standard with Win XP?

I also have done partition delete, quick format between tries; someone suggested the "writting zeros" method, which is time consuming, but I may try that between installations.

Thanks!

try installing it as raid even if it is only one drive worked like a charm for my p5w dh
Rich

w2richwood said:

try installing it as raid even if it is only one drive worked like a charm for my p5w dh
Rich

Click to expand...

Hey did you do this with the F6 and load up the ICH9R driver? Did you also load up the JMicro driver during the F6 Win XP startup?

Thanks!

Hi, you have to turn on compatible mode in Main Menu\Sata configuration in bios... Don't need the floppy at all during the installation of xp.. i think it will work.. cheers

I removed one DIMM from the motherboard the BSOD stopped. I was able to install XP with AHCI and continue. This is after maybe 20 failed installations (BSOD, ntdll.dll error). I guess I should try the simple options.

However, I put the DIMM back after I installed all software, and it works. I manually put in the settings for my RAM and it seems to work. The memory is Corsair TWIN2X4096-6400C5DHX.

I ran the memtest86 for the whole night and found nothing, but it was persistent with the BSOD. How do I know if I have defective RAM?

Thanks!