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MSI FM2-A75MA-E35, OCZ Vertex II 60gb, and Windows 7

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Tomsawyer

Member
Joined
Jan 5, 2001
I just purchased a FM2-A75MA-E35, a A6 5400K processor, and 4 gbs of GSKILL memory. The power supply is a PC&Power 500 watt. This is a present for my son as a mine craft game machine hence the low cost cpu and board.

In a nutshell I have been attempting to install windows 7 ultimate onto the OCZ Vertex II 60gb SSD. The board sees the drive and the memory and I have it set for ACHI. However when the install reaches the Setup is preparing your computer for first use it will stall. I have even allowed it to run overnight to no avail. It never reaches a working windows 7 state.

Some of the things I have tried:

The vertex came from my main machine which is a sandybridge 2500k overlocked to 4.5ghz on water cooling on a 1000 watt coolermaster PSU. I bought a new 250 Samsung SSD for that machine. I can fully install win 7 onto the vertex ssd on the sandy with no issues. This has been done with both a DVD drive and a USB boot flash. Same with the 250 Samsung. So for the sandy both SSD's have NO problem with installing win 7 ultimate to a fully working windows state. Done it 3 times now.

On the MSI board using the same DVD drive and USB flash drive again it will reach the point where win 7 has been expanded and files copied over. It then goes to preparing the computer and just will run so slow that it never reaches a working windows state. Even after an overnight attempt I had to shut it down.

I have tried another copy of windows 7 ultimate as both DVD and USB and got the same never reach working windows state on the MSI board.

Tried moving the SATA cable to 3 different ports of the 6 available. 1, 3 and then 6. Tried 2 different SATA cables to include 1 from the new MSI box. Nada.

I then got an old WD 74GB SATA raptor magnetic drive out and installed that onto the MSI board. It CAN and HAS fully installed Win 7 ultimate with NO problems both from DVD and USB boot.

So my perplexity and asking for help is can anyone please offer me some advice as to why this MSI board is doing this? Why can a mag drive be accepted and work where the SATA works on the sandy but NOT on the amd.

Any advice and hints are most welcome and I say thanks in advance!
 
Were it me I would boot to a Gparted Live and remove any partiton on the 60gig SSD and then create one NTFS partition and by default Gparted should set correct partition boundary of 1MIB is the default. Make that one partition active from within Gparted and then commence to try the install again. I have followed this procedure many times with OCZ SSD and never had any trouble since I began to go this route. YMMV.
RGone...

EDIT:
By the way I would ensure the SSD is on the first or 0 sata port and that the optical drive is on the last port which with AMD is supposed to be for opticals.
END EDIT.
 
Thanks Lvcoyote and Rgone

Made sure I had the latest Bios per MSI. Bios files as .exe still bother me

Made sure the SSD is on sata 1 and the dvd on sata 6

Used Parted Magic to first secure erase the OCZ to factory state. Then using Gparted created a single NTFS partition of a total size 55.9 GB with the default of 1 minimum

Shut down and switched to Win 7 Flash Drive......

and stuck on Setup is preparing your computer for first use.



Ok raptor drive works. SSD however does not. Has to be something the MSI motherboard is doing. Built in SSD driver???

Again thanks guys, I WILL figure this out :)



Updated the firmware to the latest from OCZ, and then used that secure erase.......
 
Last edited:
Ok I am a tired monkey and it shows.

When in doubt ALWAYS check your firmware. After updating the firmware and then resetting the TRIM I went back to try windows again.

BOOM solid install. I suspect it worked fine on the Asus board as when I set it up years back I trimmed it for that board.

In any event yippie :)
 
Man I am glad you got it fixed. The next round of things to look for was not going to be easy and I don't know that even the next round of checking would uncover a needed firmware update. I was beginning to think it was Win 7 not installed as using VGA driver only and was doing something odd with the inbuilt video. Since that was not the situation, I believe you are very fortunate to update firmware on your gut check and have it all work. Congrats man.
RGone...
 
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