Vista problem with 2 sata hd

[Guest]

I recently clean installed Vista Ultimate on a 250Gb SATA drive. Everything
went smooth and was working properly. Over the course of a couple of days I
did the online updates available. Then, suddenly the computer would take a
long time to start-up (or wouldn't start at all) and would even lock up when
starting up in safe mode. If it did start up, my second hard drive (an 80Gb
drive, also SATA) would not be detected. After Googling the issue, I was
reminded that there are issues with the nvidia nforce drivers. I remember
that I had similar issues when I first used Win XP and when I used the MS
SATA drivers instead of Nvidia's everything was fine. I thought that this
would solve the problem again since one of the updates was nividia drivers.
So, I reformatted the hard drive and installed Vista again. Everything was
fine for a couple of days and I thought that I had solved the problem.
Unfortunately, yesterday my MS USB trackball mouse froze and I received a
message that a driver was being installed. The computer froze during this
and I eventually restarted. The computer started slow (similar to the
original problem) but did eventually start. When the desktop showed up, I
again received the driver install message. I shortly received the message
that the MS USB trackball driver had installed properly, and the mouse worked
fine. For whatever reason I then went to my computer and saw that the second
hard drive was not listed again. I then received a message saying that Vista
was unable to install the driver for the second hard drive. So now I am back
to the original problem. I looked at the device manager and the MS SATA
drivers are listed so the nvidia ones didn't sneak in. I hope that someone
can help.

 

[CJW]

I recently clean installed Vista Ultimate on a 250Gb SATA drive. Everything
went smooth and was working properly. Over the course of a couple of days I
did the online updates available. Then, suddenly the computer would take a
long time to start-up (or wouldn't start at all) and would even lock up when
starting up in safe mode. If it did start up, my second hard drive (an 80Gb
drive, also SATA) would not be detected. After Googling the issue, I was
reminded that there are issues with the nvidia nforce drivers. I remember
that I had similar issues when I first used Win XP and when I used the MS
SATA drivers instead of Nvidia's everything was fine. I thought that this
would solve the problem again since one of the updates was nividia drivers.
So, I reformatted the hard drive and installed Vista again. Everything was
fine for a couple of days and I thought that I had solved the problem.
Unfortunately, yesterday my MS USB trackball mouse froze and I received a
message that a driver was being installed. The computer froze during this
and I eventually restarted. The computer started slow (similar to the
original problem) but did eventually start. When the desktop showed up, I
again received the driver install message. I shortly received the message
that the MS USB trackball driver had installed properly, and the mouse worked
fine. For whatever reason I then went to my computer and saw that the second
hard drive was not listed again. I then received a message saying that Vista
was unable to install the driver for the second hard drive. So now I am back
to the original problem. I looked at the device manager and the MS SATA
drivers are listed so the nvidia ones didn't sneak in. I hope that someone
can help.

Not sure if I can give you any advice, but I am running Vista fine (as
a dual-boot with XP) using two SATA 150 drives. I downloaded all the
updates, one of which was the MS pushed nVidia nForce driver update.
The board is a MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum. The drives are a WD 34 GB Raptor
and a Seagate 250 GB Baracuda. Both are SATA 150 drives.

 

[P. Di Stolfo]

Hello,

I've been running Vista very well on my SATA 150 harddrives (tested on
both).
Is your harddrive a SATA 300 one?

Greetings,
Paolo Di Stolfo

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the reply. One drive (the one that doesn't show up anymore) is a
Maxtor 80Gb SATA 150. The other, main drive, is SATA 300 (I think). It's a
WD2500KS 3.0Gb/s; it doesn't even say on the western digital site what it is.

 

[Duncan]

I'm running a system with a SATA 300 harddrive, and they seem to be working
fine. The model I'm using is a Seagate Barracude 7200.10 320GB. I also have
another system on dual Western Digital 500GBs also at SATA 300. No problems
with either so far. Check to make sure the drives are shown in BIOS, and
then I would suggest maybe installing the latest chipset and disk controller
drivers for your motherboard. If that doesn't work, perhaps try the nVidia
driver again but rollback to a previous version.

Cheers

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the response. The first time the problem started was after I
downloaded and installed the MS pushed nVidia nForce driver update. That's
when the problem first started. However, after re-installing vista I didn't
install the nVidia nForce driver update and the problem started again. So,
unfortunately, the nVidia nForce driver update isn't the cause or the
solution to the problem. As for other hardware, I have an el cheapo biostar
NF3UL-A9 mobo (not very good but does the job), 1Gb Ram and an Nvidia GeForce
7900GS video card. The 250Gb HD is SATA 300 (I think; the western digital
site doesn't even say, it just says 3.0Gb/s transfer (which I think is
SATA300)). The other HD (the one that doesn't show up anymore) is a maxtor
SATA150.

 

[Duncan]

Just posted another reply while you typed your last msg I guess! The
WD2500KS is the Caviar SE16 250GB with 16MB cache, the same model as the
500GB I listed in my other post. It's official number is WD2500AAKS (you
missed the AA I guess). I wouldn't think it matters if one is SATA 150 and
the other SATA 300 - I have one system that has a SATA 150 and then an old
ATA (100 or 133) drive in it and they both work fine together.

Cheers

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the response. I wouldn't have necessarily expected that there
would have been a problem running one SATA 150 with a SATA 300 either. Both
hard drives show up in the bios initially. Then, after the problems start,
the 80Gb drive is no longer present in the bios. The drivers show up
unchanged in the device manager without exclamation points or any other
problem indicator. I'm thinking that it may be a mobo issue because once
windows starts (albeit after a long wait) everything seems to work fine
(except for the second hard drive being available).

 

[P. Di Stolfo]

Hello,

additionally to updating your chipset etc. drivers, you could try changing a
harddisk feature in BIOS, something like "configure SATA as IDE".
At least you could give it a try, if nothing helps.

Greetings,
P. Di Stolfo

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm at work now (obviously working hard) but will
try your suggestion when I get home tonight.