NVIDIA nForce3 250 and SATA... what gives?

[AKJACKAL]

My apologies if this has been posted before....

I recently got a Seagate SATA drive. Until this point I have been using a
PATA drive, but I filled it up. I first tried to install the new drive as a
data drive, keeping both drives in the system. (After all, the PATA drive is
functioning fine, I just need more room for raw video and audio files.)
Well, the system did not like that at all... blue screens and lockups
GALORE.

So, I loaded XP onto the the SATA drive, transferred my critical data, and
removed the PATA drive. Suddenly, things appeared to clear right up.
However, as I'm getting SP2 and other updates installed, I start bogging
down. Blue screens soon follow. The motherboard support site suggests that
the chipset and sata drivers are to blame. Loading the ones on their site,
makes it worse. After 3 attempts in safe mode, I finally get them rolled
back. Contacting the mobo support again I am told that their drivers suck,
get them directly from Nvidia. Doing so... no help. Now, I don't get blue
screens, I just lock up every time I load windows. So, again, I'm back to
multiple safe mode adjustments just to get the system to load up.

The system is up, but it again is very slow. It's acting like I have a bad
stick of memory, but I have already tested that and eliminated that
possibility. Can anyone shed some light on how to set up and optimize this
system? (I'm making some heated calls to some manufacturers as well, but I
really need help here.)

System:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gigabyte GA-K8NS mobo (NVIDIA nForce 3, 250 chipset)
1GB (2x512) of Kingston DDR400 (DIMMs)
AMD Athelon-64 3000+ (2.01GB) CPU
Seagate ST3160812AS 160GB SATA HDD
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT AGP Graphics card (128MB DDR)
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum Sound board.
MSI 16X DVD-ROM
Realtek 8139A PCI NIC
OS: Windows XP Home Edition (32bit)

 

[Paul]

My apologies if this has been posted before....

I recently got a Seagate SATA drive. Until this point I have been using a
PATA drive, but I filled it up. I first tried to install the new drive as a
data drive, keeping both drives in the system. (After all, the PATA drive is
functioning fine, I just need more room for raw video and audio files.)
Well, the system did not like that at all... blue screens and lockups
GALORE.

So, I loaded XP onto the the SATA drive, transferred my critical data, and
removed the PATA drive. Suddenly, things appeared to clear right up.
However, as I'm getting SP2 and other updates installed, I start bogging
down. Blue screens soon follow. The motherboard support site suggests that
the chipset and sata drivers are to blame. Loading the ones on their site,
makes it worse. After 3 attempts in safe mode, I finally get them rolled
back. Contacting the mobo support again I am told that their drivers suck,
get them directly from Nvidia. Doing so... no help. Now, I don't get blue
screens, I just lock up every time I load windows. So, again, I'm back to
multiple safe mode adjustments just to get the system to load up.

The system is up, but it again is very slow. It's acting like I have a bad
stick of memory, but I have already tested that and eliminated that
possibility. Can anyone shed some light on how to set up and optimize this
system? (I'm making some heated calls to some manufacturers as well, but I
really need help here.)

System:
------------------------------------------------------------------
Gigabyte GA-K8NS mobo (NVIDIA nForce 3, 250 chipset)
1GB (2x512) of Kingston DDR400 (DIMMs)
AMD Athelon-64 3000+ (2.01GB) CPU
Seagate ST3160812AS 160GB SATA HDD
NVIDIA GeForce FX 5900XT AGP Graphics card (128MB DDR)
Creative Soundblaster X-Fi Platinum Sound board.
MSI 16X DVD-ROM
Realtek 8139A PCI NIC
OS: Windows XP Home Edition (32bit)

I found this thread interesting - it isn't for your exact
board, but it sounds like kinda the same symptoms. You might
want to uninstall your video drivers, before changing the
chipset drivers, because I think I've also heard of people
having problems installing them in the wrong order.

http://groups.google.ca/group/alt.c..._frm/thread/bf64e7567024222e/87474c7e7c6d9056

In terms of tools, you can use HDTach to benchmark the drive
and see what mode it is really in. Chances are, by your
description, it is in PIO mode, and will give a flat 4MB/sec
over the entire surface of the disk.

http://www.simplisoftware.com/Public/index.php?request=HdTach

If you want to test the drive itself, Seagate has some downloads
here:

DiskWizard, Seatools
http://www.seagate.com/support/disc/utils.html

And since you have a large disk, you might read this:
http://www.seagate.com/support/kb/disc/tp/137gb.pdf

Have fun,
Paul

 

[jojo]

My apologies if this has been posted before....

I recently got a Seagate SATA drive.

I've heard of problems with some motherboards and seagate esp mixing
sata150 controllers and sata300 drives.

Hard to say though, I haven't seen a lot of confirmation.