P4C800 Deluxe bios pointint to wrong disk

[Dave Berry]

I have a P4C800 Deluxe. I am set up as follows:
P4T 2.8GHZ with hyperthreading
2GB of PC3200 DDR memory
Radeon 9600
Matrox RT.X10, which also has a firewire port.
Advansys SCSI contoller
Two WD raptor 10,000 SATA drives set up as RAID 0 for my system disk
Two Maxtor 160GB ATA100 set up as RAID 0 data disk for video editing
Bunch of stuff connected to USB and firewire.
I'm using the onboard LAN, audio, USB and firewire controllers

All that works fine. I also have a pair of Maxtor ATA133 80GB drives that
had been my raid 0 system disk before I got a deal on the SATA drives. I
want to use the two 80GB drives for backups, extra storage, swap files etc.
I have tried them set up as SATA using adaptors as well as directly to the
parrallel ATA ports. I have the same problem in both cases. The system
recognizes the drives and I can boot Windows XP and access the drives. The
problem is the BIOS. Everytime I have to reboot, the bios changes back to
pointing at one of the Maxtor ATA drives as the boot drive. I point it back
at the SATA raid 0 SATA drives and it boots fine that time. the next time it
is pointing back at the Maxtor drives. Other settings are being remembered
and if I disconnect the Maxtor drives, the problem goes away.

I am running 1014A right now. I tried flashing up to the new 1014D, but that
didn't help. I put it back to 1014A and that didn't help either.

Any ideas out there?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Jim Inacker]

Dave try setting the hard drive boot order here.
BIOS SETUP UTILITY | Boot tab | Hard Disk Drives

Later,

 

[Dave Berry]

I know how to set the bios order. On the boot tab you select which hard
drives you want in which order and then select where to boot first on the
boot priority. I did that. The problem is that if there is a parrallel ATA
drive present it always changes back pointing to that drive instead of
continuing to point at the raid 0 system disk. I set it up and saved it a
numer of times trying to figure out why. It works for the first boot and
then the next time I boot, it has changed back. This is the only setting it
is loosing. If I disconnect the normal ATA drives (not raid), it remembers
and boots correctly.

I posted a problem report with the ASUS help desk. They say I need a new
bios chip and want to sell me one. Is this for real or is this one of those
stupid help desk replies because they don't know?

Thanks,
Dave

 

[Noozer]

I know how to set the bios order. On the boot tab you select which hard
drives you want in which order and then select where to boot first on the
boot priority. I did that. The problem is that if there is a parrallel ATA
drive present it always changes back pointing to that drive instead of
continuing to point at the raid 0 system disk. I set it up and saved it a
numer of times trying to figure out why. It works for the first boot and
then the next time I boot, it has changed back. This is the only setting it
is loosing. If I disconnect the normal ATA drives (not raid), it remembers
and boots correctly.

I posted a problem report with the ASUS help desk. They say I need a new
bios chip and want to sell me one. Is this for real or is this one of those
stupid help desk replies because they don't know?

This has to be a crock... This board should still be under warranty, so why
would they sell you a chip?

I'd email again and try and ask the same question differently.

 

[kda]

I HAD the exact same problem with a setup very similar (RAID 0) as
yours. My ATA (IDE) HD is not set up as a raid however.

On the BOOT page of BIOS, you need to go down to the second entry on
that first page which I think is "Boot Settings Configuration".

Remembering that your RAID 0 is probably listed as the TFx ARRAY or
something very similar, look at the other HDs listed in "Boot Settings
Configuration" and DISABLE them.

I think you right click on the listed HD to see that menu where you
can select DISABLE but do whatever it takes to get to that menu and
use it on all HDs listed except the ARRAY from which you do want to
boot.

Now don't worry, you are not really "disabling" that HD in any harmful
sense. The drive will still be seen by WinXP and all of that just as
usual. You are simply taking that HD out of consideration as a boot
device. Remember, this is all done under Boot Setting Configuration,
not basic drive setup or something where it might be dangerous.

Now go back up the BIOS menu ladder of the first BOOT page and to
"Boot Device Priority" where you can re-set your ARRAY as boot device.
It should stick this time ... it did on mine and I've had it that way
for several weeks.

Well, it'll stick until you introduce another new HD into the system.
Then the BIOS will likely start trying to boot that new HD again ...
and you'll had to go disable it as you did your first ATA/ IDE HD, but
usually doing this once per new HD is all it takes to end that
particular problem. I have about 6 drives in Swap Trays and I had to
do this for EVERY DAMN ONE of them. But it works fine once done.

kda