SATA drive problem, etc.

[Mark N]

So after all my rebooting problems a month or so ago, I decided to
upgrade my PC instead of pissing around piecemeal, and replaced the
mobo, processor, video card and memory, now having a Core 2 Duo E6600 in
an MSI P6N Platinum, which uses the nForce 650i SLI chipset, and also
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 and an XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320mb Extreme.
Rebooting problem gone, and things mostly are back to normal (but faster).

Installation went fine, and I was able to do the replacements without
reinstalling Windows. The BIOS is version 1.0 and I know it's still a
bit buggy - for instance, I can't change the memory voltage, the only
option is "auto", so I can't change the latency timings to the spec
4-4-4-12 from what I understand is the default 5-5-5-18 without stuff
eventually crashing. I don't plan on flashing the BIOS until MSI
releases their next update.

What I discovered this week is that my only SATA hard drive isn't up to
snuff. Windows is on an older PATA drive, and I had all my programs on
that and another PATA drive, but I finally installed something other
than data on the SATA drive this week, the copy of Ghost Recon that came
with the video card. It took forever to install, something like a half
hour, and the game was very slow in starting up and performance seemed a
bit lacking. So after tweaking the game some I finally uninstalled it
and reinstalled on a PATA drive, and that took much less time and it
works much better now.

So what can be wrong with my SATA drive? I installed the latest
motherboard drivers from nVidia at installation, and my understanding is
that with SATA drives there are no jumpers to set or DMA settings to
tweak or anything along those lines. The drive is a Western Digital
WD2500KS, which is a SATA 300 drive. Having only used it for data
storage, I don't know if the speed issue was present in the old setup,
but I never noticed anything unusual. I don't see anything unusual
indicated in Windows, SiSoft Sandra, etc. It's connected to the 1st SATA
port, and I'm using a 4-pin molex power connector, 500W Antec PS.

Thanks in advance for any help...

 

[kony]

So after all my rebooting problems a month or so ago, I decided to
upgrade my PC instead of pissing around piecemeal, and replaced the
mobo, processor, video card and memory, now having a Core 2 Duo E6600 in
an MSI P6N Platinum, which uses the nForce 650i SLI chipset, and also
2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 and an XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320mb Extreme.
Rebooting problem gone, and things mostly are back to normal (but faster).

Installation went fine, and I was able to do the replacements without
reinstalling Windows. The BIOS is version 1.0 and I know it's still a
bit buggy - for instance, I can't change the memory voltage, the only
option is "auto", so I can't change the latency timings to the spec
4-4-4-12 from what I understand is the default 5-5-5-18 without stuff
eventually crashing. I don't plan on flashing the BIOS until MSI
releases their next update.

What I discovered this week is that my only SATA hard drive isn't up to
snuff. Windows is on an older PATA drive, and I had all my programs on
that and another PATA drive, but I finally installed something other
than data on the SATA drive this week, the copy of Ghost Recon that came
with the video card. It took forever to install, something like a half
hour, and the game was very slow in starting up and performance seemed a
bit lacking. So after tweaking the game some I finally uninstalled it
and reinstalled on a PATA drive, and that took much less time and it
works much better now.

So what can be wrong with my SATA drive? I installed the latest
motherboard drivers from nVidia at installation, and my understanding is
that with SATA drives there are no jumpers to set or DMA settings to
tweak or anything along those lines. The drive is a Western Digital
WD2500KS, which is a SATA 300 drive. Having only used it for data
storage, I don't know if the speed issue was present in the old setup,
but I never noticed anything unusual. I don't see anything unusual
indicated in Windows, SiSoft Sandra, etc. It's connected to the 1st SATA
port, and I'm using a 4-pin molex power connector, 500W Antec PS.

Thanks in advance for any help...

Check Windows Event Viewer to see if anything seemingly
related is listed.

Use Sandra's benchmark for the drive and compare to the
scores it has for other drives.

Recheck the connector to the drive to confirm it is seated
good, and at the motherboard end. If there is any doubt
about it, try another cable.

Were you implying there is no bios update available that is
newer than the presently installed version? If there is
one, go ahead and update the bios if the notes suggest
anything useful is patched.

I am wondering if you had tried to change the memory
voltage, from "auto" to manual. Often more choices then
appear, but were hidden until you make that change. Also
others have observed the ability to change memory voltage,
for example they list the range here, "1.80V to 2.80 in .05V
increments"

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2946&p=2

When you wrote that changing timings w/o voltage means
things eventually crash, did you test the stability with
Memtest86+ before booting windows? Don't make memory
changes then run windows without first attempting to confirm
some level of stability, otherwise there is significant risk
of file or registry corruption, especially when copying
files back and forth. It's even possible the memory isn't
entirely stable at it's present settings, I mean if you
haven't yet checked it, how will you know for sure?

 

[Thomas Wendell]

So after all my rebooting problems a month or so ago, I decided to
upgrade my PC instead of pissing around piecemeal, and replaced the
mobo, processor, video card and memory, now having a Core 2 Duo E6600
in an MSI P6N Platinum, which uses the nForce 650i SLI chipset, and
also 2GB Corsair XMS2 DDR2 800 and an XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320mb
Extreme. Rebooting problem gone, and things mostly are back to normal
(but faster).
Installation went fine, and I was able to do the replacements without
reinstalling Windows. The BIOS is version 1.0 and I know it's still a
bit buggy - for instance, I can't change the memory voltage, the only
option is "auto", so I can't change the latency timings to the spec
4-4-4-12 from what I understand is the default 5-5-5-18 without stuff
eventually crashing. I don't plan on flashing the BIOS until MSI
releases their next update.

What I discovered this week is that my only SATA hard drive isn't up
to snuff. Windows is on an older PATA drive, and I had all my
programs on that and another PATA drive, but I finally installed
something other than data on the SATA drive this week, the copy of Ghost
Recon that
came with the video card. It took forever to install, something like
a half hour, and the game was very slow in starting up and
performance seemed a bit lacking. So after tweaking the game some I
finally uninstalled it and reinstalled on a PATA drive, and that took much
less time and it
works much better now.

So what can be wrong with my SATA drive? I installed the latest
motherboard drivers from nVidia at installation, and my understanding
is that with SATA drives there are no jumpers to set or DMA settings
to tweak or anything along those lines. The drive is a Western Digital
WD2500KS, which is a SATA 300 drive. Having only used it for data
storage, I don't know if the speed issue was present in the old setup,
but I never noticed anything unusual. I don't see anything unusual
indicated in Windows, SiSoft Sandra, etc. It's connected to the 1st
SATA port, and I'm using a 4-pin molex power connector, 500W Antec PS.

Thanks in advance for any help...

Did you install the mobo drivers?? Unless it's an excact replacement, the
stuff on the mobo will need it's own drivers...


--
Tumppi
=================================
A lot learned from these newsgroups
Helsinki, FINLAND
(translations from/to FI not always accurate
=================================

 

[Mark N]

Check Windows Event Viewer to see if anything seemingly
related is listed.

Use Sandra's benchmark for the drive and compare to the
scores it has for other drives.

Recheck the connector to the drive to confirm it is seated
good, and at the motherboard end. If there is any doubt
about it, try another cable.

Were you implying there is no bios update available that is
newer than the presently installed version? If there is
one, go ahead and update the bios if the notes suggest
anything useful is patched.

I am wondering if you had tried to change the memory
voltage, from "auto" to manual. Often more choices then
appear, but were hidden until you make that change. Also
others have observed the ability to change memory voltage,
for example they list the range here, "1.80V to 2.80 in .05V
increments"

http://www.anandtech.com/mb/showdoc.aspx?i=2946&p=2

When you wrote that changing timings w/o voltage means
things eventually crash, did you test the stability with
Memtest86+ before booting windows? Don't make memory
changes then run windows without first attempting to confirm
some level of stability, otherwise there is significant risk
of file or registry corruption, especially when copying
files back and forth. It's even possible the memory isn't
entirely stable at it's present settings, I mean if you
haven't yet checked it, how will you know for sure?

I have run Memtest86 and no problems indicated. There is a newer BIOS
available, 1.1, but as Anand's article indicates, there's an even newer
version that should be available any time that seems to work fine, and
I'm not in such a hurry to do something like flashing the BIOS, if Im
going to do it again soon. When I click on the memory voltage indicator,
there is no choice other than auto, which I assume is a problem with
that version of the BIOS, but I haven't seen that indicated anywhere on
the web. I also have noticed a couple other problems related to
analyzing/solving the problem - I can't get MSI Dual Core Center to
display at all (I do have .Net Framework 2.0 installed), and nTune's
mobo adjustment screen displays, but there's absolutely nothing there
that I can adjust (well, the AGP clock slider works). I've even had
problems getting Sandra to display and run, so I'm not so confident of
it's readings. I did just rerun the HD bandwidth benchmark, and the SATA
drive's readings were abysmal first run, but after checking an PATA
drive I reran it and it was much better, so I don't really trust what
I'm getting.

I'm also curious about nVidia firewall. I know that was part of my
previous chipset, nForce3-250, and I was playing around with
BitTorrent/Azureus this week for the first time, and download speed
seems very slow, with an indication that the firewall might be the
problem. But I can't find anything in my system related to that, no
place where I can adjust settings, no reference to it at all. So I don't
know if it's even part of the new chipset, or if there's something left
over that didn't get uninstalled in the old drivers.

 

[kony]

I'm also curious about nVidia firewall. I know that was part of my
previous chipset, nForce3-250, and I was playing around with
BitTorrent/Azureus this week for the first time, and download speed
seems very slow, with an indication that the firewall might be the
problem. But I can't find anything in my system related to that, no
place where I can adjust settings, no reference to it at all. So I don't
know if it's even part of the new chipset, or if there's something left
over that didn't get uninstalled in the old drivers.

I vaguely recall that when installing chipset drivers, you
then have the option to install the firewall driver or not
(effectively disabling it). You might try uninstalling then
reinstalling the (nVidia reference, not older(?) MSI chipset
drivers).

 

[don't look]

I have run Memtest86 and no problems indicated. There is a newer BIOS
available, 1.1, but as Anand's article indicates, there's an even newer
version that should be available any time that seems to work fine, and
I'm not in such a hurry to do something like flashing the BIOS, if Im
going to do it again soon. When I click on the memory voltage indicator,
there is no choice other than auto, which I assume is a problem with
that version of the BIOS, but I haven't seen that indicated anywhere on
the web. I also have noticed a couple other problems related to
analyzing/solving the problem - I can't get MSI Dual Core Center to
display at all (I do have .Net Framework 2.0 installed), and nTune's
mobo adjustment screen displays, but there's absolutely nothing there
that I can adjust (well, the AGP clock slider works). I've even had
problems getting Sandra to display and run, so I'm not so confident of
it's readings. I did just rerun the HD bandwidth benchmark, and the SATA
drive's readings were abysmal first run, but after checking an PATA
drive I reran it and it was much better, so I don't really trust what
I'm getting.

I'm also curious about nVidia firewall. I know that was part of my
previous chipset, nForce3-250, and I was playing around with
BitTorrent/Azureus this week for the first time, and download speed
seems very slow, with an indication that the firewall might be the
problem. But I can't find anything in my system related to that, no
place where I can adjust settings, no reference to it at all. So I don't
know if it's even part of the new chipset, or if there's something left
over that didn't get uninstalled in the old drivers.

I was having some bad SATA drive problems too. And,I downloaded Sandra from
a couple places ,installed and it won't run at all.Nothing happens even
though the install seems to go right.
As for mt SATA problems,I had to return the mobo Foxconn N4UK8AA(Nforce4
Ultra). I have two SATA drives runnung now but one is shownig UDMA 4,the
other shows UDMA 5 .I have the latest forceware drivers. I've been seeing a
bunch of posts about problems with sata drives.

 

[kony]

I've been seeing a
bunch of posts about problems with sata drives.

Well yeah, but, wouldn't it be fair to say that when they
became the more common drive selected for a new system
build, it would be expected that *any* new system drive
problem would be an "SATA drive problem"? 8 years ago we
might've said we saw a lot of ATA drive problems.

 

[don't look]

Well yeah, but, wouldn't it be fair to say that when they
became the more common drive selected for a new system
build, it would be expected that *any* new system drive
problem would be an "SATA drive problem"? 8 years ago we
might've said we saw a lot of ATA drive problems.

Very true.But one culprit is the cheap sata cables that come with
motherboards.They can slip at an angle or come off completely very easily.
I'm going to replace mine with the latching cables.They are a good price.