From: andrewstanton on
I have a new Abit AB9 pro mobo. I have 1 sata drive installed and an
ide floppy & ide optical drive as well as a 256mb ait graphics. 4gb
ram and an E6850 processor.

Now, I can boot up from the ABIT supplied CD to a text menu and create
my RAID driver disks, however whenever i insert a windows boot disk, i
have tried xp pro, win2k, w2003 server.... the pc boots up, does all
bios checks, says - hit any key to boot from CD and then..... Nothing,
screen goes blank, CD drive spins up and then spins down.... And then
nothing - it hangs and all i see is a blank screen....

I have tried a different graphics card and had the same result, i have
tried different ram and the same result, I have tried a different cd
drive and the same result....

The POST code always shows FF on the display - which translates as
Boot Attempt.

Any ideas what on earth is going on...?

From: Patty on
On Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:40:50 -0700, andrewstanton(a)gmail.com wrote:

> I have a new Abit AB9 pro mobo. I have 1 sata drive installed and an
> ide floppy & ide optical drive as well as a 256mb ait graphics. 4gb
> ram and an E6850 processor.
>
> Now, I can boot up from the ABIT supplied CD to a text menu and create
> my RAID driver disks, however whenever i insert a windows boot disk, i
> have tried xp pro, win2k, w2003 server.... the pc boots up, does all
> bios checks, says - hit any key to boot from CD and then..... Nothing,
> screen goes blank, CD drive spins up and then spins down.... And then
> nothing - it hangs and all i see is a blank screen....
>
> I have tried a different graphics card and had the same result, i have
> tried different ram and the same result, I have tried a different cd
> drive and the same result....
>
> The POST code always shows FF on the display - which translates as
> Boot Attempt.
>
> Any ideas what on earth is going on...?

You can't just put the Windows XP CD in the drive, turn on your computer
and have it boot from the CD? There should be a setting in the BIOS to
change the boot order. I know what I do when installing OSes on new hard
drives, is to have it boot to the hard drive first, and if there's not OS
on there, it should defer to the next choice which should be your CD ROM.
I'm wondering why you're even bothering with a Windows boot disk, which I
assume is on a floppy?

Patty
From: peter on
Tell us about this "windows boot disk".............all versions of XP sold
retail are bootable.
So we assume you do not have a "retail" version of XP but instead you have a
?????version.
peter
<andrewstanton(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1186764050.301082.293270(a)d30g2000prg.googlegroups.com...
>I have a new Abit AB9 pro mobo. I have 1 sata drive installed and an
> ide floppy & ide optical drive as well as a 256mb ait graphics. 4gb
> ram and an E6850 processor.
>
> Now, I can boot up from the ABIT supplied CD to a text menu and create
> my RAID driver disks, however whenever i insert a windows boot disk, i
> have tried xp pro, win2k, w2003 server.... the pc boots up, does all
> bios checks, says - hit any key to boot from CD and then..... Nothing,
> screen goes blank, CD drive spins up and then spins down.... And then
> nothing - it hangs and all i see is a blank screen....
>
> I have tried a different graphics card and had the same result, i have
> tried different ram and the same result, I have tried a different cd
> drive and the same result....
>
> The POST code always shows FF on the display - which translates as
> Boot Attempt.
>
> Any ideas what on earth is going on...?
>


From: andrewstanton on
LOL - if it was that simple i would not have a problem... LOL

I have set the CD as the first boot device and all of the discs i have
tried are genuine Microsoft discs.

All discs work in my laptop and original second desktop - it is just
in the new pc with the abit board that it does not...

All of the components have been checked and swapped....

i will seek an rma for the motherboard....



From: Bird Janitor� on
<andrewstanton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
|
| LOL - if it was that simple i would not have a problem... LOL
|
| I have set the CD as the first boot device and all of the discs i
| have tried are genuine Microsoft discs.
|
| All discs work in my laptop and original second desktop - it is
| just in the new pc with the abit board that it does not...
|
| All of the components have been checked and swapped....
|
| i will seek an rma for the motherboard....
|


I don't think it's an RMA you're needing here. Every AB9 Pro board is going
to have the same problem you've encountered.

I'll call your problem a "design challenge".

I was curious, so I downloaded the Abit AB9 series manual from The
Mothership and discover that the SATA8, SATA9 and IDE1 connectors utilize
the JMicron controller.

In looking at section 4.11 of the manual, I read the following:

[quote]
This procedure is necessary if there is access to the devices connected to
connectors "SATA8", "SATA9", and "IDE1" during the OS installation:

1. Prepare a 3.5" floppy disk drive and connect it to "FDC1" connector on
this motherboard.

2. Start install operating system.

3. Insert this driver disk into floppy disk drive when the screen
instruction prompts you to install a third-party SCSI or RAID driver.

4. Press <F6> key, and then follow the screen instruction to complete the
installation.

* This procedure is particularly necessary when you want to install
operating system from a CD-ROM drive connected through connectors "SATA8",
"SATA9", or "IDE1".

[/quote]

Obviously a driver is needed by the Windows Text Setup phase to even
identify that there is an optical drive connected to anything connected to
the JMicron controller.

I'm scratching my head as to how to do this because there's no ability to
press [F6] *prior* to starting the Windows install.

I'm wondering if you could create your JMicron driver diskette when booted
to the Abit CD then exit from the Abit utility program to a DOS prompt (I'm
assuming you're booted to a DOS environment with this CD, obviously).

If you can get out to a DOS prompt you could then swap to your Windows
install CD and run the setup program to start the Windows Text Setup phase
a-running. Press [F6] when prompted and have your JMicron driver diskette
in the drive. You may have to search around on the Windows CD to find the
NTSETUP.EXE program, as I believe you need to be booted to a mini-Windows
environment in order to use the GUI Text Setup version that normally
autoruns.

Alternatively you could browse around on the Abit CD, looking for a
Config.sys and Autoexec.bat file to identify the driver needed for the
JMicron controller (and its associated DOS driver files). Copy all this
stuff to a DOS boot diskette and follow my above instructions to run
NTSETUP.EXE on your Windows CD when booted to this diskette.

As a fallback, pay a visit to Abit's peer-to-peer support forum at
http://forum.uabit.com for help.

Hopefully I've helped here. It's been a bit of a head-scratcher as I
haven't built a system which needs a 3rd-party driver for the onboard IDE
channels.

Jef