Prev: Laptop and an expansion box questions??????
Next: Vaporizing electrolytic caps a health risk ?
From: Matthew on 7 Jul 2010 16:02
I just put together the following system:

Win 7 Home-64
MSI X58 Pro-E LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Motherboard
Kingston Triple channel (2GBx3) PC3-10600 (MB approved)
Intel i7-930 2.8GHz processor
Western Digital Caviar Blue 320GB system drive
Western Digital Caviar Green 1.5TB data drive
Sapphire Radeon HD 5450 video card
Cooler Master 650w power supply
Samsung DVD/RW drive

I went ahead and turned RAID on (for future use) before I installed Win7,
but just use the one system drive and the one data drive at the moment. I
also installed the Intel drive management software along with all the other
latest drivers and BIOS for the motherboard.

When I boot the computer it hangs at the post screen saying "detecting AHCI"
for about 3 minutes then boots... and when I hook up any sort of USB hard
drive to the system it takes roughly 5 minutes for the system to recognize
the drive, even if it has detected it in the past. I built the system for
Photoshop work and if I try to load more than a couple of pictures at a time
the system becomes unresponsive and Photoshop crashes. If I just open up
Photoshop and then try to run a second application the system hangs again.
And if I do manage to get several pictures open at once, if I run any sort
of batch command on them the system hangs again.

Is it possible that initializing RAID or possibly this Intel drive
management software is effecting performance of my drives? I'm assuming that
the initial start up hang at "detecting AHCI" is also somehow related to the
RAID configuration, but I see no option for disabling AHCI in the bios (if
that's even possible). Or could there be something else I am missing?


From: ToolPackinMama on 7 Jul 2010 16:22
On 7/7/2010 4:02 PM, Matthew wrote:

> Is it possible that initializing RAID or possibly this Intel drive
> management software is effecting performance of my drives? I'm assuming that
> the initial start up hang at "detecting AHCI" is also somehow related to the
> RAID configuration, but I see no option for disabling AHCI in the bios (if
> that's even possible). Or could there be something else I am missing?
>
>

Have you tried booting with BIOS setup defaults?
From: Matthew on 7 Jul 2010 16:44

"ToolPackinMama" <philnblanc(a)comcast.net> wrote in message
news:i12nn6$h10$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
> On 7/7/2010 4:02 PM, Matthew wrote:
>
>> Is it possible that initializing RAID or possibly this Intel drive
>> management software is effecting performance of my drives? I'm assuming
>> that
>> the initial start up hang at "detecting AHCI" is also somehow related to
>> the
>> RAID configuration, but I see no option for disabling AHCI in the bios
>> (if
>> that's even possible). Or could there be something else I am missing?
>>
>>
>
> Have you tried booting with BIOS setup defaults?

well... what would that do if I've installed Win7 with RAID? Or will it
matter since I'm not running RAID at the moment? That is pretty much the
only change I made in the BIOS.


From: Pen on 7 Jul 2010 17:38
On 7/7/2010 4:44 PM, Matthew wrote:
> "ToolPackinMama" <philnblanc(a)comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:i12nn6$h10$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>> On 7/7/2010 4:02 PM, Matthew wrote:
>>
>>> Is it possible that initializing RAID or possibly this Intel drive
>>> management software is effecting performance of my drives? I'm assuming
>>> that
>>> the initial start up hang at "detecting AHCI" is also somehow related to
>>> the
>>> RAID configuration, but I see no option for disabling AHCI in the bios
>>> (if
>>> that's even possible). Or could there be something else I am missing?
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Have you tried booting with BIOS setup defaults?
>
> well... what would that do if I've installed Win7 with RAID? Or will it
> matter since I'm not running RAID at the moment? That is pretty much the
> only change I made in the BIOS.
>
Turning on the RAID turns on the AHCI which is required by
SATA drives. All the rest of your problems scream Memory
troubles with the system swapping out to the hard drive.

From: Paul on 7 Jul 2010 19:12
Pen wrote:
> On 7/7/2010 4:44 PM, Matthew wrote:
>> "ToolPackinMama" <philnblanc(a)comcast.net> wrote in message
>> news:i12nn6$h10$1(a)news.eternal-september.org...
>>> On 7/7/2010 4:02 PM, Matthew wrote:
>>>
>>>> Is it possible that initializing RAID or possibly this Intel drive
>>>> management software is effecting performance of my drives? I'm assuming
>>>> that
>>>> the initial start up hang at "detecting AHCI" is also somehow related to
>>>> the
>>>> RAID configuration, but I see no option for disabling AHCI in the bios
>>>> (if
>>>> that's even possible). Or could there be something else I am missing?
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Have you tried booting with BIOS setup defaults?
>> well... what would that do if I've installed Win7 with RAID? Or will it
>> matter since I'm not running RAID at the moment? That is pretty much the
>> only change I made in the BIOS.
>>
> Turning on the RAID turns on the AHCI which is required by
> SATA drives. All the rest of your problems scream Memory
> troubles with the system swapping out to the hard drive.
>

In addition, Matthew might try another SATA cable, as if the
SATA cable was bad, and causing a lot of CRC errors, that
might result in the drive being accessed over and over
again. Perhaps the Southbridge SATA interface is in a
reset loop, trying over and over again to establish
communications ?

The hard drive manufacturers sometimes have downloadable
diagnostics, and it would be interesting to see whether
the diagnostic can make sense of it or not. The Western Digital
product page for each drive, should point to the diagnostic
to use. For example, I can see "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic" here.

http://support.wdc.com/product/download.asp?groupid=606&lang=en

A memory test, should always be done on a new system, before
trusting it to do anything properly. Scroll half way down the
page here, for some downloads. Some Linux LiveCDs, include
a boot command prompt option, of doing memtest as well. So
it's even being distributed on some Linux CDs.

http://www.memtest.org

LGA1366 systems sometimes have problems with socket contact
to the processor. It can affect how many sticks of RAM are
detected (some people "find a channel missing"). Check the
BIOS to see if all the memory is indicated as being present.
The memory must be detected, before a memtest program can
test it.

Paul
 |  Next  |  Last
Pages: 1 2
Prev: Laptop and an expansion box questions??????
Next: Vaporizing electrolytic caps a health risk ?