What's wrong with this brand new mobo??

[moot]

Just got this new mobo and new PSU, the latter has great specs so I know that`s solid. 60 amps continuous, so there`s no problem on that side of things.
But now I'm booting up for the initial XP install on a brand new A2M-SLI asus mobo and Seagate Barracuda 320 GB, and while the bios report shows everything OK, when I get to the windows setup (the first one with basic blue screens dos style) it only sees "131" GB. The drive is brand new, and other HDDs I connected get the same treatment; I managed to log onto an old HDD windows account and Disk Management reports "Healthy" partitions of 160GB, but in the My Computer window it shows the drive as just "Local Disk" and no used/free/total space info. Double clicking to open it gives something like "drive not formatted, would you like to?". 
At this point there's two interesting things: One of the disks connected that time was only 80GB or so, and it ran fine, no issues. Also, the reported 131070MB for every big disk (I have nothing but 160 and 320 GBs except for that one other 80GB disk) is == to 128GB if you divide that by 1.024. Too much of a coincidence not to mean something IMO.

This is what I get inside the mobo bios setup (In brackets are the options, * is the value it's on, I havent touched any of these.):
Main
---Sata1
-----Extended IDE Drive: [None, Auto*]
-----Access Mode: [None, Auto*]
-----(Capacity 320GB; Cylinder 65535; Head 16; Landing zone 65534; Sector 255) < This one's read only.

---HDD SMART Monitoring: disabled

Advanced (another top menu in BIOS)
---Onboard Device Config:
-----IDE Function Setup: (all of the items in this one are set to 'enabled'): OnChip IDE channel 0; OnChip IDE Channel 1; IDE DMA Transfer Access; SATA port 1,2; SATA DMA Transfer; SATA Controller 3,4; SATA2 DMA Transfer; IDE Prefetch Mode.

Would changing any of the above in BIOS help? Would I risk irreparably breaking something by dicking around with these parameters one at a time and trying to see if the initial (blue screen) windows xp install correctly recognizes the drives' capacities?  I'd also tried ignoring the disk space error and it went fine till it first booted the real windows (blue screen of death right after the first animated windows logo boot screen)

This is that blue screen of death.
These are the drives.. SATA (brand new), old drive 1, old drive 2. There's other 320GB's drives but I dont think I need to show those...


I forgot to bring a directx dump.... I have a training clinic coming up along with all the other things I have to get done e.g. a semi-official AH website, classes, etc etc. Help would be greatly appreciated.  Sorry if theres any typos, im outta time.

Thanks,
m.

[BaldEagl]

I can't remember exactly how it's done but it sounds like you need to enagle large disc handling.  I think it's in Windows somewhere but I forget where.  Try googling it.

[EDIT]  This might help:  http://support.microsoft.com/kb/313348

Make sure you format in NTFS.

[moot]

So I have to do this from within windows? I cant get there without finishing the installation, which doesnt work (BSOD just before it logs on after install completes) on this 320GB SATA Barracuda drive... The way I see it, the only way to get the fresh install to work on this sata drive is somewhere in the BIOS, because over in there the disk is recognized correctly, whereas once I get to the windows setup it sees the drive as "131GB" right from the start.  I wouldnt break anything by changing the HDD parameters in the bios one at a time and checking in that windows installation setup each time, would I?

[BaldEagl]

You don't have to do anything in the BIOS.  The BIOS is recognizing the full disc size.  When you go to install XP, before the install it should ask (which it has) if you want to format the disc.  Click yes, partition it as you please and format it in NTFS.  It may ask along the way if you want to enable large disc support.  If it does click yes.

If you have other drives that already have data on them you can convert them from Fat16 or Fat 32 to NTFS without having to back up the data but, if they have an overlay on them from a previous install, they will probably have to be re-formatted from scratch.

Win95/Win98/Win2000 and XP SP1 were only able to handle disc sizes up to (IIRC) 137 Gg.  You could install larger drives but they had to have an overlay to restrict the size.  Further, Win95/Win98 and possibly 2000/XP SP1's disc defrag wouldn't recognize a disc larger than (IIRC) 128 Gb so if you ever wanted to defrag your discs that was the practical limit for a single disc.

I moved 160 Gb and 200 Gb drives from my old Win98 machine but I totally reformatted them getting rid of the overlays.  I also have a 250 Gb SATA drive.  None of these are partitioned and all are in NTFS and fully recognized XP SP2 and now SP3.

[moot]

You don't have to do anything in the BIOS.  The BIOS is recognizing the full disc size.  When you go to install XP, before the install it should ask (which it has) if you want to format the disc.  Click yes, partition it as you please and format it in NTFS.

Yeah that's how I did it... But it was already seeing only 131 GB of unpartitioned space, and formatted same == still just 131GB. I let it continue as is and it ended up crashing as windows booted for the first time.  This is the brand new sata 320GB drive.

The XP install CD I have is from way back in 2002 or so, no SP1 on it.  The other old HDDs I have are all SP2 and NTFS.. I tried to repair a previous windows install on the 80GB drive that's recognized correctly, but that one gave a disk boot error (guess the drive is failing) when I rebooted while doing all the basic motherboard/directx/etc driver installations.

Is there anything I can do to the 320GB sata drive while running the 80GB drive's Windows to make the fresh install on the 320GB work? Or is that no use if the XP install CD is too old (predates SP1)?  I had previous 320GB disks and they installed fine with this same CD though. Something doesnt seem right.

[BaldEagl]

Did you get a disc with the Seagate drive?  If so you can use that to format it then do the XP install.

If not and you have a second machine you can plug the new drive in as a secondary drive and format it with the disc management tools, then move it to the new machine and do the XP install.

At worst, you may have to use Seagte disc management tools (you should be able to DL them from Seagate) to install an overlay on an older drive, then format it and install XP.  Then upgrade XP to SP3.  Install the new disc as a secondary, format it, then use the Seagate tools to copy the first drive over.  Swap the drives then reformat the original to it's full size without the partition.

One of these will work depending on what you have to work with.

BTW, you previous large discs probably worked because you updated Windows along the way and your on-disc OS is XP2 or better.

[moot]

No.. bare drive as a hand-me-down from family.. Gonna ask if they had one originaly.
No second machine.. But from what you say, it would work if I managed to boot windows on the old faulty 80GB drive, and format the blank 320GB there as a secondary drive, right? There wouldnt be any problems from the windows install CD predating inclusion of that 'larger disc' feature?

[BaldEagl]

If you can boot from the old drive go to Windows update and update it to the latest version.  Then install the new drive, format it and copy the old drive over using the Seagate tools.  You might even be able to only  copy over the OS.

[moot]

If you can boot from the old drive go to Windows update and update it to the latest version.  Then install the new drive, format it and copy the old drive over using the Seagate tools.  You might even be able to only  copy over the OS.

In bold.. can you say which tools these are specificaly?

[BaldEagl]

Discwizard (DL link on this page):
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=DiscWizard&vgnextoid=d9fd4a3cdde5c010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

This might also help you (Install instructions):
http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=install-troubleshoot-sata-non-mac&vgnextoid=2b089d2c3c90e010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

[moot]

Thanks, gonna try that out.

[drdeathx]

You can easily partition and format your drive in windows. Why reinstall windows??? Sheesh, Seagate would actually tell him to go through windows. It will save so much time if you already installed software and xp.

A simple way is right click on your My Computer icon -->click on manage -->click on Disk management. Hear you can find out how many partitions are there in your disk then select on free space, right click and select create new partition and then give space how much you want.

[Kermit de frog]

moot,
The Simple Solution:

Part 1:
Go to a working computer (Only if your motherboard did not come with a floppy disk with drivers)
-Bring a floppy disk and your Motherboard CD.
-Insert your Motherboard CD.
-Open your CD to view the files. (Open my computer, right click on the cd an choose "explore")
-Go to your Sata Controller files folder.
-Copy those files onto a floppy disk.

Part 2:
Go back to your new computer.
-Boot from your Win XP CD.
  In the very beginning, once the screen turns blue with white text, you'll briefly see the following text, "Press F6 if you need to install a 3rd party SCSI or RAID driver"
-This message will only stay on the screen for a couple of seconds, so press F6 as soon as you see it appear.
  After this is done, you will see other messages appear, and it will act as though nothing is happening, but eventually a screen will appear which will allow you to install the drivers for the add-in SATA controller.
-After you press S, the driver install process will continue and the floppy diskettes will be needed.
-Insert your floppy disk that contains your mobo sata controller drivers.

Once you load these drivers, Win XP will install just fine, with the correct volume displayed on your new HD.


To provide you with more help, I'll need you to correct the following information:
Model number: A2M-SLI
Manufacturer: ASUS



Good luck and as always, report back that it worked or not.

[moot]

Doc - What I see (saw) when I open up disk management was a 160GB partition. Not the whole 320GB that the physical disk truly is. Even way back at the very first part of windows (dos-style blue screen installer screens), the disk was reported as "131 GB".  Which never made sense since:
1) Those disks it refused to recognized were formatted and/or installed windows on with the exact same CD I'm using now. Why would they suddenly not be recognized? The only reason would be the motherboard. That's the only difference between then and now.
2) Now, windows suddenly decided to recognize, out of the blue, the seagate hard drive as such rather than as just some local disk. Full 320GB of space, though by then I'd already told windows to format 100GB out of those "131" GB.  So I now went ahead and formatted the rest of the disk into 100+100+120GB. This is all using the old 80GB disk's windows partition tools... Gonna reboot and do a fresh install in one of these partitions.. if that one works without any bugs (on this 80GB install there's a ton of stuff not working... DirectX fails to replace a bunch of outdated directx files.. network hardware failed to install half a dozen times with as many reboot attempts.. the newly formated three partitions on the 320GB sata show up as removable drives... and there's this too..)

So.. The F6 thing at the start of the blue screen install wizard was the solution..   I'd seen that but ignored it since it didnt say Sata. Thanks Kermit.. Now I know.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

If you have an XP install disc older than SP2 you're going to have to install sata drivers from a floppy. That sucks.

Nobody should need a friggin floppy in their PC for any reason in 2009.

Even post sp2 you need the drivers if you want to do fake raid built in the motherboard. Blows.

If only Vista didn't blow chunks..