Sabertooth 990FX...Now What!

[Froglips]

I am really having a love/hate relationship with this motherboard. When it is running it is so sweet, but then there is the rest of the time...

I swapped in a new FX 4170. Board booted, told me to press F1 as I had a new processor. I did. Checked that no setting had gotten reset that were an issue. Pressed F10 to save and the board rebooted. Well actually it just hung. I powered off, counted to ten, powered up. Now the M/B powers itself off after 1-2 seconds when I attempt to boot. What the frack is with this board now? I guess I will try to reset the CMOS but sheesh, this is ridiculous.

[HiVizMan]

Not sure what happened there but it does not sound happy at all. Clear CMOS is a good idea.

Once you have got back into bios may I suggest you just let the default setting cycle through to OS once or twice.

Then start playing with OC your system.

[Froglips]

Hey HiVizMan,
Thanks for the reply. I reset the CMOS. Got into BIOS. Reset everything to default. Rebooted. Went back into BIOS. Set SATA 1-4 to RAID, SATA 5-6 to IDE as I boot from a RAID 0 array. Saved and exited. I am got the dreaded Can't find system. Insert system disk and reboot. (or something similar to that). I am thinking oh crap the array took a poop. So I boot up my WHS Recorey disk and it can't find my home server. WTF?? I exit out of the Recovery program. The system reboots....and loads Windows. I am thanking my lucky stars. There are acouple windows updates so I let them run and reboot. Back comes the Insert System Disk warning. What?? I reinsert the WHS Recovery Disk, reboot, same as the last time, it can't find the server, but when I exit and reboot Windows loads.
I got no idea what is going on. Sometimes I really get tired of things not just working simply.

[HiVizMan]

Mate you need to set your SATA mode to RAID not IDE.

[Froglips]

HiVizMan,
Hmmm, I assume you are familiar with the Bios. I have set the SATA 1-4 to RAID. I have a SATA DVD plugged into SATA 5. SATA 5-6 are set to IDE to accommodate the DVD drive. I don't think it will run in RAID.

[HiVizMan]

You assume quite right my friend I am familiar with the BIOS of that motherboard. But what I am not familier with is the problems that you are having, that should not be the case.

Re my RAID comment - you can set all your SATA ports to RAID, even if you are not going to create one or run one.

Pull your DVD drive for now and just see if you can get back into your BIOS please. We need to see why you are having this irritating issue.

[Froglips]

OK. I am getting into the BIOS and Windows at this point. I even am connected to my WHS and have gotten a successful backup. Will reboot and go to all RAID. It is almost like the BIOS is NOT booting off the System (RAID 0) disk. When I boot off the DVD then exit from WHS Restore I get the Boot Option menu, select System, and then all boot normally. I have rechecked the BIOS multiple times for boot order and HDD order. So wierd.

[Froglips]

Just to close out this tread...it turns out the partition table on my boot array got unmarked as a system partition.

So the PC will run just fine but needs a partition marked as "SYSTEM" to boot from. I ran Windows repair which spotted but would not fix the problem. Found an old copy of Partition Magic and relabeled the boot disk as a System partition.

[HiVizMan]

I thank you for posting back what the cause was my friend. I am sure that by doing so you will help a number of people who have similar issues and use google to find answers.

You enjoy your system.

[chrsplmr]

...... well done .. thank you all.c.