Unfortunately, the changes didn't affect my motherboard, it's still completely unresponsive. My case speaker won't even make any noise. I'll still have to RMA my board, but I'll try to make the same changes to my boyfriend's machine and hopefully that will prevent his motherboard from suffering the identical fate.
I've tested all of the rest of the hardware in my own machine, if that's what you mean. All of them work fine in his machine, so I know it's the board.
Yes, that's what I meant. I've RMA'd boards before and it is quite a pain. I just didn't want you to go that route if it wasn't necessary. But, I'm sure you already know that.
Yeah, haha, I know. it is quite a pain, indeed.
Thanks for the help and concern
I'll let you know if the changes to my boyfriend's machine helps his problems with it and if I find out anything else.
I found the RAID/AHCI drivers. I have a question.
Do I need to install both? Or just AHCI? I don't want to break the computer even more by having a driver I'm not supposed to have. When checking his device manager, I see that he definitely has an out-of-date AHCI/RAID driver from Microsoft.
I don't know why it says it's from Microsoft. I installed a RAID driver on his computer from Asus when I first built these. I think that after I updated the BIOS, his RAID driver got switched to the Microsoft version. WTF?
So, I figured before I did anything, I'd ask if I needed to install both AHCI and RAID, because I guess they're separate. Or maybe they aren't and I'm an idiot.
If you need more information, here is the downloads section of our motherboards which contains the ACHI/RAID drivers underneath "Utilities."
Windows 7 is 64-bit.
http://support.asus.com/Download.asp...fUSB3&p=1&s=24
I'm thinking this may be a major cause for why his computer is having trouble booting. The RAID driver is apparently a Windows-issued one. On top of that, the Windows-issued driver is apparently SCSI and not AHCI, like it's supposed to say. That's what it used to say before I flashed the BIOS. Now that I think about it, these crashes on startup began happening after updating his BIOS, so these might be connected. While updating the BIOS caused many other crashes to stop, it caused this new one to begin.
Also, what is the safest way of updating these drivers so I don't cause damage to the array?
So I was going to update his RAID drivers because it looks like his system is using that Microsoft one instead of the Asus one, but whenever I try to get it to update with the Asus RAID driver I downloaded, the update screen gets pissy at me and says, basically, "cut it out, that driver is already updated," even though the file I'm trying to give it is completely different.
When looking at the "volumes" tab under the driver information, it's all blank.
Apparently the RAID is using two driver files I've never heard of involved in a RAID. disk.sys and partmgr.sys.
I realize the drivers for Asus are from last year. But I don't think I care how recent the Microsoft one is. I have a bad feeling that the computer is trying to run the wrong driver or even two at the same time for the RAID. Since it won't allow me to update the ahcix64s.sys file, which is the old version from April off of the Asus disk, I can't even determine if the update can fix the problem.
Someone else is going to have to help on that. I've never used raid. But bios has to be set as raid and on some AMD systems under raid you have to select either IDE or ahci mode. I really can't tell you whether the Microsoft raid driver is as good or better than the AMD raid driver.
BIOS is in RAID for the drives.
Hello
I do not have a lot of time this evening but if you reply to this post I will receive an email to remind me to look at it again tomorrow.
I have read through the posts but it has been a quick read so bear with me if I cover ground that is already covered :)
You mentioned early on in the post problem may be caused by the front USB ports, I recommend disconnecting these ports for the time being to take them out of the equation.
It is also a good time to check that the front USB is connected to the right header marked in yellow and not the wrong one marked in red which may cause the MB to be damaged.
Attachment 165230
Secondly I recommend backing up your RAID drive. Windows backup should be sufficient to make an image on a USB drive, this will take away the worry of damaging your install when we try to repair the problem.
Reference the RAID If windows has installed its own driver you should have the option to roll back to the last driver.
Attachment 165231
You will find the newest RAID driver here; ASUSTeK Computer Inc. -Support- Drivers and Download M4A89TD PRO/USB3
You only need the RAID driver having the AHCI driver installed as well should not cause a problem.
If you need to install the new driver try uninstalling the old RAID driver. You should get the option to delete the old driver whilst uninstalling it. Be aware that you may need to new start the PC if you cannot install the new driver before the restart you may have to use start up repair to start the PC and you will need the new driver handy in a location where you can find it to enable you to install it as a part of the start up repair!!! I recommend here that you try the roll back feature first and only attempt to uninstall the old driver after you have made a backup image
I hope this helps for the moment
PS posting a snip of you MB and connections is a good idea and may well help diagnosing the problem
Last edited by pooch; 15 Jul 2011 at 14:56. Reason: added ps
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