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View Full Version : About ready to demolish my PC.... HELP!


Wyndle
09-03-2006, 10:40 PM
Some of this seems simple yet I can't find anything specific to suggest anything other than a possibly bad MOBO.

The board is an MSI RS482M4. The first problem that I noticed was that the on-board SATA ports don't seem to work. The only device showing as unknown in Device Manager is "PCI Device" and it does not like the drivers from the recovery disk, from the MSI site, nor from the ATI site.

As if that wasn't enought to drive me batty, now it seems that if I try to install Linux (Fedora, Gentoo, SuSE, or Arch) that I get tons of errors that equate to file not found (the self-test on the disks shows them as good). I was orginally going to use Linux to see if the SATA ports issue was a Windows driver issue but now I'm convinced that it's something else hardware related.

I don't want to to fork out money on a new mobo unless it is unavoidable. Any suggestions or possible help?

**Edit**

After coming across a few Linux forums discussing the issues I have determined that it is the mobo causing the problems (though not really a broken hardware issue, just poor support for anything other than Win XP). While I'm a little upset at not having as great a gaming machine as I'd hoped (without the SATA drives) I've got a few other machines that I can play with Linux on. Since this machine was intended to be my XP gaming machine I am not going to go through the trouble it would take just to get it dual booting.

Anyone know a good 4 port PCI SATAII RAID card with Win2k Adv Server and/or Linux support? Since I'm not using onboard SATA for gaming I'll use the drives for a decent server.

Wyndle
09-07-2006, 02:30 PM
Still at odds with this mobo...

The bios screen goes by too fast to react. Even if I had time to react the screen only shows an image, and not what keys to press. I have tried esc, all the F# keys, and combinations of ctrl and/or alt of all of those keys. Since it goes so fast I don't know for sure if the attempt failed because it's wrong or if it failed because I wasn't fast enough. Either way I am really pissed about this mobo.

Any suggestions (aside from replacement, not enough $ right now)?

**Edit**

Still looking for a good PCI SATA RAID card with Linux Support?

DodgeMan79
09-08-2006, 02:54 AM
since it's an MSI board the BIOS key is the delete key. I have an msi board as well and you didn't mention if you tried the delete key.

Wyndle
09-08-2006, 09:09 AM
I have (sorry for not mentioning it). Since I'm now pretty sure of which one it is I can keep one hand on delete and the other on the reset switch until I get in.

Thanks

DodgeMan79
09-08-2006, 02:53 PM
i also take that you have reset the bios?

if not then pull the power and switch the jumper to the 2-3 pins, wait about 20 seconds, then put the jumper back and plug it back in and try again.

Wyndle
09-09-2006, 08:29 AM
i also take that you have reset the bios?
But that would be too easy....

Sarcasm aside, the Del key worked on the second attemp with spamming it. Now that I've been in the bios it shows up much longer at boot-up.

Now I just need three more 250GB SATA drives and a good tv tuner card and I'll be really happy. And if my van wasn't in the shop for repairs that will likely be in the neighborhood of $600 I'd order the drives ($245 for all three) and tv card (which one is best?) from newegg today.

Now that I've cleared off the secondary IDE drive (onto the SATA) I've got a ton of space for my Linux server on the other box. Now I've just got to find a distro that I like (and no, I didn't like Ubuntu) I'm playing with Knoppix right now and then I'll try Debian and Arch. I may wind up with Mandrivia (or I'll dig up my old Mandrake disks).

DodgeMan79
09-10-2006, 01:43 AM
so I take it you got eveything running like it should?

Wyndle
09-10-2006, 06:50 AM
I got the hardware working like it should but I haven't tried Linux on it again.

Since I have a machine I can dedicate to it without dual booting I can have all the benefits of XP and Linux at the same time. I'm running Debian right now and I think that's where I'll stay for now. It feels a little more natural for me than Ubuntu, Knoppix, or Fedora Core. I'll start a new thread for the TV Tuner Card.

Thanks for the help, now my blood pressure can come back down to pre-hypertension levels.