x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

[beton]

hi guys,

i must be missing something very silly and obvious here and have probably done things in the wrong order, but hope you can help me. sorry if a similar problem has already been addressed in the past in this forum. i have found one similar, but that was overclocking related, mine isn't.

the rig:

x58a-ud7
i7 930 (running at stock)
12 gb corsair

hdds:

SSD intel x25m g2 160 gb (os windows 7 64bit)
2x wd caviar black WD2001FASS 2tb
2x wd caviar black WD1001FALS 1tb

all of them connected to the onboard intel ich10r controller

what i have done so far:

1. set ICH to AHCI in bios
2. format and install windows 7 onto the SSD

everything groovy for 2 days

today i decided to move on with the setup and raid1 the two 2tb drives as follows:

3. set ICH to raid (xhd) (unfortunately without enabling XHD on the first line)
4. save changes to bios
5. enter the intel matrix raid setup on reboot (ctrl-i)
6. create a raid1 of the two 2tb drives
7. exit, reboot

that's where things went amiss.

on the next boot the bios froze on the verifying DMI pool data screen, and later asked to boot from CDROM

8. trying to revert to the last working configuration i hit reset, entered bios and changed ICH back to AHCI... same result - boot from CD, then DISK BOOT FAILURE

9. changed ICH to IDE... same result

10. changed ICH to RAID, rebooted, entered the RAID config and deleted the RAID1

11. rebooted, changed ICH to AHCI in bios - same result

any clues?

the two 2tb drives are unformatted, not sure if one has to format them first and then raid.

or do you have to set up the raid first and only install the OS afterwards?

regards

tomas

p.s. attaching some screenshots (analogue)

[wazza300]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

did you install the sata raid driver from gigabyte website??

GA-X58A-UD7 (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE

[beton]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

did you install the sata raid driver from gigabyte website??

GA-X58A-UD7 (rev. 1.0) - GIGABYTE

hi wazza300,

i did. in fact, after installing windows, i first installed all the drivers that came on the gigabyte install disc, and then download all the latest drivers from the link you posted and ran the installers just to be on the safe side.

even if the raid werent supported, i wonder why i shouldn't be able to simply change the ICH setting back to AHCI, and boot windows like before. i mean i haven't touched the OS installation, so there is no reason for it to be corrupt.

it just occurred to me, if that doesnt sound too far-fetched, i shut down and unplugged the machine yesterday because of a hefty storm, and replugging it today blew the fuses.

any chance the SSD could be affected, but would it then be recognised on startup at all?

[wazza300]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

i dont know,i dont know much about raid either as i havnt used it but i have done the reg tweak for win7 to enable ahci,have you tried that to see if things will run again in ahci mode?(ahh sorry forgot that you cant get into windows) have you tried clearing the cmos?? it will wipe any bios settings so make a note before you do it.....you havnt set the first boot device as your dvd drive have you? by mistake?

[beton]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

just gave it try, but clearing cmos didnt help. chose 'last know good' on reboot, but ended up with the same 'disk boot failure...'

the first boot device was set to hdd, with the ssd on top, even though failed boots seem to have reshuffled the booting order several times, putting the ssd after the two caviars, so i had to move it to the top manually and save, but to little effect.

thanks for your effort, much appreciated. i am calling it a day now, and will get back to the issue tomorrow.

t

[wazza300]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

its when you switch from ide to ahci and back that it shuffles the hard drives around in the boot order,when it prompts you to install cd have you tried inserting the win7 install disk and doing a start up repair?? just put the os disk in and follow the onscreen prompts it will let you repair the start up on the os sometimes,or even a system restore,its worth a try

[beton]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

its when you switch from ide to ahci and back that it shuffles the hard drives around in the boot order,when it prompts you to install cd have you tried inserting the win7 install disk and doing a start up repair?? just put the os disk in and follow the onscreen prompts it will let you repair the start up on the os sometimes,or even a system restore,its worth a try

makes sense, i did try switching to IDE and back to AHCI, so that explains the boot order.

will try the win7 repair and see if it makes a difference. maybe feed it the intel driver exe again in the process.

thanks for the tip

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

You either have to install the OS in RAID before you do this, or do the following registry tweak and then go change the BIOS settings

Enable switching between all IDE/AHCI/RAID modes by changing "Start" Values in these keys to 0

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Msahci\Start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\Pciide\Start  
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\services\iaStorV\Start

Remove all those drives for now leaving only the SSD in SATA2_0 port, and then set AHCI in the BIOS again at the top, then you should be fine. Once you get going make the above changes, then you can shut down and install the other drives, change BIOS to RAID (XHD either way is the same FYI), and create your array's

And yes, always check the hard drive boot order in the advanced BIOS page, to make sure the drive you want to boot from is first in this list.

[beton]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

hi lsdmeasap,

thanks for stopping by. will try the steps you suggested this evening and report back.

meanwhile, what i still don't understand though (granted, i have little idea about the bios<->windows interaction), how come that restoring the bios setting to AHCI and deleting the raid didn't fix the problem, since the OS installation on the SSD remained unchanged... but there is probably more under the hood than a simple switch.

regards

tomas

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

K, good luck, hope you can get it!!

What you asked about, that may have fixed it before and you just didn't go move your OS disk back to the top of the hard drive boot priority list is all.

What you did should not have messed anything up, setting RAID when it is not enabled to boot from in the OS should just cause a boot failure is all.

Now setting AHCI/IDE when RAID is already previously enabled/used and or arrays setup as the OS boot drive, will corrupt the array, but that isn't what you are concerned with.

What you did should have just caused a boot failure since you did not make the above registry changes first, your OS should have been fine and you should have been able to switch right back to AHCI as long as you then moved your OS disk back to the top of the hard drive boot priority list.

[beton]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

[SOLVED] (at least for now)

a brief wrapup of the steps that might have done the trick for anyone plagued by the same issue.

following lsd's advice above, i disconnected all drives, leaving just the SSD win7 boot drive in port 0 on the intel controller, rebooted, entered bios to make sure ICH was set to AHCI and the SSD was the first boot drive (both was the case). quit bios and let the reboot run...

...same problem - DISK BOOT DRIVE FAILURE.

so it's back to google...

found someone recommending a bootable utility called partition wizard to fix system booting issues. download and burnt the iso onto a cd and rebooted into partition wizard.

the wizard displayed my SSD win7 partition, but its status was showing as NONE. so i set it to ACTIVE (hit apply) and quit to reboot.

next thing you know, it's no longer "DISK BOOT FAILURE", but a much more upbeat "BOOTMGR missing" message.

ok, more google yielded the tip of loading the win7 installation CD, entering system repair options and running the startup disc repair. i did, it said it fixed 1 error, and i hit restart.

nothing... same problem.

booted from win7 cd again (cussing that the CDDROM drive was found by bios at random, only like every other time, despite being set as first booting drive, alternatively greeting me with the BOOTMGR missing message), entered repair options, cmd prompt and executed a couple of commands recommended by another user - see below).

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /rebuildbcd

rebooted, entered bios to change booting drive back to HDD, but nothing changed - BOOTMGR missing.

at this point i was about to give up, but just out of spite rebooted from the win7 cd, entered the startup repair at just let it try the automatic repair one more time.

rebooted and the impossible happened, windows booted.

dont know what did the trick and still feel like i was all over the place making all sorts of logical changes first, later followed by random and desperate ones, but maybe there is a hint to be found in here somewhere for future victims.

@lsd

once in windows 7 i checked the registry keys you had pointed out, and the first two were set to 0 already, the last one was 3, so i set it to 0.

i also checked that i had the latest intel ICH10r driver installed (9.6.0.1014) - the one supposed to allow RAID arrays on the controller while supporting TRIM on a non-RAID SSD drive connected to the same controller (link below - text in german says what i just said and suggests that though the driver might not be that much better in terms of performance than the MSAHCI, at least it doesnt cancel TRIM if you set up a raid array p[not involving the SSD] on the same controller).

Intel Rapid Storage-Technologie 9.6.0.1014 .


for now, i am just glad to be able to boot windows again and havent had the nerve yet to create a raid array again (despite making the registry key change and having the latest driver).

thanks to wazza and lsd for taking their time.

bottom line for me is_ whether this was a bios or OS issue, it should be much easier to recover from changing an innocent setting like.

regards

tomas

[wazza300]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

did you format any hdd with the other hdd's installed or try to install the os with other hdd's with os's on them? as this usually upsets the bootmngr,and yeah sometimes you have to use the start up repair a few times for it to fix it completely,im glad you fixed it

[beton]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

did you format any hdd with the other hdd's installed or try to install the os with other hdd's with os's on them? as this usually upsets the bootmngr,and yeah sometimes you have to use the start up repair a few times for it to fix it completely,im glad you fixed it

no, i didn't. what i have done was this:

1. plug everything in with all the drives factory-new and unformatted
2. boot from the win7 install cd
3. enter repair and cmd prompt
4. format the SSD with a single partition and alignment 1024 (following a guide saying wrong alignment - though win7 should get it right on autopilot install - can slow ssd speed down by almost 50%
5. install win7
6. install most of the programs i use
7. reboot, enter bios and change the ICH controller to RAID in order to create the raid (all caviar HDDs still unformatted at this point)
8. reboot, enter the RAID config utility (ctrl-I)
9. create raid 1 of the two 2TB discs
10. reboot
11. DISK BOOT FAILURE
12. the rest described above

i forgot one more thing i have done before things started working again (namely the last 3 commands in the howto below, after that i used the win7 CD repair and that got me back on track):

you can rebuild the BCD store by using the Bootrec.exe tool in the Windows Recovery Environment. To do this, follow these steps: - Get your Windows 7 installation DVD and pop it into your drive.
- Then restart your computer.
- Press a key when you are prompted.
- Select a language, a time, a currency, and a keyboard or another input method, and then click Next
- Click Repair your computer
- Click the operating system that you want to repair, and then click Next
- In the System Recovery Options dialog box, click Command Prompt
- Type bootrec /rebuildbcd and then press ENTERbcdedit /export C:\BCD_Backup

ren c:\boot\bcd bcd.old

bootrec /rebuildbcd

- Restart the computer.

[Lsdmeasap]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

You needed to do the Registry changes I mentioned right after step 6, then you would not have this problem.

The reason you needed to rebuild the BCD is due to what I described previously in regards to the SSD not being first in the hard disk boot priority, so the BCD was installed to another drive

Glad you got this all sorted now though!

[beton]

Re: x58a-ud7: boot failure after changing ICH10R to raid

You needed to do the Registry changes I mentioned right after step 6, then you would not have this problem.

The reason you needed to rebuild the BCD is due to what I described previously in regards to the SSD not being first in the hard disk boot priority, so the BCD was installed to another drive

Glad you got this all sorted now though!

you have a point with the BCD and SSD not being first in the boot priority after the raid was created in intel matrix, but it didnt occur to me this needed checking. when i checked (after a failed boot, meaning too late) the SSD was indeed demoted to no. 3 after the 2 raid disks, but at this point no amount of moving it to the top again made a difference, since as you say the BCD was installed to the raid1 (despite being unformatted?).

regarding the necessary registry change after step 6 (before the controller switch and creating the raid)... i mean, really, how many people besides you would have thought of that and the consequences of not doing it? with the latest ICH drivers installed and all...

i was probably a bit starry-eyed believing a PC build means plugging the parts together, formatting drives and installing the system, but i still dont believe most builders are that savvy in critical registry key tweaks.

anyway, thanks a lot for your help and i hope changing the third key from 3 to 0 will be enough not to derail me the day i muster enough courage for another foray into the raid manager:)

then it is on to 4ghz, but that's a different story where i can be guided by the tons of tips you and others have lavishly spread all over this forum.

t