I'm stuck, stuck, stuck.

I have a P4P800 ASUS motherboard, 512M RAM, 1x CD-ROM, 1xDVD-ROM, two IDE hard drives (80G), and have installed a SATA 120G on the 0 SATA Controller on the motherboard. The CD and DVD run from the Primary IDE and the two 80G IDE run from the secondary.

Using Win XP Pro. SATA settings in the BIOS are on S-ATA+P-ATA although I can get the machine to boot on SATA only. My machine detects all the drives and XP installed correctly on the SATA drive and made it C:\.

My Problem: No matter what I do, the AMI Bios makes my IDE drives Secondary Master and Slave and my SATA 4th Master, so when I reboot the machine, the BIOS resets itself and then tries to boot from one of the IDE drives! The only way to get it up is to go into the BIOS every time and change the boot order to the SATA drive.

The system is like greased lightning when it's up, but I can't pin down why the BIOS resets (no viruses -- I checked) when XP shuts down, and why I can't make the BIOS 'see' the four hard drive as the primary active drive.

Pleeeease help,

Jeff Thompson, Kingston ACT, NSW

I'm sure you’re frustrated, and no wonder. You’ve purchased a new, fast hard drive for system performance enhancement, and instead of gaining productivity you’re wasting time trying to get the machine to see the blasted thing!

Unfortunately, although it’s quite common nowadays for computer owners to have a fast, SATA hard drive installed, it’s not yet the ‘norm’, and BIOS changes are necessary to have your system recognize the drive. BIOS changes are, at best, confusing. Component manuals can be even more so. Unless we want to start paying the amounts of money Apple Mac owners have to lay out for their equipment, however, that’s probably one of the drawbacks we’re going to suffer in return for having very affordable high performance equipment to work with. And in any case, we’re here to help, so try this:

• Head into the BIOS setup. The "Main" screen will then display. Go into the "IDE Configuration" menu option. Ensure that "Onboard IDE Operate Mode" is set to "Enhanced Mode". The "Compatibility Mode" option is only for older operating systems other than Windows XP or 2000.
• As a result of the above selection, the setting below will be called "Enhanced Mode Support On". Now, despite the rather confusing naming convention of the three choices available for this setting ("S-ATA", "P-ATA+S-SATA" and "P-ATA") the default, recommended setting for all P-ATA and S-ATA ports to work properly is in fact "S-ATA" (see page 2-26 of your manual). So make it is now set to that.
• Last of all, make sure the "Configure S-ATA as RAID" option is set to "No". Leave any other options as they are.
• Save and exit from BIOS, and see if your problem has been corrected.

If the problem persists, and particularly if you find that other BIOS changes are ‘reset’ after your system is turned off and then powered back up again, you may have a ‘dead’ CMOS battery. You could replace that quite easily yourself. It’s the round clip-in battery near the PCI slots, and you’ll get replacement ones quite easily and cheaply at Tandy, Dick Smith Electronics or similar stores.

If you find your BIOS settings are being reset even with a new battery installed, it may just be that you need a BIOS update for that system of yours. It’s not really clear from Asus’ documentation, but the most recent BIOS update I found purports to "Fix boot devices failed to be disabled when more than one device are in the same group." Head to your motherboard’s support download website and download the latest BIOS update file. When we checked this was Version 1015. Ensure you check the ‘More’ button beside the download for details of installation changes, in case you’ve got out of date tools for installing the update. There’s a newer version of the manual installation tool included with the download, and if you choose to use ‘LiveUpdate, you must have the latest version. It would be best to have a repair shop install the update for you unless you’re familiar and comfortable with carrying out the procedure, because mistakes can render your system useless!

If you wish to perform the update yourself, carefully follow the instructions provided by Asus (and I’d suggest you avoid the ‘LiveUpdate’ route!).

As a matter of fact, Jeff, the more we look at it the more we’re convinced that the ‘manglish’ (mangled English) comment taken from Asus and mentioned above is the explanation of your problem, and a BIOS update the solution. But try the other procedures we mentioned first, please!

Cheers,

Terry O'Shanassy and Marcel Dousr