Problems with Intel D955XBK mobo system

[jillsy]

I built a system a couple of months ago with the following:

Intel D955XBK mobo
Intel P4 EE w/HTT 3.73 GHz CPU
Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 SATA II 250 GB Hard Drive
Samsung IDE DVD-ROM (primary master)
Plextor 716 SA/SW SATA DVD Burner
eVGA e-GeForce 6800 GT 512 MB DDR3 PCI-E Graphics Card
2x1GB Patriot PC2 5300 667MHz DDR2 Memory
Ultra Floppy Drive/Card Reader
Enermax Noisetaker 600-W PSU
OS: Windows XP Pro SP2

I do not have a RAID system. The mobo has two sets of SATA connectors - a black set controlled by Intel drivers, and a blue set controlled by SATALink 3114. I have the SATA hard drive on the black set, and the SATA DVD burner on the blue set. When I set it all up, I configured SATA as AHCI in the BIOS, and installed the Intel AHCI driver and Silicon Image IDE driver upon Windows installation (F6).

Everything has been working well for the most part. However, tonight I opened up My Computer and realized my SATA DVD burner was no longer listed under the drives. I restarted and noticed that the Silicon Image screen that comes after the initial Intel screen no longer appears. The Silicon Image screen lets you press F4 to enter the Silicon Image BIOS for the blue connectors. I don't know exactly when this happened, but I know it was fairly recently that I saw the Silicon Image screen flash by while my PC was booting up.

The SATALink controller is no longer listed under device manager, and if I do any kind of hardware search, such as to add new hardware, I get the BSOD. Is anyone familiar with this Intel mobo or the SATALink 3114? Silicon Image's site isn't very helpful and I've emailed their support before with no response. Could it be that something has gone wrong with the blue connectors, or could it be a memory problem?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Jillsy

[comp615]

My best guess is that you disabled that controler in BIOS. When I upgraded my MSI Bios it turned off my RAID and I was puzzled for about a week till I figured it out. Make sure both controllers are still on in there.

[jillsy]

You are an absolute lifesaver. Of course, I feel like a complete moron now for not checking something so obvious. I guess I just panicked when I saw the DVD burner not being recognized because I had tons of trouble with those secondary blue connectors when I first built the rig. It turned out the drivers Intel had sent with the mobo were bad and also the wrong drivers for the config I wanted (non-RAID). They don't even have the non-RAID drivers on their site under downloads for that mobo. I had to go to the Silicon Image site myself to get what I needed.

Anyway, thanks again. One little change in the BIOS and everything is peachy. I'm not sure when it changed. The logical answer would be when I updated the BIOS fairly recently, but I could have sworn I've seen the SI BIOS screen appear since then. Who knows, though? Most of the time I hit the switch and walk away while she boots up.

Happy holidays!

[comp615]

You too, and dont worry I flip out everytime this happens to me