P55A-UD4P Won't power off

[skozzy]

A problem started recently where I shut down windows all the hdds park, the video goes off, but the mainboard remains powered. Pressing the Rest Button will reset, pressing the power button does nothing (unless I hold it for 4+ seconds).

After swapping/removing hardware I found that if I don't have any HDDs plugged into the ICH10 ports the system will shut down. If I plug 1 or more HDDs back in I get either of these two results:

Result 1: Will power down normally
Result 2: Wont power Down at all.

If result 1 happens after the next shutdown we are back to the original problem.

If result 2 happens and I unplug one or more HDDs while the system is running and the drives unmount from the OS it will then power down but once only. Also what can happen is pressing the reset button Will Not reset the system at the time of pressing it, it will delay about 1-2 seconds then power off the whole system, then power back on. (similar to overclocking too far, but I don't overclock, just once to see what it was like about 2 months ago).

The system configuration I have has been stable for many months untill a week ago.

I am not sure what to do about it, default windows install is the same as my main OS which I installed months ago with reguards to this issue. About 2-3 weeks ago an interuption to the mains power grid made the #2 power supply cycle off/on but the main supply kept going, all that was effected was the HDDs on that supply all reset and the system locked up (not sure if the ICH10 supports HotSwap, if not then that's why it locked up).

Putting the system into Standby has the same result where the board remains on. Tinkled about with the power managment software that was on the install disk, if I remember right something wanted to save settings, but I don't know where.

Vista64 Home Premium (2 installs, one on IDE and one on Raid, both have same problem)
P55A-UD4P F11 Bios (but prior was F7 when problem started)
(Drivers tried are original from Install Disk, and latest downloads with the F11 Bios)
i7-860 (stock settings, no overclocking)
8gb 1333 Ram
ATI HD4950
1x PCIe Compro E700 HD TV Dual Tuner
6x WD 1TB Green HDD (on ICH10 as raid5) (OS HDD power saver off else I get broken raid all the time)
1x WD 808GB Green HDD (on Marvell)
1x Hitachi 120gb 2.5" HDD (on Marvell)
1x DVD Burner on Gsata1
1x Bluray Burner on Gsata2
1x WD 320gb on IDE
2x 600watt Power Supplies (Main one powesr MB, Video, DVD Burner and IDE, other powers all other HDDs) Main one Powers a Relay to turn on Supply #2

Can anyone help with a debug process.

[Dark Mantis]

Well there's a lot to go through. Firstly the ICH10 does support hot swap but only if it is set to AHCI mode.
So you have two power supplies no2 slaved off no1. Do you have a Mountain Mods case by any chance?
I would say that probably the best place to start is by clearing the CMOS and loading the BIOS optimised defaults and see what happens from there.

[Peteruk]

ATI HD4950

There is no HD4950 ? I will guess this could be a HD4850?

6x WD 1TB Green HDD (on ICH10 as raid5) (OS HDD power saver off else I get broken raid all the time)

I I'm not the one to say use RAID drives (as its not true that you have to use RAID drives ) but WD green are really not for RAID because all they want to do is slow down and use less power this does not work well with RAID.

Are you using RST?
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=2101&DwnldID=18859&lang=eng
You can also try these which I am using on a P55 board myself and they do work.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&ProdId=3146&DwnldID=18055&lang=eng

[Dark Mantis]

Peter is quite correct regarding the Western Digital Green hard drives. They are no good for RAID and personally I wouldn't even use one for a boot drive. Their "green" designation makes them not very usefull for anything except extra data storage.

[skozzy]

Video Card Model is in fact ATI HD4890 (dunno where the 4950 come from, maybe the last 6 coffee's)

The Green WD drives seem to be working well, ONLY when I set the power managment to never turn the drives off, if I allow the drives to sleep then I get a raid rebuild cause they don't come online fast enough for the controller to be happy.

Aside from that, I followed a few steps from other posts with similar problems from other gigabyte boards, that was un-installing the drivers before updating the new ones. I have had a few succesful power downs since (=>50%) . It also made me think of the steps I used when installing Vista64, the few times I reinstalled Vista I do remember selecting iMSM folder for the bootdrv drivers requested when scanning for drives to install to, I believe last install (this one now) I may have used the iRST drivers, or possibly selected both. So what is the difference between the Matrix Storage Drivers and the Rapid Storage Drivers, they both seems to see the raid array.

Last night I changed the power wiring config in the case so the main power supply that feeds the mainboard also feeds the drives on the array, before power supply #2 was feeding the array. I did this incase the driver was expecting the drives to power off before allowing the computer to power off, that effort didn't help. I did that step before the un-install/re-install of the latest drivers though.

The question about the case: The case is a Lian Li PC-P80 12x 5.25 drive bays (monster case).

I will know more if it was a driver related problem when I do a re-install on a spare drive shortly. So which is the better driver set to use, iMSM or iRST