GA-870A-UD3: DVD drive not found and instability

[TRICE]

Just got a GA-870A-UD3 with a amd 965BE and OCZ3P1333LV4GK memory as approved on the
supported memory list. Also i have a 4890 ati graf card on the board in case its relevent.


I installed the board instead of my old gigabyte that was working perfectly. wonderful board.

Booted up and it didnt find the dvd drive. all forms of cable swapping and poking to check that its
plugged in properly resulted in nothing and it auto closes if  you try to open the drive. so its powered.
the drive in question is a:
Samsung super writemaster speed plus (with a name like that it sounds like its compensating for something)


And the instability in the system is random reboots after program crashes leaving no real eventlogs to give clues
to its cause.




Issue one is fixing the dvd if somone can help. The instability is secondary becuse i might fix it with a fresh windows unpolluted by the previous board and maybe run a memtest and check the memory. my forum diving here said ocz had been fishy recently.

Thank you for any help you can give.

Edit:
Forgot to mention that its rev 2.1 with the latest bios f5a i think it was called.

[absic]

Hi there,

Is the DVD/CD Writer I am looking at the same as yours with an older IDE connector? If it is then you need to make sure that the GSATA/IDE Ctrl is enabled and the GSATA/IDE Mode is set to IDE.

It is worth noting that there have been some problems when trying to run older IDE devices alongside SATA drives and it is often easier and cheaper in the long run to replace the DVD/CD Writer with one that has a SATA interface.

As you have stated, your instability problems could be due to not doing a clean install of the OS and whenever you replace a major component, such as a motherboard, it is always best to reinstall everything so there can be no registry conflicts.

[Dark Mantis]

Hi and welcome to the Gigabyte Forum.

Firstly you should always do a fresh install of your OS when you do any major upgrade. Not only for the stability issue but just tpo clear all the old crap out and get the best speed out of it.

Next I don't know how old your optical drive is but I woiuld be inclined to purchase a new one  considering the prices of them now. If it was of the PATA variety then that could be your problem.

SNAP absic!

[TRICE]

The drive is a Sata i bought about 6 month ago so i whouldnt be running a ide with the rest of the more modern components. The fresh install whould be ideal but hard to do while the dvd isnt working. had more trouble with the network drive not appearing to windows just when i started.

maybe i should try some musical chairs with the cables and se if its the sata connector thats faulty.. the card seems to have two extra connectors unfortunatly covered by my grafics card.

So there is a chance that the Sata DVD drive isnt compatible eventho it was on the last gigabyte card. whould think giga was holding it self to the same standards when it comes to opticaldrive compatability.

hope ive got a extra optical drive laying around too for troublefinding..

will post when ive done some sata musical chairs..

thanks for the help so far. good to have some knowhow helping to keep one from going insane like only computers can drive you.

[TRICE]

a session of sata musical chairs worked... it works now.. just not in sata port 4.

any opinions if this meens that the port 4 is a broken port? i can do some fault finding and drop one of the hardrives onto that port and se if it suffers the same problem. if not could there be a natural reason for the drive not liking a specific port?

Will start a fresh install and hope all the other problems will be magicly washed away.
i know what ill be upto the next hour

[absic]

Hi again,

you don't say which revision your motherboard is but it might be worthwhile updating to the latest BIOS version especially if it is revision 2.0 or 2.1 with BIOS F2 or earlier as there was a problem with the GSATA controller that was corrected with the F3 and later BIOS.

If it is rev 2.2 or 3.0 then it shouldn't be a problem but it won't hurt to update to the latest BIOS just to eliminate that as a possible cause.

[TRICE]

the revision and bios version is att the end of the original post. i edited them in 1 minute after the posting. read it and realized that it didnt have that info.

I read about that problem trying to solve the problem and installed the latest bios among the first thing i did. updating all drivers and bios before asking for help is always wise

[absic]

I read about that problem trying to solve the problem and installed the latest bios among the first thing i did. updating all drivers and bios before asking for help is always wise

Very true but you'd be surprised how many times it is these kind of things that get overlooked!

It seems strange that it doesn't work in SATA port 4 but it's a PC and I am never surprised by these things. As you say, the best thing is to connect an HDD to this port and see if it is recognised. If it isn't recognised then it's pretty safe to assume you have a dodgy port/connection and you can then decide if you want to RMA the board, which is probably what I would do.

[TRICE]

It seems strange that it doesn't work in SATA port 4 but it's a PC and I am never surprised by these things. As you say, the best thing is to connect an HDD to this port and see if it is recognised. If it isn't recognised then it's pretty safe to assume you have a dodgy port/connection and you can then decide if you want to RMA the board, which is probably what I would do.

always a hard choice to do if youve only got one pc of your own att home... being without your poor baby... its a tradgedy. So far the system seems stable after the windows install atleast. im hoping it keep that way. takes atleast a month before i trust a previously unstable system random instability problems have a tendency to give you hope and then dash it expertly.