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Questions about GIGABYTE products => Motherboards with Intel processors => Topic started by: paragon69 on May 31, 2011, 01:01:44 am

Title: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: paragon69 on May 31, 2011, 01:01:44 am
Hi all,

I am trying to get my mates computer to work but all my efforts have failed thus far.  He has a 2500K CPU in a gigabyte GA-P67A-UD3-B3 motherboard.  Also running a Vertex 3 SSD.  The only way i can install/boot to windows is to install it on IDE mode (in the bios) whilst it is plugged into the Sata II slots on the mb. 

If I try to install on AHCI mode in sata 3 or sata 2 it goes through the initial select disk - expand files etc but after the first reboot in the install it has the loading bar for windows for about 1 min and then bluescreens same spot everytime.  If i run in safe mode it gets to disk.sys and then pauses before the bsod.

its doing my head in and I can't find an answer anywhere.  Is it just that this board is like the s***y jmicron chip in the x58-ud3 that never supported sata3 as it was supposed to? 

Ive tried using a different windows image etc. The only thing I have not done which might have a chance of working is to install in IDE mode then use regedit to allow me to change to ahci mode AFTER the install.  But surely this should not be neccessary?

Thanks in advance
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: F5BJR on May 31, 2011, 01:24:52 am
*
Just a little question :

Have you tested with a normal SATA harddisk ?

Pierre

Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: paragon69 on May 31, 2011, 01:33:38 am
I havnt. But the vertex 3 works as I tried it in my z68 ud7.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: paragon69 on May 31, 2011, 01:41:05 am
i havnt tried the AHCI preinstall driver tho...  that could be it!

I thought win7/vista had native ahci support though???
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: nijel on May 31, 2011, 02:37:48 am
Those vertex 3 have a lot of problems. That's all I can say.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: paragon69 on May 31, 2011, 01:24:53 pm
driver worked!  thanks all
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on May 31, 2011, 01:58:58 pm
Hi

Just for your information it was the Marvell chip that gave the problems on the X58 boards not the J Micron.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: xmanli on June 12, 2011, 05:34:54 pm
driver worked!  thanks all

Hi
I have the exact same motherboard & vertex 3 drive.  I also have the same problem.  I have been trying to install in AHCI mode but couldn't complete installation.  When it reboot during install, there comes BSOD.  I have now installed in IDE mode but the performance is much reduced.
Could you please explain here how you did it successfully so others can learn from your experience.  Attached is my AS SSD Benchmark results:

Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 12, 2011, 05:55:12 pm
Hi

What port have you installed the Vertex3 on ? The ideal one is SATA3_0, set the controller to AHCI and it should work ok. Put your optical drive on another controller's port though.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: xmanli on June 12, 2011, 07:31:44 pm
Hi

What port have you installed the Vertex3 on ? The ideal one is SATA3_0, set the controller to AHCI and it should work ok. Put your optical drive on another controller's port though.


My Vertex 3 is on port SATA3_0.  I also have a Hitachi HDD 1TB on SATA3_1 which serves as mass storage.  My optical drive is on SATA2_5.
But I unplugged the HDD when I was trying to install win7 x64 on the vertex3 in AHCI mode.  It went fine in the beginning until the first reboot till logo screen, then came the BSOD.  Then no further progress, I then have to re-install win7 x64 in IDE mode.
Now I am running win7 x64 in IDE mode, which I don't feel getting my Vertex 3 to run at its full speed.  Also in this mode, oftenly the bios don't detect my Vertex 3.  I need to restart the PC few times to get the bios detect the Vertex 3.
I am sure something is going wrong and want to take the board & ssd to be checked, but the last thing I want to try is to install win7 on my Vertex 3 in AHCI mode before I take them back for checking.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 12, 2011, 10:13:36 pm
What was the STOP code when you got the BSOD ?

Is it the same each time ?

OCZ do seem to have a lot of problems with their firmware/drivers for the SSDs.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: xmanli on June 15, 2011, 03:02:10 pm
Hi
Just want to notify that that I successfully installed win7 on sata 3 port in AHCI mode.  The part which I was doing mistake during installation is that I didn't install the driver.  It is done after the "Install Now" button in win7 installation.

Now my Vertex 3 is installed properly with good speed.
Attached is my updated benchmark results.

Hope this can help others.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 15, 2011, 03:16:33 pm
There seems to be some discrepancy between the results on your two different tests there. The AS-SSD seems to be giving a very low Write indication.
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Aussie Allan on June 15, 2011, 04:56:23 pm
  Clarification!..... This is only as far as I'm aware and please advise me if you think I'm wrong, but this works for me .......... every-time!

  A lot of people think Windows 7 supports ACHI out of the box........Windows 7 HAS the drivers on the install disc but must still be installed at the right time, (either F6 or during the first Phase of windows install {load driver}) this (Windows ACHI Driver)  is not an automatic driver install like the hundreds of others that are loaded during windows OS install.

 Aussie Allan

      Update!

.......Well that had the desired effect!...... Someone, very good with AMD came back to me With a correction, From his experience mainly from an AMD platform perspective.... the guts of it was Windows ACHI drives seem to load automaticly during the windows install ... as I said , my experiences have been hit and miss and forcing the install of ACHI Drivers during the install has helped me at best and at worst , .... can't hurt.

 Would be good if others came forward with there experiences with this issue.....mainly to shed some light on this point
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 15, 2011, 08:44:46 pm
Well if that is the case it is new to me because I have never had to load them manually as you describe.  :-\
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Aussie Allan on June 15, 2011, 08:58:26 pm
Well if that is the case it is new to me because I have never had to load them manually as you describe.  :-\

 Well that's two !  Who am I to argue in the presence of greatness  8) ....

 AL
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 15, 2011, 09:00:26 pm
I thought that maybe you were going to tesch me something there. I am always ready to learn a new trick or tip. ;)
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Aussie Allan on June 15, 2011, 09:16:48 pm


 "Measure twice, ... Cut once" ..... I'll do a little more research before responding!

  I find it extremely uncomfortable at my age putting a size 12 in my mouth even once!

 Aussie Allan
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 15, 2011, 09:34:51 pm
We all do it on the odd occasion. It's easilly done when you have you mind on another question still while answewring the present one. :-\
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: xmanli on June 18, 2011, 05:08:10 pm
There seems to be some discrepancy between the results on your two different tests there. The AS-SSD seems to be giving a very low Write indication.

I was also in doubt in the beginning about the AS SSD scores being too low, but I was told in OCZ forum that the speed claimed are only achieved by ATTO test, not with other benchmark test.  So I stopped figuring out how to reach that speed in read/write with other benchmarks.

I just focused in reaching the CLAIMED speed with their CLAIMED benchmark tool, just to verify that my Vertex 3 is working normally.  But even though my Vertex 3 has almost reached the speed CLAIMED, I am not really satisfied with the overall performance.  I still feel that I am just using 2 HDD in Raid 0. 

My booting is not smooth, windows is not shutting down smooth, my email client opens in the same speed as a single HDD.  And the most annoying thing is that the HDD Led light on my front panel of the case is blinking every second, which means that the Vertex 3 is working, even though I am not reading or writing any data from it.

Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 18, 2011, 08:26:38 pm
AS-SSD is normally one of the top benchmarking tools for SSDs. I wouldn't expect it to be far out at all from real world figures.

Have you made sure that everything else is configured properly to make the most out of the drive ?

You should be booting in a matter of seconds certainly under 30.

I would guess that the drive is being indexed or something like that if the LED indicator is flickering like that. Have you turned off the swapfile or moved it to another drive ?
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Aussie Allan on June 18, 2011, 10:23:09 pm

 I don't know the depth of your pockets, ... but by the sounds of things you may want to consider what I have as my main boot drive which gives me 625 Mb/s write and 800+ Mb/s read out of the box.... with under 16 seconds boot time..........RevoDrive X2 PCI-E card by OCZ.....highly recommended.

 Aussie Allan
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: xmanli on June 19, 2011, 06:34:31 am
Have you made sure that everything else is configured properly to make the most out of the drive ?

I have configured my Vertex 3 to run in AHCI mode.  And before installation, I used the OCZ tool to "Clean Erase" the drive.  Are there any other configuration on this board to get more performance?

I would guess that the drive is being indexed or something like that if the LED indicator is flickering like that. Have you turned off the swapfile or moved it to another drive ?

I believe there is no firm saying that the LED flickering is a bad thing, but it is just annoying because its my first time experiencing it.  Before I actually try to figure out stopping this flickering of LED, I am waiting for a reply from OCZ if this flickering is normal.  I will post their reply here once I get it.


Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: xmanli on June 19, 2011, 06:39:34 am

 I don't know the depth of your pockets, ... but by the sounds of things you may want to consider what I have as my main boot drive which gives me 625 Mb/s write and 800+ Mb/s read out of the box.... with under 16 seconds boot time..........RevoDrive X2 PCI-E card by OCZ.....highly recommended.

 Aussie Allan

Hi Aussie Allan
May I know which benchmark tool you used to achieve the read/write speed you quoted for your RevoDrive X2?  And how do you measure the boot time?
Thx
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Aussie Allan on June 19, 2011, 07:51:23 am
  Xmanli

  More and more manufactures and people are turning to ATTO as the SSD benchmarking standard, apparently a little kinder to SSDs with how the benchmark is generated,  and considerate re Trim and or garbage collection, I usually start the Samsung Galaxy S Stop watch app at the end of the motherboard boot, just timing the windows boot Phase as all motherboard are a little different in the boot cycle, .... some a little more, ....some a little less.

 Will be interested to hear what OCZ have to say, I suspect the intermittent led flash is trim at work in the back ground

 Aussie Allan
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: jayzala on June 25, 2011, 04:52:19 pm
Hey All-
I'm having the same problems running SATA3 on my SSD (Corsair Force Series 3) with this board.  It runs fine in SATA2.  On SATA3, I can't even get Win7 to boot cleanly.  I tried installing F6 drivers during the Win7 install as well, and tried running in ACHI and IDE w/ SATA3 but still very unstable.

Only solution is to run SATA2 on my SSD (which is SATA3).  Anyone else having problems with SATA3?

I know this Corsair drive has been having problems, but not sure if it is totally its fault since it works fine in SATA2 but not SATA3...

Thanks
Title: Re: Problem installing win7 on sataIII AHCI with GA-P67A-UD3-B3
Post by: Dark Mantis on June 26, 2011, 03:09:52 pm
Hi

I don't see any reason why your motherboard shoulld have a problem with running this SATA3 SSD from the correct ports. I have the UD5 version and it runs SATA3 drives fine. I would suspect the firmware of the drive and or drivers.