Morvin Stayner wrote:
> "Homer J. Simpson" <root@127.0.0.1> wrote in
> news:1-:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I have an ASUS A8N-E motherboard, had it for nearly 2 years, and I've
>> discovered early on that this board won't even get to the stage where
>> it should be trying to look for an OS if I happen to have a USB flash
>> drive hooked up to a USB port. It'll do the memory check, list all
>> the hard drives, display the 'Hit Del for the BIOS setup' and 'Hit F8
>> for boot options' messages, but it'll then stay there and do nothing.
>> Hitting Del or F8 at that point still responds, and shows the
>> appropriate 'Loading BIOS' or 'Loading boot options' messages, but the
>> screen doesn't change beyond that. Ultimately, leaving a USB stick
>> hooked up when powering up (or resetting) this board won't get you
>> anywhere. I can live with that, and have done so for the past two
>> years. I also have an IBM tower at work that does the same thing, so
>> I'm like, whatever...no biggie.
>>
>> This morning I was using my PC, then at some point had to restart.
>> After listing all the drives, the system hung as it usually does when
>> a USB drive is hooked up. At first I was rather puzzled, since my USB
>> stick was sitting on my desk, and not hooked up to the machine. I
>> reset and restarted the machine a couple of times, same thing.
>> Eventually I thought I'd start disconnecting hard drives, one-by-one,
>> and/or other hardware, until *something* different happened. Lucky
>> me, upon disconnecting the first hard drive (IDE0), the system
>> proceeded to boot as usual--only, with one extra line on the next
>> screen that doesn't normally show--something about "USB drive: HP".
>>
>> I immediately clued in--earlier I hooked up my HP digital camera to
>> the USB port to transfer a couple of photos. Like my USB stick, my
>> camera is picked up by the OS like a regular hard drive. So, I
>> removed it, reconnected the hard drive I had disconnected, and reset
>> the system once again...now it works as usual.
>>
>> I guess it just so happens that in the two years I've had this
>> motherboard, this is the first time I boot it up with my camera still
>> hooked up to it. Ultimately, again, it's no big deal--I'll remember
>> this as well.
>>
>> But my question is: has ASUS fixed this with their newer
>> motherboards? Have they done, or are they doing anything (flash
>> update, etc) to fix the A8N-E? I have the 1013 BIOS revision,
>> which--last time I checked--has been the latest version available for
>> the longest time.
>>
>> What I found interesting today as I was disconnecting/reconnecting
>> hard drives is that even with the camera hooked up, the machine would
>> still boot *if* I disconnected the first IDE hard drive (the master on
>> the primary controller).
>>
>> As far as I'm concerned, whether the system is configured to try to
>> boot off of a USB drive or not is irrelevant--the system won't get
>> stuck if the CDROM drive is part of the boot sequence, and you have an
>> unbootable CD in it...
>>
>>
>>
>> Now for something completely different: since installing the 1013
>> BIOS update (months ago), I always have to power up the machine twice
>> in the morning. The first time I power it up, everything turns on
>> (fans, hard drives, etc start spinning), but I get no display, and not
>> even a single beep. I have to wait maybe 5 seconds in that state,
>> power down, and then power back up. The second time around it's fine
>> (as well as subsequent times). It only seems to happen after the
>> system's been shut down for a few hours. During the rest of the day I
>> can shut it off and turn it back on without any problem.
>>
>> Again this is not a huge issue as I've just learned to live with it,
>> but I thought I'd throw these observations out there...I'm curious to
>> see if anyone has made the same observations, and whether there are
>> any known fixes...
>>
>>
>
> I don't know if this will help, but it's worth a try. I had boot
> problems until I came upon this, which is from a Techincial Update that
> ASUS included in its last versions of the A8N-E.
>
> Apparently, the A8N-E is finicky about where the operating system (OS)
> should be. Here's where the OS should be, depending on what else is on
> the SATA Connectors.
>
> If SATA 1 and SATA 2 are populated the OS should be on SATA 1
> If SATA 1 and SATA 3 are populated the OS should be on SATA 3
> If SATA 1 and SATA 4 are populated the OS should be on SATA 4
> If SATA 2 and SATA 3 are populated the OS should be on SATA 3
> If SATA 2 and SATA 4 are populated the OS should be on SATA 4
> If SATA 3 and SATA 4 are populated the OS should be on SATA 3
> If SATA 1, SATA 2 and SATA 3 are populated the OS should be on SATA 3
> If SATA 1, SATA 2 and SATA 4 are populated the OS should be on SATA 4
> If SATA 1, SATA 3 and SATA 4 are populated the OS should be on SATA 3
> If SATA 2, SATA 3 and SATA 4 are populated the OS should be on SATA 3
> If SATA 1, SATA 2, SATA 3 and SATA 4 are populated the OS should be on
> SATA 3
>
> I hope this helps...
>
> M
>
>
>
>
Where do you take this from ?
I have SATA1 and SATA2 populated, with XP and VISTA on SATA2, and dual
booting fine.
Lorenzo
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