Windows 8 and Asus P5Q Pro Turbo

I've downloaded the Win8 beta and this morning I disconnected all the
current drives from my P5Q Pro Turbo, plugged in a spare, and installed
Windows 8 on it under AHCI. The installation went smoothly and
everything seemed to be working.

Then I installed the ICH10 driver that I must use under Windows 7 in
order to make the board's Drive Xpert feature work. (It's a quasi-RAID
feature that combines drives connected to the board's orange and white
SATA sockets.) I had to use Windows compatibility mode to install
anything from the P5Q's installation disk.

Then I tried plugging in my other drives: one 3-gig HDD, two 1-gig HDDs
running together under Drive Xpert, and a 1.5-gig HDD. Windows 8
promptly croaked.

Actually, when I tried to boot with all the drives connected, I got a
warning screen saying I had a "DPC Watchdog Violation" and that I should
look it up if I wanted to know what that meant. So after re-booting
with the drives disconnected I looked it up and found nothing helpful.
Most people are seeing it pop up while running, as some sort of BSOD
that appears unexpectedly. I couldn't get that far; I simply couldn't
get Win8 to run, to get past the Violation screen at boot.

I did a little more troubleshooting. I discovered that I'd see the
Violation screen at boot with either the 3-gig drive connected by
itself, or with it disconnected and just the two 1-gig drives connected
as a pair.

I didn't see the Violation at all with just the 1.5 gig drive connected.
In fact, with just that drive connected Win8 would boot just fine.
But...it wouldn't recognize the drive. BIOS could see it, but not Win8.

When I took the Win8 drive out of the system and replaced it with my
Win7 boot drive (SSD) with all the drives plugged in, everything went
right back to normal. I'm running Win7 just fine. So what's up with
Win8? Anybody had any experience with it yet? Thanks.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog

Bill Anderson wrote:
> I've downloaded the Win8 beta and this morning I disconnected all the
> current drives from my P5Q Pro Turbo, plugged in a spare, and installed
> Windows 8 on it under AHCI. The installation went smoothly and
> everything seemed to be working.
>
> Then I installed the ICH10 driver that I must use under Windows 7 in
> order to make the board's Drive Xpert feature work. (It's a quasi-RAID
> feature that combines drives connected to the board's orange and white
> SATA sockets.) I had to use Windows compatibility mode to install
> anything from the P5Q's installation disk.
>
> Then I tried plugging in my other drives: one 3-gig HDD, two 1-gig HDDs
> running together under Drive Xpert, and a 1.5-gig HDD. Windows 8
> promptly croaked.
>
> Actually, when I tried to boot with all the drives connected, I got a
> warning screen saying I had a "DPC Watchdog Violation" and that I should
> look it up if I wanted to know what that meant. So after re-booting
> with the drives disconnected I looked it up and found nothing helpful.
> Most people are seeing it pop up while running, as some sort of BSOD
> that appears unexpectedly. I couldn't get that far; I simply couldn't
> get Win8 to run, to get past the Violation screen at boot.
>
> I did a little more troubleshooting. I discovered that I'd see the
> Violation screen at boot with either the 3-gig drive connected by
> itself, or with it disconnected and just the two 1-gig drives connected
> as a pair.
>
> I didn't see the Violation at all with just the 1.5 gig drive connected.
> In fact, with just that drive connected Win8 would boot just fine.
> But...it wouldn't recognize the drive. BIOS could see it, but not Win8.
>
> When I took the Win8 drive out of the system and replaced it with my
> Win7 boot drive (SSD) with all the drives plugged in, everything went
> right back to normal. I'm running Win7 just fine. So what's up with
> Win8? Anybody had any experience with it yet? Thanks.
>

What happens if you install Windows 8, and just use whatever
it has for ICH10 driver ? DriveExpert is probably just a Silicon Image
chip "faking" a RAID, and doesn't need a driver to gain access.
Only if you were attempting to configure it, or make changes to
the RAID behind the chip, would you need additional software.
And you might be able to manage that, from a BIOS screen
(change mode etc).

ICH10R ----
----
----
----
----
---------- SIL5723 --- orange
--- white

The SIL5723 presents a "fake" SATA drive to the ICH10R.
And shouldn't need a driver as such. The drives behind the
SIL5723 would be "less observable".

And there's nothing on this page that looks modern enough to help.
It's not clear, whether this works in-band, through the SATA cable,
or only works in designs where the I2C enclosure bus or equivalent
is hooked up. The I2C bus isn't typically wired up on motherboards.
It's more for something like a NAS design with multiple drive bays.

http://www.siliconimage.com/support/...pid=103&cat=24

http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/sii...L_11-28-06.pdf

Paul

On 7/11/2012 5:03 PM, Paul wrote:
> Bill Anderson wrote:
>> I've downloaded the Win8 beta and this morning I disconnected all the
>> current drives from my P5Q Pro Turbo, plugged in a spare, and
>> installed Windows 8 on it under AHCI. The installation went smoothly
>> and everything seemed to be working.
>>
>> Then I installed the ICH10 driver that I must use under Windows 7 in
>> order to make the board's Drive Xpert feature work. (It's a
>> quasi-RAID feature that combines drives connected to the board's
>> orange and white SATA sockets.) I had to use Windows compatibility
>> mode to install anything from the P5Q's installation disk.
>>
>> Then I tried plugging in my other drives: one 3-gig HDD, two 1-gig
>> HDDs running together under Drive Xpert, and a 1.5-gig HDD. Windows 8
>> promptly croaked.
>>
>> Actually, when I tried to boot with all the drives connected, I got a
>> warning screen saying I had a "DPC Watchdog Violation" and that I
>> should look it up if I wanted to know what that meant. So after
>> re-booting with the drives disconnected I looked it up and found
>> nothing helpful. Most people are seeing it pop up while running, as
>> some sort of BSOD that appears unexpectedly. I couldn't get that far;
>> I simply couldn't get Win8 to run, to get past the Violation screen at
>> boot.
>>
>> I did a little more troubleshooting. I discovered that I'd see the
>> Violation screen at boot with either the 3-gig drive connected by
>> itself, or with it disconnected and just the two 1-gig drives
>> connected as a pair.
>>
>> I didn't see the Violation at all with just the 1.5 gig drive
>> connected. In fact, with just that drive connected Win8 would boot
>> just fine. But...it wouldn't recognize the drive. BIOS could see it,
>> but not Win8.
>>
>> When I took the Win8 drive out of the system and replaced it with my
>> Win7 boot drive (SSD) with all the drives plugged in, everything went
>> right back to normal. I'm running Win7 just fine. So what's up with
>> Win8? Anybody had any experience with it yet? Thanks.
>>
>
> What happens if you install Windows 8, and just use whatever
> it has for ICH10 driver ? DriveExpert is probably just a Silicon Image
> chip "faking" a RAID, and doesn't need a driver to gain access.
> Only if you were attempting to configure it, or make changes to
> the RAID behind the chip, would you need additional software.
> And you might be able to manage that, from a BIOS screen
> (change mode etc).
>
> ICH10R ----
> ----
> ----
> ----
> ----
> ---------- SIL5723 --- orange
> --- white
>
> The SIL5723 presents a "fake" SATA drive to the ICH10R.
> And shouldn't need a driver as such. The drives behind the
> SIL5723 would be "less observable".
>
> And there's nothing on this page that looks modern enough to help.
> It's not clear, whether this works in-band, through the SATA cable,
> or only works in designs where the I2C enclosure bus or equivalent
> is hooked up. The I2C bus isn't typically wired up on motherboards.
> It's more for something like a NAS design with multiple drive bays.
>
> http://www.siliconimage.com/support/...pid=103&cat=24
>
> http://www.siliconimage.com/docs/sii...L_11-28-06.pdf
>
> Paul

Thanks, Paul. I may give that a try. Seems unlikely, but maybe the
problem is the result of disconnecting all data drives during
installation. Maybe if they'd been there, Windows 8 would have seen them.

Yikes, I've just noticed that in my original post I talked about "gig"
when I meant "TB." It's a three terabyte drive that causes Win8 to give
the violation screen and it's 1.5 terabyte drive that Win8 just wouldn't
recognize. And of course there are two identical 1-TB drives that need
to work together under Drive Xpert, and they produce the violation
screen too.

I just don't want anything to happen to the data on all my disks, and
that's why I disconnected them before playing around with Win8. I
suppose I can make sure I have everything vital backed up and give Win8
installation another shot with all drives attached. Maybe I'll get
brave in a day or so. We'll see. Thanks again.

--
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog