PC hangs or reboots attempting to partition or format any hard drive with all OS's.

[isilion]

Hi all. This is my first post in this forum.

My old Intel mobo died and i replaced it with an ABIT VT7. In a first, while pc was mounted, it was unable to boot the winXP partition, and Debian partition sometimes freezed (error was "not syncing", with a kernel panic).

So i tryed to format the drive and do a full reinstall of both Os's. Using the 80 Gb IDE drive of the old build, the Windows installer was unable to even read the partition table (if any) on the drive, so i thought the drive was dead, and bought a brand new SATA WD Caviar Blue.

After finding and aplying the drivers in the moment of the installation the error came again (hang or freeze just in these moments:

-after reading installation files from windows install cd (blank screen, "Wait a moment...")
-at the moment to INSTALL or PARTITIONATE/FORMAT with windows installer.
-at the moment of doing more than 1 partition in any kernel over 2.6.26.

) So... i think my first HDD was OK and mounted it again and pulled the SATA, for the moment. Error happens always in that 3 ways, showing different results (BSOD, hang, reboot, in less cases kernel panic).

I wanted to test my memoryes and i did so. They pass memtest86+ in less than an hour. So i checked the Graphic card. I booted a livecd of Ubuntu and ran OpenArena. Like a charm... So system is stable.

I noticed, or pursue the idea that the error is provoked when the system (or installer) is trying to access or write data in a HDD. LiveCD works with no problems, a installed GNU/Linux partition could run until:

-system stores data in hdd or attempt to sync and fail.
-(reproducible) I access to MEGAVIDEO or to play a flash game (IE, Tower Defense 2). I think this is because some data is trying to be stored in the hdd (TD2 save game, or megavideo authentication script). In this case the screen freezes, sound enters in a short loop and have to shutdown pc pressing 4 seconds Pwr btn.

Bios version is the latest (14). BSOD's received by windows installer were:

-IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
-BAD_HEAD_POOL
-Error including cdfs.sys and ntfs.sys so i tryed a new XP copy.

I manually set the IRQ assignment for SATA or IDE and they are not in conflict with any other. SATA IRQ isn't shared. Not sure what bus is IDE, but seems like it's other thing. All the errors above are reproducible using whatever HDD, so i think that the problem resides in the mobo or in his bios config. I reseted the CMOS several times with no better luck.

At this moment i'm totally lost. Please help... If of interest, my last attempt was to reflash the bios, and while pressing ALT+F2 on the POST screen with ATWDFLASH.EXE and the bios file in a floppy, iit says reading, then hangs, then resets config (each time i do so, Intel Branding comes again and i manually set it off).

[isilion]

Well, I commented my problem to the seller and he said perhaps is a BIOS problem. This made me think in a kernel error gave by ubuntu 10.10:

[1.018839] BIOS EDD facility v0.16 2004-Jun-25, 0 devices found ...

EDD is: wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Disk_Drive , which IS precisely who tells the system about Cilinders, Headers, Sectors. That confirm that it is a BIOS problem, just because the error detected match the symptoms expected/observed.

Since the BIOS is unflasheable (it hangs, reading the diskette), it's a dead mobo. I told the seller and he's going to give me an ASUS P4C800 Deluxe P4 Socket 478 FSB800 SATA. Im very happy because it's better than this one, and because having succeeded at determining such nasty error.

You can mark this as SOLVED.