BIOS help!!!

[Mr_Threepwood]

Ok so this weekend is the weekend I finally decided to update my computer hardware and reinstall windows. First off i started by flashing the BIOS, after I did this it still worked but whenever it boots it gives me a warning about the settings and I can skip it and go into windows (on previous settings i guess). I have a new 250 gb SATA Maxtor hard drive and I decided to install it. The pboelm is my motherboard has 2 SATA IDE type connectors, and 2 SATA ones that are on a "promise RAID" interface. The IDE ones were used by my other 2 hard drives so I put it on the RAID one. Then I went into the bios and tried to make sure that the primise RAID interface was activated, and set to IDE mode instead of RAID mode. After doing that and rebooting it does a couple of weird things.

First it stalls for about 10 seconds saying scanning for IDE devices, then after that I get:

"CMOS checksum bad"

It ignores the boot settings I put in the bios and goes into my windows (which is the old one, not reformatted i mean). Once in windows everything seems to work ok but I cant get the new hard drive to work. Plus I really would like to get rid of these errors and get a fresh copy of XP installed.


So what should I do, should I flash the BIOS again with a different version or something?


My Motherboard is a P4C800 Delux.


-Edit After reading some more of my motherboard manual I think it says that a bad checksum means your BIOS is destroyed, but can be recovered with the CD (which I kept thank god). So should I attempt to do this, or does it sound like the BIOS isnt corrupt since I can still get into windows fine.

 

[uzi9mm]

try doing a hard reset on your CMOS, by shutting down your computer. And finding the CMOS clear jumper, or by pulling the battery.

 

[Mr_Threepwood]

What? What is the jumper, what does CMOS mean, and will I still have a BIOS after I do this?

 

[uzi9mm]

yeah. It is just going to reset your CMOS.

 

[Mr_Threepwood]

K but before I do this I'll post my new discovery. I rebooted again and Disabled the 2 SATA ports that were on the FASTRACT RAID controller, when I do that everything boots up fine, no errors at all. So I'm thinking now that my BIOS is ok. The problem now is I really want that Fasttrack controller to work on IDE mode because I need to get my SATA hard drive thats on the controller working. I was thinking maybe theres a second driver for the fasttrack controller, but I'm not sure because their downloads thing is very unclear to me, can you check it.

http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=en-us

-EDIT Sorry I tried to post a link right to the drivers page but it takes you to the main page.

enter this info into the drop downs

Motherboard

socket 478

p4c800 delux (not delux E)



-SECOND EDIT Ok I am now 99% sure that its the Promise Fastrack controller thats causing the problem. When I enabled it again it tried to search for IDE hard drive then said It couldnt find one and then gave me the BIOS is not installed error.