I am exchanging emails since a few days ago with the Abit technical support, and I am very, very unhappy. They don't seem to consider me seriously. They try to insinuate that I am doing something wrong when installing WinXP (no way).

As many of you know already, I can't manage to use my IBM DeskStar 60GXP hard disks on the HPT370 controller (not even with RAID disabled!!).

I followed all the possible advices, updated all the drivers, removed all the cards and other drives, NOTHING. The HPT370 corrupts the partition continuously, it's absolutely unreliable.

Note that the drives and the system passed all the hardware tests possible, they are not faulty. They are incompatible.

Before you begin to tell me "try this, try that", I tried everything already, so please spare me. I am a professional in this field, I know what I am doing. And, if you have been successful in installing XP on these HDDs, maybe they have a different BIOS revision, or maybe you have a slower Pentium4 processor or memory (I have a P4 1.8 GHz with 512 Mb PC800 RDRAM).

What I want to underline here is that, from many, many posts, I can see that the HPT370 RAID controller has been completely screwed up in this motherboard.
I have also an Abit ST6-RAID with a P3 1Ghz, and there you get always a perfect result at full speed regardless of the HDDs brand and/or drivers and/or BIOS version used.

I have been fortunate for have two IBM Deskstar 30's Raid'ed 0 and they have worked fine, albiet the ABIT drivers are not ACPI compatible (103b).

ABIT did a better job with the BP6 bios's as far as updating frequency. The HTP controller issue on this board, esp with XP, is lacking and inconsistent.

There is also a (major) but in XP where it re-letters/re-assigns drives on the fly, causing corrupt boot sectors, etc. The doc is on the MS site.

Regards,

I am installing WinXP again.
I start setup and choose create partition, then Format NTFS, this part is fine.

Then setup copies files to the hard drive, then reboots. After reboot I get a Blue screen ... which says boot disk error and remove any new hardware or software and try again, if this problem persists contact harware manufacturer.
I reboot again, it says the same thing on the Blue screen.
(B.T.W. , I am installing on an IBM Deskstar 60GXP 20gig ATA 100 7200RPM hard drive)

I go into Bios and disable Port 1 Master UDMA, so only PIO modes are available. I reboot and setup continues without a flaw. I then turn on UDMA in Bios after WinXP Setup finishes, all is well.

In Conclusion,
I am forced to disable UDMA on the Intel IDE Port 1 during WinXP setup.

I hereby warn and advise anyone installing WinXP to turn off UDMA for their C-Drive during WinXP setup. The "Damn" motherboard is bugged, this happens on any IDE port on the TH7II-Raid motherboard.

I am very frustrated with this board, it cannot even do simple tasks such as install an operating system without errors. I am not asking the board to do wild things, just standard things which it should be able to do. I am not even overclocking, I am running exactly as I should be running.

The system has ACPI StandBy mode problems with both Bios revs, to me they have fixed nothing. They state that the new bios fixes some WHQL status functionality. For me, I cannot see why this board passed WHQL status. they must have submitted a tweeked motherboard to get the certification.
I am calling my hardware vendor on Monday and demanding my money back or a swap for the asus P4T-E motherboard. i will have Chan in the USA Tech support office write a letter for my motherboard vendor to inform them of the problems with the board if I need to go to this extent.

I am getting absolutely Pissed Off at this board. I have installed Win2K and WinXP so many times; to get a working ACPI system, that I am getting dizzy.

I will never ever buy another Abit board in my life. I am the System Administrator of the IT Department at work, and have over 8000 PC's in our network of offices. I build PC's for a living and I know my Shi*.

I have built over 40 PC's last year alone, and I have never had a problem like this.

I advice against using the HPT370 at all, at the very first symptoms of incompatibility with your hard disks.

Switching to PIO4 to complete the installation worked for me, but the system corrupted itself after switching back to UDMA5.

If you can't install in UDMA5, move the hard disks to the Intel standard controller (IDE ports 1 and 2), and move the CD-RW / DVD / CD ROMs to the HPT370 (IDE ports 3 and 4).

I have 2-60g IBM drives on the HPT IDE3 as Raid-0 and 2-40g IBM Drives on HPT IDE4 as Raid-0. I do not have a problem with the IBM drives on the HPT controller, it is only on the Intel ports that I have a problem.

yep now I understand your config - so we are experiencing very different issues.
On my motherboard, the Intel IDE controller is OK, it accepts anything in UDMA5 without any fuss. On the other side, the HPT370 literally hates my IBM HDDs.

As a test, you could leave the HPT370 EMPTY, and see if this changes the situation.

Diane, I fully understand you. But I have to say that I am an Abit fan since many years ago, and this is the very first time that I am having problems with them.

Now you on the other hand, have problems with the HPT controller as the c-drive and installing WinXP.

My conclusion is that the Bios is just screwed up and cannot work with IBM or seagate drives.

This would appear to be a bios issue since we are having simular problems on quite different ports.

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FINAL = beta Status
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