herbr

Lancelot_Real Your process (in the first post) described something about "building" drivers. I don'e yet have a system to do that on. The system I have trouble sith is the one I would use. Beyond that, I do Linux development (embedded boards, drivers and kernel bring-up). I have done some windows work, but I think the environments in Windows leaves a LOT to be desired. Just my opinion. Please note everyone, Linux has NO problems with this board! I also have another Linux system built around a P5B-VM which is a development system for my embedde3d work. It also has the same chipset and works just fine with Linux. I do want to use Win2k but am blocked by this problem. Lancelot_Real, are you suggesting using ICH9 test mode install? Which version would you suggest? I have altered the txtsetup.oem for several of the ICH8 versions but have had no success. That doesn't give me any confidence that I'm doing it right! Herb

Thanks Lancelot_Real. I don't understand what that process you provided is doing. I went to Intel, downloaded the ICH8 document and its' updates. What I found is that the Dev ID in the ICH8 CHANGES DEPENDING on the MODE set by the BIOS. My motherboard is an Asus P5B-VM SE and the Asus BIOS (903 the latest) DOES NOT ALLOW NAY choice of mode i.e. IDE/AHCI/RAID. If the BIOS allowed that I am quite sure that the Dev ID's I see would NOT be 2820 and 2825 but rather they would be the ones in the TXTSETUP.OEM that I modified. To illustrate this, go to the BIOS on your motherboard and select IDE mode. I WOULD NOT BOOT TO YOUR OS after this - it WON'T WORK!. Download a live cd (like UBUNTU 8.0.4) and boot it. Use "sudo lspci -vnn" to look at the device ID's on devices:function 1f.2 and if.5 I cannot confirm this on my motherboard since I cannot change the mode in the BIOS. If I could change the mode in the BIOS, I would not be trying to "fix" the TXTSETUP.OEM file. By the way, lspci on my board reports the device a couple of ways depending on the DevID found - for the LPC Interface Controller it reports 82801HB/HR (ICH8/R) and for the SATA IDE it always reports 82802H (ICH8 Family). You can try to figure that one out ;-) I'll just have to bother Asus (or wait for them to see the light ;-) Herb

I've tried to use this guide to attempt to allow me to use the F6 floppy method to install XP Pro on a new system. Motherboard Asus P5b-vm se (has the ICH8 on board) 2 Gig OCZ DDR2 SDRAM (memtest passes OK) Seagate 320 Gig SATA HD When I attempt to install Win2k (just because I like it!), it detects the partitions I made using Partition Magic but fails to format the C: partition. When I attempt to install WinXP, it doesn't even detect the partitions and reports a 131,xxx Meg drive. The installation continues and I can run it. To use the rest of the 320 Gig, I resize and create other partitions. When I reboot, WinXP doesn't get started and reports a corrupt disk. If I try to re-install I get a 131,xxx Meg drive. I tried to use your guide to add the "Testmode" drivers. Booting into Ubuntu 8.0.4 and use "lspci" to determine what pci devices are present, I find that there's a 4-port SATA controller with vendor:device of 8086:2820 and a 2-port SATA controller of 8086:2825. I download the Intel documents for the ICH8 and again using "lspci" get some dumps of the configuration space for the 8086:2820 controller. This device SUPPORTS AHCI and in fact has detected the presence of a device on port 1 (where I connected it). I then modify "Fernandos fixed files" to find the 8086:2820 device and do the install of the textmode drivers.WinXP reacted the same way as without the changes. Digging deeper into the configuration registers, I see that the MAP register at offset 0x90 is set 0x00 indicating IDE mode. This is what the BIOS thinks is the best mode (and probably is "compatibility" mode). Another field in this register is 0x00 as well and indicates that AHCI or RAID (????) may be selected. I've had no success with this system but I do think that Asus needs to allow the selection of AHCI/IDE/??? for this register. Then I think I might even be able to use this system! Am I on track here or am I "off in the weeds"? Herb