Final K8N2P bootup problems solved...!

Question

When I first built this system last week I experienced a really annoying bootup problem when booting into WinXP....the system would lock up with a blue screen *Machine Error* every single time....so I loaded the "failsafe" bios settings, booted into XP finally, and then began a process of elimination among the bios settings to try and determine which ones disagreed with WinXP so much....  (Oh, joy!)
To make a long and tedious story very short, I eventually found that I had to manually *disable* UDMA auto-config for my empty hard-drive slot of IDE0 secondary channel, and in combination with that had to *disable* UDMA auto-config for both of the DVD/CD-ROM devices I had then which were located at IDE1 primary and secondary. (All jumper settings for the drives were correct, btw, and the machine error manifested whether I set CS or M&S or, in the case of my WD boot drive, "stand-alone.")  Once I did that, I could boot fine from IDE0 prime autoconfigged @ UDMA5, and my two IDE1 devices would then boot with PIO4 set by the bios's PIO autoconfig. I had to set it up exactly this way to boot--doing one or the other as regards each IDE channel would result in the Machine Error that I didn't want see--so I had to do both, in other words, to boot.
In reading the forums here I  saw mention of ps2 keyboard problems, but replacing my PS2 kboard with a native USB kboard *did not* solve the problem or change its nature (had no problems with either native PS/2 or USB kboards.)  Then I read about config problems people had with Audigy2's, so I removed  my A2Zs card, refreshed the CMOS, and rebooted--right back into the Machine Error again (unless I manually setup the IDE channel UDMA autoconfig as described above, of course.)  So my A2Zs (0350) was not the cause of the problem.  I did the same thing with my TX4200 PCI RAID controller--again, without positive result.  Last, I disabled WinXp SP2's Data Execution Prevention to see if that might have been the cause--it was *not* (so I reenabled it with the OptIn policy.)  So by then I knew the problem was not caused by my keyboard, my A2Zs, DEP, or my PCI RAID controller--any one of which, of course, *might conceivably* have caused a resource conflict of some kind--so I had to to test out all of these avenues.
That done, I had a hunch and went out and picked up a couple of new DVD/CD-W drives (as described now in my SIG), and lo and behold, from the first attempt I could successfully boot into XP without the Machine Error that had defeated my best efforts at troubleshooting for all of last week--I could boot fine with all of the bios settings for IDE 0&1 UDMA and PIO set to "auto" without incident for the first time!  I was also a bit surprised to see that these new DVD/CD's run natively in UDMA 2--not PIO4 (multi-word DMA) as had both of my former CD-type drives on IDE1.
So the problem having been solved in this fashion I will make the following observation about the K8N2P (I'm running stock bios 1.3):  this board does not like *old crap* connected to it!....  Heh...  My former CD-type drives were scarcely two-years older than the drives I installed today (according to their tagged manufacturing dates), but even so my old drives were "old enough" it seems to not get along with my k8n2P system's resource allocation!  Installation of the new drives solved the last remaining problem that I had, I'm very glad to say.
Although I didn't have to, I also got rid of my old TEAC floppy drive--and replaced it with a USB HDD which is so quiet and unobtrusive I have to pinch myself to make sure it's there...
Finally, along the lines of "old stuff"  I did note that the board does not seem to recognize PS/2 devices using PS/2-to-USB adaptors of any description--so go native whether PS/2 or USB and you should be fine.
I'm certainly relieved--hope this account helps a few folks!

Answer 1

Quote
Originally posted by syar2003
Nice work .  
I have suspected the K8N boards having trouble with optical for some time.
Nice to have some proof .
Did you by the way try with one of the old ones as the only optical on the IDE1 port , or have the opticals on IDE0 and harddrive on IDE1.
Some has had success in swapping it around if i remember correctly.
Thanks, syar....  I'm just relieved that everything is working as expected now as it was a bit of a bummer to have to go to a bootup workaround for a new system over something as routine as IDE autoconfig.  
Those older drives, a Samsung CD-RW/DVD SM332 and a Lite-On LTR32123S CDRW, came out of my former nf2 (Chaintech 7njs) system--that the wife will inherit from My Most Beneficent Self (which of course was my excuse to build a new system)--and if I recall correctly it seems the combo presented some problems for me there which I finally solved by going to a cable select setting for them in the Chaintech.  So maybe it's just the particular combination of these drives in my case, or possibly something less than completely compatible optical-drive support from the nVidia IDE controller implementation...?  I didn't try swapping them on the channels, but I did try setting the IDE 0 secondary UDMA bios config to "auto" while disabling the UDMA auto-config for IDE1 prime and second--and still got the machine error, and vice-versa.  It does indeed seem to me as if these newer platforms are a bit pickier about what you hook up than maybe was the case in the past (with nf2 and circa core logic.)
Edit: Wanted to add as well that these new DVD/CDRW drives (manufactured mid '04) are *a lot* quiter in operation (aside from being generally faster.)  Spinning up, the old drives reminded me of a washing machine in the "spin" cycle...  I have to listen to even hear these--what a difference a couple of years can make, eh?