[P2420] DVD's cause HDD to hang!

[niterock]

Hi!

Apologies for the lengthy submission but hopefully someone can suggest a resolution. I am a reseller engineer and not the end user.

The problem is identified as a communications or driver error or conflict between Vista Business and the SATA drivers for the Esprimo P2420 (YKEC002022)

I bought two of these machines to sell on to a client ... one with the pre installed Vista and one downgraded to XPP to meet customers requirements.

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I failed miserably to get machine one to read the XPP downgrade disk, continually getting 5/10 minutes of nothing (hard disk light on but no activity!) followed by a request for the same disk, followed by more waiting ... loop ... loop

I tried re-installing Vista from the recovery DVD .. same problem cant read DVD (hard disk light on but no activity!) ... loop etc. Hhmmm. Replaced the DVD drive with a generic Lite-on drive ... same problem ... replaced the HDD with another one (brand new) same problem.

Inserted an OEM XPP CD and installed XP no problem ... full access and DVD functionality. Tried to reinstall Vista from the recovery DVD ... failed when asking for missing driver then cant read DVD??

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Machine 2 booted fine into preinstalled Vista ... perfect! Until I inserted a DVD Movie to test installation. Machine hung with HDD light on but no activity. Had to power off and re-boot. Machine works perfectly until !ANY! dvd is inserted, then it falls over!

I attached an external USB DVD drive and that works perfectly!

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I conclude that Vista and the SATA are not compatible! Suggestions please!

This is NOT urgent as the client is happy with the external USB drive for the moment and his XPP box is perfect although it cost me an OEM license rather than a downgrade!! We'll talk about that later

Kind regards

Jimmy Flynn
Milborne Port Computer Services

[niterock]

OK ... so I solved my own problem in the end ... not to my satisfaction and no thanks to FS tech supp or warranty department who passed me from pillar to post an would take no responsibility for the problem! Rant over!

You have to attach an external USB DVD drive to your PC ... press F12 at boot up to select the boot device ... select the USB DVD drive having already inserted the XP Twinload DVD ... Agree to downgrade and off it goes ... when it asks to reboot unplug the USB DVD and then reboot ... XP starts up just fine ... The DVD drive works perfectly under XP from then on.

This does not address the issue of Vista Business not being able to read or access the DVD drive in its pre installed state ... I've tried changing the DVD drive, the HDD and upgraded the BIOS ... nothing works ... I've had 3 of these machines so far from eBuyer ... all the same (no blame on eBuyer!).

As with most things in life "Vista" is a pretty view, not an operating system

Jimmy

Cross posted to other threads with similar issues! ... FS will probably moderate as I've been critical.

[TeQiE]

I have seen a similar problem with these units, and I know a friend of mine has also had the same sort of thing! I was advised by FS tech support it can take 5-10 mins to boot the recovery disk - but as you say it doesn't work.

I think I have narrowed down the Vista / DVD issue further - if you look in Device Manager you will see that the IDE controller is using a standard Microsoft driver. You cannot update this to an NVIDIA (the mobo chipset) one since Windows recognises the device with a device ID of 0550 and the drivers are for other device IDs, specifically 0554 in the one I am looking at (downloaded from the Nvidia site).

Advice I see on other pages notes that the BIOS should be set to hard-drive RAID mode in order to change the device from a 0550 to a 0554 ID, and allow you to load the driver. HOWEVER - I see no option for this in my BIOS.

I assume that SATA RAID has been disabled by FS to make sure that if you want that feature you buy a more expensive machine. I also assume that the XP driver is more compatible, even though this seems a poor assumption to make especially when I haven't been able to get XP onto this box yet to look! Don't know how we can get around this, but I will be pointing the problem out to FS tech support shortly!

Any other ideas please post back...
cheers

[TeQiE]

OK hopefully a resolution:
Tech support believe that my motherboard is faulty, and have noted that a certain number of boards exibit this fault and need to be changed.

The way to find out seems to be to go into the BIOS and press F1 for Info. Then scroll right to the bottom of the list, and in the bottom left hand corner I have a number E11 - these are at least inclusive to the list of boards affected.

The resolution I am told is to update the BIOS first (which I had already done) and then see if you have E11 - if so you need to get FS to replace your mainboard.

I have an engineer booked for the next 2 business days (apparently having built countless PCs and with over 8 years experience in IT they still prefer to send an engineer - so that I am blameless. OK I can live with that) so I will let you know the result of that.

Cheers
Jon

[sabrex]

Thanks Jon.
Very limited number of boards exchibit this but anyone who also passes this post will need the following info aswell for the helpdesk.
The Serial-Number of the mainboard is mentioned on the mainboard label or can be displayed by using the inventory function of the FSC Test-& Diagnostic Tool DIFS.

[TeQiE]

Oops sorry yes they did ask for that info too - never heard of the mentioned tools so I just whipped the cover off to get the motherboard serial number.

Swapping the mainboard appears to have fixed everything and I am not very happy with my purchase again

I just feel sorry for FS who it has now probably cost a lot more to put this machine on my desk than I have paid them.

Well done to the chap who eventually diagnosed the fault and ordered me a new part - didn't catch his name on the helpdesk. The first guy cut me off whilst talking to someone else about it.
Nice engineer too - very helpful chasing Parcelfarce who couldn't find us apparently with the same address as the engineer.

I think the engineer mistakenly picked up both of my recovery disks though - is there a way to obtain another copy from somewhere? I have asked for him to be informed and to pop back with them if he has them, but otherwise they have walked out on their own...

Cheers
Jon