# What else could be wrong with my new system?

## Dralnu

I have recently purchased a much-needed upgrade, and have come across some problems, mainly the fact that Knoppix (5.1CD or 5.3DVD) can't seem to find the SATA2 drive that I have plugged into the system.

I have talked to the guys on #hardware, and from the errors I posted there (which I sadly don't have anymore), they figured it was a bad drive (mobo recognized the drive corrently, but when booting dmesg said that the drive wasn't responding), which I replaced with another drive.

I reset the CMOS header several times, I have tried 3 diffrent hdds, and I'm even on my second mobo (which I have tried with one of the older drives as I returned the other two), which still fails.

I'm honestly at a loss as to what could be wrong with this system. Everything seems to work perfectly well, EXCEPT for the blasted drive (and an optical drive that seems to have decided it wouldn't retract its tray, and died when I tried to persuade it to accept it, the hard way).

I'm returning the the optical drive, the hdd, and the mobo soon, but I want to see what else could possibly be wrong with this system, since I feel like I have tried everything except replacing the whole mess.

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## yabbadabbadont

Perhaps the hardware is too new?

/me dons asbestos undies

Does it work with windows?

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## pdw_hu

You could try setting AHCI off in the BIOS. Tho i've no experience with SATA2. I just recently got normal SATA myself, but windows xp couldn't even find the HDD with AHCI.

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## gerard27

Why not try rescuecd?

Gerard.

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## Dralnu

I may try a diffrent CD.

@pdw_hu:

How would ahci cause problems with SATA?

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## harrisonmetz

What is your motherboards chipset (and perhaps southbridge)? What kernel is konppix running? Have you tried booting linux with the parameter pci=nomsi ?

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## gerard27

@hdw_hu

I first set "Normal IDE" instead of AHCI.

Kernels > 2.6.23 were having problems during boot.

By setting it to AHCI these problems were gone.

After that I couldn't boot into XP.

Solution: when XP is needed go into the bios and change back to "Normal IDE".

I got rid of XP because I don't need it anymore.

Gerard.

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## Dralnu

 *harrisonmetz wrote:*   

> What is your motherboards chipset (and perhaps southbridge)? What kernel is konppix running? Have you tried booting linux with the parameter pci=nomsi ?

 

It works. Knoppix was running with the .24 kernel, while the rescuecd is running .25, which seems to have made the diff.

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