NForce 520/Win7 64bit - can't get SATA DVD working...

[SToPGAP]

I recently upgraded my OS to Win7 Ultimate and all was well. Since then, I got a new SATA DVD RW and it just won't work... any attempt to access it results in the process (eg explorer) crashing and sometimes the drive completely disappearing altogether.

I have a SATA HDD which is working just fine. Occasionally the DVD will pick up an audio CD and WMP has even gone as far as identifying the album art for it, but no audio and it crashes WMP on track change. I have verified that the same audio CD works fine in my IDE liteon CD-RW drive. I have tried a linux live CD and a Win XP BART PE live CD and both booted just fine, with no issues accessing the drive so something is definitely not right with the Windows 7 drivers. I've tried different SATA cables and sockets from the mobo to the DVD RW - to no avail.

I'm running Win 7 Ultimate 64-bit on an Althlon XP 64 4400 X2 CPU

My DVD RW is an SH-S223C:
http://www.samsung.com/ca/consumer/office/optical-disk-drives/optical-disk-drives/SH-S223C/BEBE/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail

My mobo is a Foxconn 520a:
http://www.foxconnchannel.com/product/Motherboards/detail_overview.aspx?ID=en-us0000342

both have the latest firmware.

Can anyone offer any help? Most Win 7 64 drivers for nForce don't seem to support 520/560 and I'm really at a loss as to what to do now - I can't afford a new mobo right now alas as I'm sure that'd get around these issues. I tried Fernando's package to no avail, it just didn't make a difference. I read that AHCP can cause problems although I have no option in the BIOS to change it. I simply have enable/disable sata and then enable/disable raid (plus a few options for that).

I'd really appreciate some help, I'm so stuck without my DVD writer and my old one is now defunct.

[Fernando 1]

@ SToPGAP:
Welcome at nForcersHQ Forum!

You are right regarding the bad support of nForce 560/520 (MCP65) chipsets by NVIDIA. The latest official nForce chipset driver set, which will support your system, is the 15.25 one. You can get the 64bit package from >here<.

Before I am able to give you any recommendation about how to solve your problem, you should give us the information about the SATA mode of your system. Are you running your SATA devices (hdd and optical drive) in AHCI or IDE mode? The SATA mode settings have to be done within the BIOS.
If you should not know the SATA mode settings, please open the Win7 Device Manager and look into the "IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers" section. Which Controller name do you see there ("Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller", "NVIDIA nForce Serial ATA Controller" or both)?

Regards
Fernando

[SToPGAP]

Hi Fernando,

thanks for replying. I have checked through the BIOS once again to make sure and there is simply no option relating to AHCI or IDE mode, just enable/disable SATA controller.

I have just installed the drivers you linked to; the device manager shows ATA Channel 0 (twice) and ATA Channel 1 (twice), plus Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller (twice). There is an IDE CD-RW drive connected to the IDE socket on the motherboard in addition to my SATA HDD & DVD-RW drives.

There don't appear to be any jumpers on the DVD-RW drive, just SATA power and data.

Basically I see no way of setting AHCI mode either way.

Thanks for your help

Simon.

[Fernando 1]

Hello Simon,

since you are not running the SATA drives in AHCI mode, I don't have a real explanation for your issue with the DVD RW device.
My suggestion is to RMA your SATA connected optical drive (if you can) or to buy an IDE connected one.

Regards
Fernando

[SToPGAP]

Hi again,

I'm inclined to believe that it has to be something to do with the drivers in Windows 7, the drive works flawlessly when booting from CD/DVD, works perfectly in a Windows XP CD build, with a Linux bootable CD and in another machine with a more recent nForce revision (I tried plugging it into a friend's PC). It doesn't make sense that it would be a hardware fault either in the drive or the SATA controllers as they both work flawlessly outside of Windows 7.

On a slightly different note - the drivers you linked to, should they have shown multiple options for selection when I was installing? I only got SMU and Away mode driver (not even sure what that one is) in the list of items to install... I've found similarly few options in other driver sets - it almost seems as though certain parts of the nForce install are being missed as it's not seeing them... I know in the past on nForce2/3/4 installs I've had many more options. Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Simon.

[Fernando 1]

Hello Simon,

when I gave you the link to NVIDIA's nForce chipset driver set 15.25, I thought, that you are running your SATA devices in AHCI mode. The 15.25 sets are the last ones, which contain nForce SATA and RAID drivers, which do fully support nForce 560/520 chipsets. All the other nForce drivers of the 15.25 (Ethernet, SMU etc.) are not important for you, because there are newer ones out, which may work better with your chipset.

The problem for you is, that there is no NVIDIA nForce SATA driver at all available for your chipset, if the SATA Controllers have been set to IDE mode. The default IDE mode SATA driver for MCP65 systems is the generic MS driver PCIIDE.SYS, which is managing the "Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller". So you will not be able to solve your problem by changing the SATA driver, unless you get the chance to set the SATA Controllers to AHCI mode. You should ask the manufacturer of your mainboard for a BIOS update.

On a slightly different note - the drivers you linked to, should they have shown multiple options for selection when I was installing? I only got SMU and Away mode driver (not even sure what that one is) in the list of items to install... I've found similarly few options in other driver sets - it almost seems as though certain parts of the nForce install are being missed as it's not seeing them... I know in the past on nForce2/3/4 installs I've had many more options.

It is rather normal, that the installer of any nForce chipset driver set won't give you the option to install all drivers of the set.
Example: The included nForce IDE drivers of the 15.25 set are not usable with your chipset, because you are running the SATA Controllers in IDE mode and none of the nForce IDE drivers do support the IDE mode of your chipset.

Regards
Fernando