8k5a3+ "Unmountable Boot Volume" Please Help!!

[CoolHand]

I have tried two different 8k5a3+ motherboards (new), two different drives, switched drive cables, and reinstalled winXP 5 times. Each time, I get a blue screen at startup with the error "UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME".

Setup is as follows:

Unlocked Athlon 1600+
8k5a3+ Motherboard
WD 120 Gig SE HD
ATI All-In_Wonder 8500
512 Meg Crucial RAM

DVD-ROM
Lite-On CDRW

430W Power Supply

[Mr.X]

tried a different stick of ram just in case???

[CoolHand]

I have indeed.

I am currently typing from my backup computer running the very same ram that was in the other board.

I am done with Epox, and I am RMAing both of these crappy boards.

I will be quite happy to pay $30 more for a compeditor's board that will actually run when it comes out of the box.

I hope this string of bad quailty boards will eventually catch up with Epox's reputation, so that they will watch their quailty, rather than just pumping out new boards to be the first with some new feature.

Oh well, I got screwed, what else is new.

Might as well just get drunk and enjoy it. :beer:

You guys can stop trying to puzzle out this problem, because I am going to wash my hands of these boards.

Thanks for the help though.

[mookydooky]

The problem you describe usually occurs if you're trying to boot from the wrong drive that does not have an OS installed. Like trying to boot from the floppy without a boot disk, but regularly formatted one. Let me ask, when you get this error, is it after you've already installed WinXP, or during the install?

[Nerd2]

It certainly does not sound like a motherboard problem. When i had this, i think i was trying to boot from a normal drive on a raid channel.

[CoolHand]

I have only ever had one drive attached at a time, and it was a master, on its own channel.

I even went so far as to unhook everything from mobo, and still no joy, it will not boot. It tried a few times, but never succeeded.

I think it is an IDE controller problem, as it will not even recognize HDs with windows already on them, it simply refuses to boot.

To tell you all the truth, I don't care what is wrong.

I am going to get a new board, made by someone else, and then I will be happy, and own a stable/reliable computer.

Thanks for trying though guys.

[Uncle Bob]

It has nothing to do with EPOX, don't lay the blame there. Read this thread and see Microsoft Knowledge Base article number Q315403 for the solution.
Here is a better article: You need an update to your IDE drivers. I had the exact same problem awhile back and it was easily solved. No need to replace mobo.

Cause "Because of the write-pattern optimization in IDE disk drives, the caching routines sometimes write data out of order to keep drive write speeds at the fastest possible level depending on where data is located on the disk. This opens a timing window where the NTFS disk system could have critical tables damaged if a write is not finished. Microsoft has recommended in the past that caching on IDE drives be turned off on programs with somewhat critical data that is stored on the disk or for situations that allow the slight drop in overall speed. Programs with critical data may need to use SCSI drives, which have better control of data transactions.