On Fri, 2 Feb 2007 11:33:05 +0000, Eva Myers <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

>> >> I'm having some trouble installing SL44 on a new machine from World of
>> >> Computers.  As far as WOC are aware, the only difference between this
>> >> machine and the one I was asking about in December is that the IDE
>> >> DVD-RW drive has been replaced by a SATA drive because they were
>> >> having difficulty getting a different version of Linux to communicate
>> >> with the IDE drive.
>> >>
>> >> However, the installation problems are quite different.  Rather then
>> >> freezing when I boot from the boot CD without any kernel options, the
>> >> install process claims that it cannot find any hard drives.  I tried
>> >> using the all-generic-ide and pci=nommconf options - the hard drive
>> >> was then detected, but the install process hung while formatting the
>> >> root filesystem!
>> >>
>> >> The relevant hardware details (copied from the quotation) are:
>> >>
>> >> Motherboard + processor: Intel D965SSCK Core 2 Duo 6300 2MB cache
>> >> Hard drive: 160GB - ST3160811AS -  7200rpm Serial ATA
>> >> DVD drive: Samsung DVD RW (+/-) OEM Dual
Layer/16xDVD+R,8xDVD+RW,16xRead-SATA
>
>> SATA works fine in SL44.  Has worked for a long time now.
>>
>> I suggest that you look at the 2 systems and look for bios differences.
>>
>> You could also run memtest86 to make sure you do not have a memory
>> problem.
>
>They appear to have different BIOS versions - the newer machine has
>MQ96510J.86A.1614.2007.0105.1345 and the older one has
>MQ96510J.86A.1545.2006.1101.2008.
>
>Apart from that, everything in the BIOS appears the same.  In
>particular, they both have the following settings under Advanced ->
>Drive Configuration:
>
>ATA/IDE Mode: Native
>Configure SATA as: IDE
>S.M.A.R.T: Enable
>Hard Disk Pre-Delay: 0
>
>Eva.
>=========================================================================
Can you try to configure SATA as AHCI in your BIOS?
That works fine for my Core-2 / P965 board. Also use the SATA connections
from the P965 and not (if available) the ones from the JMicron RAID
controller (this one is only supported in kernels >= 2.6.18)

Paul