Thank's Jerry,

I tought it had more to do with Windows drivers and setup than the mobo itself. I followed your advice and asked the question to ASUS technical support. I am now waiting for a reply from them.

Best regards,

NBouc
"Jerry" <NoSpamChiefZeke@MSN.com> wrote in message news:ebJskYZ7FHA.1140@tk2msftngp13.phx.gbl...
You would probably get the best answer from the tech support people of the motherboard manufacturer.

"NBouc" <nospam_normand@boucher.net> wrote in message news:OpVAXMZ7FHA.2364@TK2MSFTNGP12.phx.gbl...
I recently installed Windows XP Professional (with SP2) on a brand new computer (ASUS P5WD2 Premium motherboard - Intel 955X chipset - ICH7-R) with 2 SATA2 drives and a DVD burner, but I am not sure that the correct SATA controller for ICH7 was installed. The motherboard has:
- 1 IDE port on ICH7
- 4 SATA2 connectors on ICH7
- 1 IDE port on ITE 8211 controller
- 2 SATA connectors on Silicon Image Sil 3132 Controller

I attached the "Lite-On SOHW-1693S" DVD burner to the ICH7 IDE port (alone as Master)
I attached the 2 WD1600JS SATA2 drives on the ICH7 connectors (Master / Slave)
There is no device attached to the ITE or Silicon controllers.

During Windows installation, I used F6 disks for all 3 controllers and when it was time for the Intel Matrix Storage disk (5.0.0.1032), I had to choose between 2 types of controllers:
- ICH7 82801GR RAID
- ICH7 82801GB AHCI

Since I wanted to use the SATA2 drives in AHCI mode (as opposed to RAID), I selected the 82801GB AHCI controller and Windows continued to install without problem. After Windows installation completed, and all other drivers were installed (including the motherboard INF and Windows updates), I checked the drives status using Lavalys Everest Home Edition and they are listed under "ATA drive" with an active transfer mode of "UDMA-5 (ATA-100). Is this normal ? Shouldn't it be 150 or 300 ?

In device manager:
- 82801GB Serial ATA Storage Controllers and 82801GB Ultra ATA Storage Controllers appear under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
- ITE 8211 ATA/ATAPI controller and Silicon Image Sil 3132 SATALink Controller appear under SCSI and RAID controllers

I noticed that in the BIOS, SATA was configured as "Standard IDE". I changed it to "AHCI" but Windows would not start at all (Blue screen then computer turns OFF). I tried to install the Intel Matrix Storage Manager but it refused complaining of "Incompatible Hardware. This software is not supported on this chipset".

Did I choose the wrong controller (82801GB vs 82801GR) ?
If so, is there a way to install the proper drivers from the F6 disk without a full re-install of Windows ?
In any case, what would be the best course of actions to get my SATA2 drives to perform at 300 MB/sec in AHCI mode ?

Thank you for any input or advice on the matter,

NBouc