All:
I was given a lightly used DX58so motherboard with an i7 cpu and 6GB of RAM.
After looking at the specs, I decided it would make a nice replacement for my antique PowerEdge network server.
My plan is to run it as a Hyper-V host for 3 or 4 guest VM's.
I had it working pretty well with a 500GB boot drive except that it was taking more than 5 minutes to get to the RAID config screen. During that time the screen is just grey with a solid (not blinking) cursor in the upper left corner. Eventually a B/W screen appears and disappears so fast I can't read it. I assume this is the RAID status? Immediately after that, the blue Intel splash screen appears for a couple of seconds and then it boots into Windows if I don't touch a function key. I have never been able to get into the RAID setup screen by hitting Control-I during the POST.
Here is what I've tried:
- disconnected all drives except the boot HD
- disconnected all USB devices except keyboard and mouse
- changed the video card
- added auxiliary power through the 4-pin molex connector
- upgraded BIOS to version 5600 using the Windows utility
- put the BIOS jumper into "maintenance mode" and reset to "optimal" defaults
- disabled, in the BIOS, any hardware not being used
- set HD delay to 0, 5, and 10 seconds
- set all overclock settings to defaults
- set boot order to HD first
- tried both Basic and Advanced menus
Here are my questions:
- Apparently, the BIOS is very busy doing something for 5 minutes during the POST but what ???
- I have never heard a beep from this box. Do I have a bad speaker on the motherboard?
- Can the Intel RST utility in Windows perform all the same RAID configuration functions as the Cntr-I BIOS extension?
- Is there anything in the Integrator Toolkit that might help get this BIOS configured properly?