Black Blocks, Black Lines and whole lot of E's

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rich071
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 5:14 pm

Black Blocks, Black Lines and whole lot of E's

Post by rich071 »

I installed another controller, 4 port SATA Raid with a Sil3124 chipset. I have BootitBM 1.19 installed and have had no issues at all. Used Windows 7 x64 SP1 for the items below. Also, a raid is not utilized, this was added to access additional drives.

1. After installing the controller, Bootit did not recognize the controller or the drive attached to it at all. Naturally, I couldn't boot from it.
2. Updated the bios to the latest version, 6.6.00 from the Silicon Image website. This latest bios is to be matched with the installed drivers. The bios update went fine with no issues.

Now Bootit can see the drive. I can now boot from a EMBR drive. It appears that there is no issue accessing the other drives within Windows. Basically, everything seems normal, except the following.

What's not normal, when I have a drive attached, after the bios loads, I have one or more black blocks towards the upper portion of the screen. These are randomally placed between reboots. No standard patterns. If I go into Maintenance Mode, I get a black line all the way accross the top and it covers one and half lines. When I actually select an OS to boot from the menu, the bottom portion of the page, fills with capital E's. These continue on to the Windows boot screen while the Windows logo is displayed. Once Windows finishes loading, everything appears normal, until you reboot.

If I have no drives attched or they are turned off, since the bios is not loaded, no blocks, no lines and no E's. I have no other display or mouse issues.

I am confident that this is not a Bootit problem. I believe the bios may have quirks. I am just curious, if anyone else has seen anything like this. I have backups, if I decide to pull the controller and put everything back the way it was.

Thanks,
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3598
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Black Blocks, Black Lines and whole lot of E's

Post by TeraByte Support »

You could try different video modes in BootIt - those items in the GUI mode
could be messages coming from the BIOS assuming text mode. For a test, you
could use VGA mode (ugly) but may see something print in that mode??


"rich071" wrote in message news:5986@public.bootitbm...

I installed another controller, 4 port SATA Raid with a Sil3124 chipset. I
have BootitBM 1.19 installed and have had no issues at all. Used Windows 7
x64 SP1 for the items below. Also, a raid is not utilized, this was added to
access additional drives.

1. After installing the controller, Bootit did not recognize the controller
or the drive attached to it at all. Naturally, I couldn't boot from it.
2. Updated the bios to the latest version, 6.6.00 from the Silicon Image
website. This latest bios is to be matched with the installed drivers. The
bios update went fine with no issues.

Now Bootit can see the drive. I can now boot from a EMBR drive. It appears
that there is no issue accessing the other drives within Windows. Basically,
everything seems normal, except the following.

What's not normal, when I have a drive attached, after the bios loads, I
have one or more black blocks towards the upper portion of the screen. These
are randomally placed between reboots. No standard patterns. If I go into
Maintenance Mode, I get a black line all the way accross the top and it
covers one and half lines. When I actually select an OS to boot from the
menu, the bottom portion of the page, fills with capital E's. These continue
on to the Windows boot screen while the Windows logo is displayed. Once
Windows finishes loading, everything appears normal, until you reboot.

If I have no drives attched or they are turned off, since the bios is not
loaded, no blocks, no lines and no E's. I have no other display or mouse
issues.

I am confident that this is not a Bootit problem. I believe the bios may
have quirks. I am just curious, if anyone else has seen anything like this.
I have backups, if I decide to pull the controller and put everything back
the way it was.

Thanks,

rich071
Posts: 24
Joined: Sun Jun 17, 2012 5:14 pm

Re: Black Blocks, Black Lines and whole lot of E's

Post by rich071 »

Thanks for the feedback. I had thought about that as well, but didn't really want to change it.

I have pulled the 4 port controller and reinstalled the original 2 port controller I had installed before the possible upgrade. It also has the Silicon Image chipset. I never had any issues with it. I had hoped to get two more SATA ports to raise the total to eight.

With the 4 port controller, I would always be a little uneasy if it was warning sign of possible issues to arise later. Reverting back, pease of mind, priceless, as this system has always been rock solid.

Thanks again,
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