Abit’s AB9 motherboard is very good by all accounts. However it has one rather annoying flaw: the AB9 BIOS it shipped with (revision 13) has problems with IDE devices (such as a CD-ROM drive) which prevents Windows from being installed. This is because it needs a SATA/RAID driver installed, as it’s not got an IDE controller on the motherboard (I think - I’m hazy about the real problem).
The motherboard ships with a floppy containing drivers to load during the Windows installation process. But even after I borrowed a floppy drive, they didn’t work for me.
The solution, as noted in the ebuyer reviews, is simple: upgrade the BIOS. However, this is easier said than done. If you have a floppy drive or can make workable floppy boot discs then great - I didn’t and when I borrowed one, couldn’t. Having spent somewhere over five hours trying different approaches, here is a writeup of my approach - hopefully it will help someone!
My penultimate attempt was using a DrDOS bootable CD burned with Nero 7, with the BIOS files burned to the CD. I figured this would work, and indeed DrDOS booted and loaded. However, due to these IDE access issues (the problem I needed to upgrade the BIOS to cure), I couldn’t cd to the CD-ROM drive in order to run the BIOS update files - DOS didn’t know any CD-ROM drive was attached to the system.
The solution came in the shape of the Ultimate Boot CD, which contains amongst many things a copy of FreeDOS… with support for USB (if you fiddle around with the options when it’s loading - the dialogs which pop up for ~3 seconds are very important!).
Don’t be distracted by the fact FreeDOS says it can enable CD-ROM drive support - it can’t due to the ABIT BIOS problems!
Once I’d got the USB support enabled (Tip: every time a dialog appears as FreeDOS loads, go to “Configure” in order to have time to read it) I was able to plug in a FAT formated USB drive with the BIOS update on it, cd to the USB drive and flash the motherboard’s BIOS.
After that Windows installed without any problems. And I now have a fast computer!
Thank you Jonny & Robin for letting me use your CD burner in order to get this far!
12 comments ↓
I have no idea what you just said
Translation: building my new computer was a complete pain in the arse and way more hassle than I wanted. (and here’s how to fix it if anyone out there has the same problem ;))
just read your coments on the ab9, i just bought the ib9 which has the same problem, i,m not sure if the ab9 comes with a ide to sata adapter like the ib9, if it does, plug this in to your dvd/rw drive, plug in the floppy power and sata cable to it, plug into your board and windows loads up no problem, when you install the m/board drivers, intall the ite driver for the ides on your m/board if you use them,
abit have totally lost me on their way of thinking, sata dvd drive are more common now and will replace ide, at last !!, but it seems we can.t get away from the dreaded floppy, like you i had to dig one out until i tried the adapter,
i,ve just upgraded to the new core 2 duo from my abit aa8 duramax/3.4/1m/800, 2gig of ddr2 533, to a abit ib9 2,13 core 2 duo/ 2gig ddr2 800, give me back my aa8, i hate this board, can,t be the chip as i,ve heard good things about it, must be this board, thats why i was looking on the net for comments on the ab9, seems more like my aa8, don,t want anything special, no gaming board, just one that can do 10 things at once, is this to much to ask ??,
Ah, sadly they didn’t ship a sata to ide adapter with the AB9 - that would have really simplified matters! Interestingly, once the updated BIOS was installed the floppy drive wasn’t needed, as it would work without the drivers being loaded when Windows was installed. As soon as ABIT ship boards with updated BIOS’s there’ll be no more problem sories!
Aside from you having faster RAM and a different mobo we’ve got identical systems. I do like the AB9, seems as solid as a rock and no stability issues. There again I don’t overclock, so YMMV…
I’m not impressed with the speed of XP Pro on a Core2duo though - I expected something a lot faster and more responsive than I got. Roll on a proper 64-bit multithreading OS!
Do you know how can i install a sata drive on this motherboard because i can`t seem to do it and noone else seems to know how:| btw i`ve tried all of abit`s sata drivers for windows xp,none of them works…i have a sata 2 hdd.
Blade, SATA support is native to the board so there’s no need for any driver installations IIRC. Drivers are only needed to get IDE drives to work, and Windows can pick them up without drivers installed (mine is a SATA hard drive also, and worked perfectly out of the box).
I can`t understand it..i have the latest version of bios because it didn`t see my cpu and it doesn`t read my hard drive when i try to install windows,it`sata2 i tried putting it on sata1,same result it only recognizes it if i put ite ide ata drivers,otherwise it gives me the blue screen…
Oh i have to mention mine is ib9,i`ve seen the article title wrong,but they`re very similar…
Hello. I installed AB9 about a month ago and simply repaired my Vista installation and carried on. However, I am now trying to install XP and have hit the boot CD problem. I have updated the BIOS to v20, the latest (I think - just how do you check for BIOS version? It doesn’t show during booting.), and I still have this problem. I have just given Abit a bollocking about this. Remember, it is an IDE device that is being routed through SATA. Abit should have had the wit to understand that this was going to be a big problem.
btw, this is the second prob I’ve had with this mobo. First time up and the BIOS failed to recognise 800mhz memory (set it up as 533) - even tho’ the board is rated for 800 - and caused a hang.
So, if Abit can make dumb mistakes like this, how are we to trust them? This mobo wasn’t my first choice, so I’ll get my money’s worth out of it and then move on to something more trustworthy
I just recently built my first PC. the mobo is an AB9, 4GB of OCZ DDR2 800 RAM, Kensington Q6600 Core 2 Quad CPU, video card is a EVGA 8800GTS 640Mb DDR3 RAM, and a 160GB SATA HD.
Once I put everything together it worked great. I installed XP Pro and it worked like a charm. Unfortunately I was forced to reformat and after the second install of XP the HD Audio didn’t work - the install (both off the CD that came with the mobo and the latest update from the manuf. site) failed mid-installation.
I reformatted a third time, this time installing the HD Audio driver before the updated Intel chipset driver. The Audio worked - for a time. After a few days of various installations, applications and games all began to freeze the system and I was forced to manually shut down my PC each time. I wasn’t sure if the problem lied within the HD Audio, my video card, or the lack of a BIOS update.
Now I will try to follow the steps you did to update the BIOS and afterward (if possible?) format the HD and install XP following the BIOS update.
I’ll let you know how things work out. Thank you for posting this article!
-Alan
I just bought one and can’t get it to see any EIDE devices with the SATA-EIDE card included with the board.
As a fall back, I installed the SATA/RAID EIDE drivers like mentioned (there is a minimal description in the owners manual on how to do it) and I find the board keeps self powering off during OS (Windows 2000) installation.
Overall, very annoying since the whole reason I purchased the board was to avoid buying new DVD and Hard Drives. I am not 100% confident that a SATA will work since it doesn’t work with the above mentioned adapter board.
Jim
hi there i have just got my self a ib9 board i have a ide harddrive with xp all ready on it will i need to update out to get this to work i tryed it with a new hard drive but xp would not load in just the blue screen
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