My precious is not well and I am needing some assistance. As of late I have started getting this dreaded of dreaded error and it appears to be a purely random occurrence. My best guess is that it has something to do with the complete and utter crap that Vista is. OK...from what I have been able to decipher from the millions of posts on the subject is that SATA does not play entirely well with Vista, let alone SATA RAID. When the machine borks (sometimes in the BIOS splash screen) it terminally hangs...reboots fail, last known good fails, safe mode fails, nothing works. But (as what has happened today) if I do something as simple as change the SATA cable to a different post, it works (hence why I am typing ATM.) Now has anyone experienced this problem (mac users STFU plz) and what have they done to remedy this?

Seppycake

are you using the onboard raid controller or do you have an extra card?

onboard, Maeli...I have an MSI P7N Diamond mobo.

check if there is a driver update on the manufacturers website and check for bios updates

When the machine borks (sometimes in the BIOS splash screen) it terminally hangs...reboots fail, last known good fails, safe mode fails, nothing works. But (as what has happened today)

Since does freeze at the BIOS screen , it maybe the BIOS

If I was in your shoes I would try

1. Check in the BIOS settings, and set to defaults
2. I agree with Maeli to check on MSI website for any BIOS updates
3. Flash the BIOS on the mobo

Also what version of Vista do you have 32 or 64?

Do you have Windows update automatically install updates?
I found two websites about the same problem. One person said it was his ram. The other person said after installing Microsoft update KB941649 it f'd it all up.

It can't hurt to update it.

Found on http://forums.techarena.in/windows-update/841467.htm

It seems that microsoft has released a version 2 of the update, as you can see
here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/941649/en-us

"Known issue
Note This package has been updated to version 2. An issue was identified in
which certain computers that have specific combination of older AHCI USB
chipsets and CD or DVD drives that use the SerialATA interconnection bus may
not start after the installation of the original version of this package.
Version 2 of this package has removed the fix that caused this problem. If
you are using a computer that experienced this issue, you can restart the
computer by using a bootable Windows Vista DVD and by selecting the
Repair/System Recovery options. If your computer has already installed the
original version of this update and has successfully restarted, you do not
have to install version 2 of this update."