GA EP45 DS3 boot 132 Problem

[c4rugby]

Hi,

 

I'm feeling stupid (and frustrated, not a good combination)!

 

I decided to build a new machine to handle video. I'm a long term mac user and have 4 of the things, none of which is fast enough to let iMovie deal with 80 minutes of full HD video once a week (rugby matches, they're filmed on a Saturday and need to be reviewed, stats gathered etc. by Tuesday so that it can be discussed at training).

 

I spent a lot of time on here and decided on the following kit:

 

Gigabyte EP45-DS3

Core2Duo E8500

Nvidia 9500GT 1GB

8GB Crucial DDR2 (4x2GB)

1TB SATA Hitachi Deskstar

LG SATA CD/DVD drive

 

I expected that it would take a number of hours to get it up and working but I didn't think that I would fall at the very first hurdle.

 

My problem is that I can't get the bootloader to load. I've tried boot 132 and grub-dfe, I've also tried kalyway as an alternative.

 

I've configured the bios according to weaksauce12's guide for the EP35. I was pointed to that from auzigog's guide and I've read, googled and read again to try and get to the bottom of this. A key setting setting seems to be to enable AHCI for SATA although it makes the boot process much slower and the Intel driver throws up a message about only working for hard drives and CD drives.

 

What happens is that the dvd drive whirs and blinks and then a boot error appears on the screen saying that it can't be booted and inviting me to put a system disk in and try again.

 

Linux system_rescue_cd boots perfectly so the hardware is OK. Neither boot132 or grub-dfe display any messages so I can't tell what step it fails on. Without AHCI enabled the boot failure message appears instantly, with AHCI enabled it takes about a minute before it craps out.

 

Can anyone help?