problems with asrock939a8x-m
 

hi!

I recently upgraded my mobo to an asrock939a8x-m (64bit). Sofar, I have had three problems.
First being the most drastic. When installing linux (ubuntu 64 and others) the installer refuses to detect my onboard network device. The only way I can 'outwit' this, is by adding a pci ethernet card. Obviously this is no solution, so is there maybe anyone out there (in the 64bit-linux-world...) who has experienced a similar or the same problem?
Second problem is, that I also have an onboard sata-controller and a single disk connected to it. Now with my 32bit mobo, I used a pci controller card, and the disk worked fine and was fast (dma worked). Now, with my new board, I cannot add the pci controller card (a, because I don't want to, b because there isn't a slot left), the disk works okay though, but not very fast (no dma).
I dual boot to windowsxp 64, with which I had exactly the same problem, the disk was there, worked, but way too slow, until I reinstalled windows and added "third party drivers" (from asrock) during setup. How do I achive similar using linux?

Again, anyone having similar probems or just suggestions, please post! Any help is of course welcome.

Another issue is, that during bootup, 'linux' tells me that it "cannot access the hardware clock in any known way" or something similar. It does however set the clock, just two hours fast. I have set my timezone correctly and informed ubuntu that it is indeed not utc. My hardware clock in the bios is set to my local time. Now basicly, I don't care what time 'linux' thinks it is, as I can always sync it to a ntp-server or something(theoretically, though it didn't work with the default ubuntu setup, so I uninstalled it). My problem lies when I reboot, as it saves the false time to the hardware clock (2hours+) and of course will add 2 more hours on next reboot, if I don't reset the time in the bios... So is there a way, to either enable 'linux' to access my hardware clock, or to prevent it from writing to it (this is paradox!) when the system goes down?

ThanX in advance!