Help! T-bird hard drive problems

I recently upgraded the BIOS in my main racing computer, a T-bird 1.3 in an Abit KT7, so I could use the 1.3 at full speed (the original BIOS only went to 1.2). However, now the machine is screwed up. Hard drive writing is excruciatingly slow (15 seconds to write 9 mb!) and brings the machine to its knees all the time it's writing. So every time GPL writes out some replay bits or anything to virtual memory, the screen freezes, the controls stop working, and all Internet communication stops. Sometimes this lasts for several seconds. It's dreadful! If I save a replay after a race, it takes so long (and kills communications so comprehensively) that the server typically disconnects me. Any suggestions are welcome. I've done just about everything I can think of, including: - installed the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers and the 1.10 USB driver - installed the George Breeze PCI latency patch - disabled serial port 2 to free up an IRQ - removed both USB controllers from the Device Manager to let Windows find them again - set the jumper on the hard drive to cable select - disabled PCI#2 Access Retry in the BIOS - enabled Fast Write in the BIOS - set PNP OS to No in the BIOS - cut GPL replay length to 20 mb Nothing helped. One thing I haven't tried is resetting the BIOS using the jumper on the motherboard. Also, oddly, Windows Device Manager thinks I have two USB controllers and two USB Root devices. I don't know if this is a problem, but I don't remember it being this way before the BIOS upgrade. Any suggestions? I'm at my wits' end, and can't see too many other options short of reformatting and reinstalling Windows - and I hate doing that! I would be terribly grateful for any suggestions that might help me fix this machine and get it running as well as I know it should! Computer specs: Abit KT7 Tbird 1.3 Ghz 256 mb PC133 memory 3Com Ethernet card Voodoo5 SB Live! Value Logitech Wingman FF CH Pro USB Pedals Act Labs GPL USB Shifter Windows 98 Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.net

On Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:45:35 GMT, Alison Hine <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>I recently upgraded the BIOS in my main racing computer, a T-bird 1.3 in >an Abit KT7, so I could use the 1.3 at full speed (the original BIOS >only went to 1.2). > >However, now the machine is screwed up. Hard drive writing is >excruciatingly slow (15 seconds to write 9 mb!) and brings the machine >to its knees all the time it's writing.

<rest snipped> Is DMA enabled for the hard drive? Ian -- Ian Riches GPL Rank +1.76 Monsters of GPL +284.19

I dont know specifically but here is the KT7 FAQ... http://www.sudhian.com/faqs.cfm/fid/2.sud

Hi Neighbor, > One thing I haven't tried is resetting the BIOS using the jumper on the > motherboard. I hardly ever do it myself, but they do recommend resetting the bios after you flash it. Probably won't help, but with all the time you've got in this problem already, what's a couple more minutes? If you haven't done it before, turn the computer off, move the jumper for a second and put it back. You probably remember all your bios settings anyway. >Also, oddly, Windows Device Manager thinks I have two USB > controllers and two USB Root devices. I don't know if this is a > problem, but I don't remember it being this way before the BIOS upgrade. I had this happen on my kid's computer. I think it took a bios flash to fix it. Gary -- Slot Tweaks & Reviews www.slottweak.com

I had the same problem, turned out it was indeed that DMA was not turned on in the device manager for the hard drives. Not sure why it turned itself off. "Ian Riches" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> On Tue, 01 Oct 2002 15:45:35 GMT, Alison Hine <[email hidden]> > wrote: > > >I recently upgraded the BIOS in my main racing computer, a T-bird 1.3 in > >an Abit KT7, so I could use the 1.3 at full speed (the original BIOS > >only went to 1.2). > > > >However, now the machine is screwed up. Hard drive writing is > >excruciatingly slow (15 seconds to write 9 mb!) and brings the machine > >to its knees all the time it's writing. > > <rest snipped> > > Is DMA enabled for the hard drive? > > Ian > -- > Ian Riches > GPL Rank +1.76 Monsters of GPL +284.19

Hi Alison, Like the others, I'd suggest first resetting the BIOS (or reloading the BIOS defaults as it's called on Asus motherboards), as the new BIOS may have a somewhat different internal structure (I learnt that from Asus' Readme's), and if you don't reset it, the values you set in the BIOS' UI may get assigned to parameters they're not meant for. After that, I'd check DMA and PIO modes. Any other BIOS settings should really be tried after you've checked the above three things, but although I don't know your motherboard's BIOS, I don't think any of them could - if simply set to their defaults - cause such a severe speed drop. Smaller ones, yes, but not that substantial. I'm using WinME and for me, the VIA drivers have always been slower and less reliable that Windows's own - I've consequently never used VIA drivers other than for a short test. But I don't know how Win98 is in this respect. In the device manager, is one of your IDE controllers or Harddisks marked as having errors (yellow question mark), or as running in 'Compatibiliy' or 'DOS' mode (not sure about the English names, I'm using a Spanish version of Windows)? You'd see that under the properties tab. And you didn't change any hardware, like hooking the HD up with another device on the same cable? I never used Cable Select btw, I always define a clear master and slave myself. Not sure this could cause your prob though, but I assume you've tried master/slave anyway before you went to CS. Have you tried msinfo32.exe? I think Win98 should have that as well, and it gives you a lot of info about potential conflicts etc. If it's not the BIOS but something Windows can sense, you'd probably see it there. It's started through the 'Run' command line in the start menu, and it self-explanatory. When you restarted Windows after the BIOS flash, did it detect any new devices (or re-detect old ones)? Good luck! Achim

First, make sure it's not a Windows prob. I have an intermittant HD prob that slows everything down like pulling the boards out of a HAL 9000. You must have a DOS sys burn-in pgm., no? (Or I'll send you one.) Run some DOS benchmarks and make sure it isn't something the Evil Dr. Gates hasn't initiated. "Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> I recently upgraded the BIOS in my main racing computer, a T-bird 1.3 in > an Abit KT7, so I could use the 1.3 at full speed (the original BIOS > only went to 1.2). > > However, now the machine is screwed up. Hard drive writing is > excruciatingly slow (15 seconds to write 9 mb!) and brings the machine > to its knees all the time it's writing. > > So every time GPL writes out some replay bits or anything to virtual > memory, the screen freezes, the controls stop working, and all Internet > communication stops. Sometimes this lasts for several seconds. It's > dreadful! If I save a replay after a race, it takes so long (and kills > communications so comprehensively) that the server typically disconnects > me. > > Any suggestions are welcome. I've done just about everything I can > think of, including: > > - installed the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers and the 1.10 USB driver > - installed the George Breeze PCI latency patch > - disabled serial port 2 to free up an IRQ > - removed both USB controllers from the Device Manager to let Windows > find them again > - set the jumper on the hard drive to cable select > - disabled PCI#2 Access Retry in the BIOS > - enabled Fast Write in the BIOS > - set PNP OS to No in the BIOS > - cut GPL replay length to 20 mb > > Nothing helped. > > One thing I haven't tried is resetting the BIOS using the jumper on the > motherboard. Also, oddly, Windows Device Manager thinks I have two USB > controllers and two USB Root devices. I don't know if this is a > problem, but I don't remember it being this way before the BIOS upgrade. > > Any suggestions? I'm at my wits' end, and can't see too many other > options short of reformatting and reinstalling Windows - and I hate > doing that! > > I would be terribly grateful for any suggestions that might help me fix > this machine and get it running as well as I know it should! > > Computer specs: > > Abit KT7 > Tbird 1.3 Ghz > 256 mb PC133 memory > 3Com Ethernet card > Voodoo5 > SB Live! Value > Logitech Wingman FF > CH Pro USB Pedals > Act Labs GPL USB Shifter > Windows 98 > > Alison > > From: [email hidden] > Reply-To: [email hidden] > Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. > http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.net

On Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:26:25 -0000, "Joachim Trensz" <[email hidden]> wrote: Thanks, Achim, and thanks to everyone who responded with suggestions! It's so great to have a group like this available to help when we've got problems! Also, thanks to fredrickson for the link to the FAQ. I had already read this, plus two of the BIOS FAQs that it points to. Lots of great information! >Like the others, I'd suggest first resetting the BIOS (or reloading the BIOS >defaults as it's called on Asus motherboards), as the new BIOS may have a >somewhat different internal structure (I learnt that from Asus' Readme's), >and if you don't reset it, the values you set in the BIOS' UI may get >assigned to parameters they're not meant for. Ok! After reading the posts in this thread, I tried some things and I did have some success, although this Abit KT7-based machine's hard drive writes are still not quite as good as my other racing machine, a 1 Ghz Celeron in an ASUS P2B. [The P2B machine writes out GPL replay chunks to virtual memory almost totally transparently; there's virtually no interruption in screen flow and no impact on the controls. If only I could get the P2B machine's GeForce2 Ultra to behave!] Anyway, here's what I did: 1. Checked Device Manager once again to make sure DMA was turned on for the hard drive. It was. 2. Reset the BIOS using the jumper on the motherboard, and went in and reset the BIOS to 1.3 GHz. I also set DRAM Clock to HCLK+PCICLK to run my memory at 133, and disabled Video BIOS Shadow. This made no difference. I recalled that once in the past, Windows reported something as being turned on when it actually wasn't. So I went into the Device Manager and turned off DMA for the hard drive, and rebooted. I figured I'd try it just to see how slow the hard drive was with DMA off, and then turn DMA back on. Presto!! With DMA *off*, the hard drive got waaaay faster! It writes a 9 mb file in a couple of seconds. Better yet, there's hardly any impact on the rest of the system when it's doing this. In GPL, I get a little bit of screen chop when replay is being written out while I drive, but the controls remain perfectly functional, so I assume the Ethernet controller will also keep communicating. I decided to try turning DMA back on for the hard drive, but when I did, Windows gave a scary warning that my hardware may not function properly with DMA on, so I changed my mind and left it off for the moment. >After that, I'd check DMA and PIO modes. In the BIOS, all IDE devices are set to AUTO for PIO and Ultra DMA. Is this correct? The hard drive is a standard Western Digital 450AA, and the BIOS recognizes it as a WDC WD450AA-OOBAAO. Windows says it's a Generic IDE Disk Type 47. Does this drive have Ultra DMA or even DMA? I thought it had at least the latter.

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>Any other BIOS settings should really be tried after you've checked the >above three things, but although I don't know your motherboard's BIOS, I >don't think any of them could - if simply set to their defaults - cause such >a severe speed drop. Smaller ones, yes, but not that substantial. > >I'm using WinME and for me, the VIA drivers have always been slower and less >reliable that Windows's own - I've consequently never used VIA drivers other >than for a short test. But I don't know how Win98 is in this respect.

The FAQ advises installing the VIA drivers right after installing Windows (which I did). Since this motherboard was built after Win98 was released, I think it's desirable to use the VIA drivers. >In the device manager, is one of your IDE controllers or Harddisks marked as >having errors (yellow question mark), or as running in 'Compatibiliy' or >'DOS' mode (not sure about the English names, I'm using a Spanish version of >Windows)? You'd see that under the properties tab. No. All devices look cool in DM. >And you didn't change any hardware, like hooking the HD up with another >device on the same cable? I never used Cable Select btw, I always define a >clear master and slave myself. Not sure this could cause your prob though, >but I assume you've tried master/slave anyway before you went to CS. I did have a slave drive on the same cable, but it was malfunctioning, so I disconnected it. This was after the BIOS reinstall and the very slow write problem began, however, so it didn't cause the slow write problem. Prior to that, the main drive jumper was set to Master and the second to Slave. After disconnecting the second drive, I found I had to either remove the jumper or put it on CS in order for the BIOS to see the main drive. Since one of the FAQs I read recommended CS for the KT7 motherboard, I left it there. >Have you tried msinfo32.exe? I think Win98 should have that as well, and it >gives you a lot of info about potential conflicts etc. If it's not the BIOS >but something Windows can sense, you'd probably see it there. It's started >through the 'Run' command line in the start menu, and it self-explanatory. Thanks!! I didn't think about msinfo32. I don't do this stuff enough, I guess! msinfo32 doesn't report any problems under Conflicts/Sharing, and the hard drive and CD and CD-ROM drives (on IDE2) all show up in Components/Storage. Also, it does show two USB controllers. I do have four USB ports, two next to the PS/2 port and two in a plate connected to the motherboard, so I guess maybe I should show two controllers as John Hilsman says. >When you restarted Windows after the BIOS flash, did it detect any new >devices (or re-detect old ones)? Yes, it re-detected the motherboard chipset, hard drive controller, and USB controller. Unfortunately I had not installed the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers before flashing the BIOS, and for some reason when Windows re-detected the devices it tried to find a file that wasn't in the existing drivers. I had to skip the file to get the Windows boot to complete (I tried several times but couldn't find the file and couldn't find another way around the problem) and then install the latest 4 in 1 drivers. Later I also installed the latest USB and IDE drivers. I don't know if this skipped file/belated 4 in 1 driver install caused problems or not. I suppose I could remove the 4 in 1, USB, and IDE drivers, and then reinstall them. Maybe I should drop into Safe Mode first, to make sure I get rid of all the files installed by the drivers? Since the machine works a lot better with DMA turned off in Windows, it seems like maybe I just need to optimize the BIOS settings for the drive, and then maybe I can turn DMA back on. Does this sound reasonable? If so, what should the BIOS settings be for the drive? Or, maybe I should just leave well enough alone! Thanks again, Achim, and everyone who replied! Alison [email hidden] www.alison.hine.net www.alisonnic.com www.vroc.net ________ / \ _/__________\_ /_ \ '====' / _\ |(_) ____ (_)| |\o [] (____) [] o/| | ---______--- | '---' '---'

Steve- No, I don't have a DOS sys burn-in program. I'd be glad to try yours! BTW, I did try George Breese's hard drive test program, and it reports that my hard drive is working fine and is quite fast. Here are the results: TST disk-speed test 32-bit edition Copyright 1999-2000, George E. Breese. Rev. 12/26/00 Write rate is 34.482 megabytes per second. Read rate is 19.230 megabytes per second. Testing random reading for five seconds... Random read rate is 14.677 megabytes per second. From these results and comments in the readme, I think this program bypasses Windows. It was originally a DOS program, and was adapted to the Windows environment but still runs in a DOS prompt. Alison On Wed, 02 Oct 2002 10:57:59 GMT, "Steve Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote: >First, make sure it's not a Windows prob. I have an intermittant HD prob >that slows everything down like pulling the boards out of a HAL 9000. You >must have a DOS sys burn-in pgm., no? (Or I'll send you one.) Run some DOS >benchmarks and make sure it isn't something the Evil Dr. Gates hasn't >initiated. Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

"Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > I recently upgraded the BIOS in my main racing computer, a T-bird 1.3 in > an Abit KT7, so I could use the 1.3 at full speed (the original BIOS > only went to 1.2).[snip] You've got a similar setup to my machine! And I had a mare of a problem when I updated the bios, again similar. I realised that the problem was to do with AGP acelleration, which is different from your issue, but anyway, running the DirectX diags caused the machine to hang. I tried everything, from Fdisk (I nearly cried when I found out my backup CD was corrupt!!) through to ancient versions of drivers for everything... What it turned out to be was that somehow I'd managed to introduce another couple of IRQs to the PC causing a clash with the G-card. Sorting it was easy. I simply disabled the printer and serial ports on the PC giving me several further IRQs. Everything has been stunning since! The moral of all this is to disable the hardware you're not using I think. AndyC

Can such a pgm. test 32-bit under DOS? Anyway, if even *one* pgm. sez it's working fine, then it seems unlikely that it could be a BIOS program...unless you've checked/unchecked the part where the BIOS knows it's running a PnP OS. One of my ME 'putas was having gawdawful problems until I told it that it *wan't* looking at a PnP OS...and now it's fine (although the list of IRQs is frighteningly long). If yer BIOS is set for a non-PnP OS, then you should check for IRQ conflicts. "Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> Steve- > > No, I don't have a DOS sys burn-in program. I'd be glad to try yours! > > BTW, I did try George Breese's hard drive test program, and it reports > that my hard drive is working fine and is quite fast. Here are the > results: > > TST disk-speed test > 32-bit edition > Copyright 1999-2000, George E. Breese. Rev. 12/26/00 > Write rate is 34.482 megabytes per second. > Read rate is 19.230 megabytes per second. > Testing random reading for five seconds... > Random read rate is 14.677 megabytes per second. > > From these results and comments in the readme, I think this program > bypasses Windows. It was originally a DOS program, and was adapted to > the Windows environment but still runs in a DOS prompt. > > Alison > > On Wed, 02 Oct 2002 10:57:59 GMT, "Steve Smith" > <[email hidden]> wrote: > > >First, make sure it's not a Windows prob. I have an intermittant HD prob > >that slows everything down like pulling the boards out of a HAL 9000.

You > >must have a DOS sys burn-in pgm., no? (Or I'll send you one.) Run someDOS

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> >benchmarks and make sure it isn't something the Evil Dr. Gates hasn't > >initiated. > > > Alison > > From: [email hidden] > Reply-To: [email hidden] > Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me. > http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

Hi Alison, I'm afraid I must start guessing, but here are a few ideas what I'd look into. - if Windows redetected devices and then a file was missing, it is possible that one such device didn't get installed properly. When you reinstalled it, it is possible that a second instance of that device got installed, but Windows is now using the wrong one. Or, the two are conflicting (the latter is a guess, the former could indeed happen). An indication for this is perhaps that turning DMA off made things faster - apparently the DMA driver did not work properly. I think your taking out one HD could _not cause something like the above. This looks like something different. But... - my second guess is something that happened to me just last week. I thought my second HD was defective because it didn't get recognised, but after still having some problems with the first HD after having taken out the second one, I noticed that it was actually my first HD which had given me the problem. However, I don't really think that this is what happened on your machine, as it all happened in the context of flashing the new BIOS. In my device manager, all HD's are called Generic IDE as well, this seems to be correct. I am sure your disk is DMA capable, I think nowadays they all are and have been for years. I also think users like you and I wouldn't notice a difference between UltraDMA and DMA; I think that's more noticeable on servers. As for the PIO and DMA, I think both can be set in the BIOS as well. Maybe your BIOS showing wrong values to Windows caused Windows to detect new devices. Have you checked the options for DMA and PIO in the BIOS? I think selecting the second-to-highest PIO and DAM modes should work for your HD, to be safe. My personal guess is what I described above, a hard drive controller and/or its driver got installed incorrectly, something got garbled, and now Windows isn't using the resources correctly. If btw such a file is missing, it's often already somewhere in the System or Options directories (or another subdirectory of Windows) despite the fact that Windows doesn't find it, and simply pointing Windows to it (you can just open the directories in the search dialogue, if the file is in there it'll be visible there) is enough to make Windows use it. Maybe install all the driver software, also unzip them into a directory in C: (to have any files that might be needed handy), then just delete your HD and USB controllers from the device manager and restart. You might as a precaution save system.dat and user.dat from the Windows directory, so you could under DOS copy them back in if something goes really wrong in the process). Maybe the device detection would then work properly. Good luck, and please let us know how it's going! Achim

One more thought, Alison. I think Win98 makes backups of its Registry (system.bak and user.bak). If you could find copies of these two files made before your BIOS flashing, maybe that would cure the problem already. I am not sure if that's Win98, but some version of Windows I think created up to 5 backups of these Registry files. If I'm right, is there anyone in the knowing where these files are located? Achim

Actually it's "user.da0" and "system.da0". Allison, make sure you also have an 80-pin cable going to the hard drive. The lines on it will be half as thick as a "standard" IDE cable, but there's still only 40 pins on the end. This will ensure you're getting at least ATA-66 transfers. The 40pin cables don't support that speed. Also, I'd ignore (at least temporarily) the warnings from Windows about DMA. Don't forget: it's Microsoft warning you there! lol. Gunner "Joachim Trensz" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:anfm6n$e2813$[email hidden]... > One more thought, Alison. I think Win98 makes backups of its Registry > (system.bak and user.bak). If you could find copies of these two filesmade

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> before your BIOS flashing, maybe that would cure the problem already. > > I am not sure if that's Win98, but some version of Windows I think created > up to 5 backups of these Registry files. If I'm right, is there anyone in > the knowing where these files are located? > > Achim > >

Actually it's "user.da0" and "system.da0". Allison, make sure you also have an 80-pin cable going to the hard drive. The lines on it will be half as thick as a "standard" IDE cable, but there's still only 40 pins on the end. This will ensure you're getting at least ATA-66 transfers. The 40pin cables don't support that speed. Also, I'd ignore (at least temporarily) the warnings from Windows about DMA. Don't forget: it's Microsoft warning you there! lol. Gunner

"Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]... > On Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:26:25 -0000, "Joachim Trensz" <[email hidden]> > wrote: Alison, You may need to install (reinstall?) this driver, hpt201019.exe. I believe that this is the Highpoint? Ultra DMA100 driver, read on.... <snip> > In the BIOS, all IDE devices are set to AUTO for PIO and Ultra DMA. Is > this correct? Yes this is correct. <snip> > Does this drive have Ultra DMA or even DMA? I thought it had at least > the latter. Here's some info on your hard drive; Specifications for the WD Caviar WD450AA Physical Specifications Formatted Capacity 45,020 MB Interface 40-pin EIDE Rotational Speed 5400 RPM (nominal) << slow by today's standards. Data Transfer Rate (maximum) - Buffer to Host 66.6 MB/s (Mode 4 Ultra ATA) << Yes your Hard Drive can do Ultra ATA with the right cable. 33.3 MB/s (Mode 2 Ultra ATA) 16.6 MB/s (Mode 4 PIO) 16.6 MB/s (Mode 2 multi-word DMA) Buffer Size 2 MB Found at; http://www.wdc.com/products/legacy/Legacy.asp?r=3 Abit KT7, ??? All I could find on Abit was the KT7A at here, http://www.abit-usa.com/pt_main_back29be.html?pPRODUCT_TYPE=MotherBoard&pMOD EL_NAME=KT7A AMD Socket A Based ATX Mainboard With Ultra DMA100 & SoftMenu III Technology If this is your motherboard, it has Ultra DMA100 (Mode 5 Ultra ATA 100.0 MB/s). It will also run Mode 4 Ultra ATA 66.6 MB/s. Backwards compatible. You should get rid of the Generic IDE Disk Type 47 by installing the right Ultra DMA100 drivers. To get the most speed out of your motherboard a recommendation of a ATA100 7200 rpm drive would be the best, as the motherboard can handle it. Did you get the right bios, some of these motherboards have Raid, but I read the bios update will detect if you have Raid or not. Latest bios is, KT7A/KT7A-RAID (A9 BIOS Compile Date: 7/11/2002) or, KT7A V1.3/KT7A-RAID V1.3 (9R BIOS Compile Date: 6/11/2002). I'm not at all familiar with the VIA chipset, but know that there are many drivers for this chipset. And did you load the right drivers for the Ultra DMA100 chipset? Abit used to use the Highpoint Ultra DMA66 controller which on a Intel chipset was a separate install, if I recall on my old BE6 board. > - installed the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers and the 1.10 USB driver Are these Abit VIA drivers or,,,? This is the Abit driver download page; http://www.abit-usa.com/download_content9c5d.html > I had to skip the file to get the Windows boot to complete (I tried > several times but couldn't find the file and couldn't find another way > around the problem) and then install the latest 4 in 1 drivers. Later I > also installed the latest USB and IDE drivers. When Windows asks for a file that is most likely already installed and there is no browse button to find the file, just type in c:\windows, or c:\windows\system and it may find the file already installed. Sometimes there will be a "info" button that gives you a clue as to what directory the file is to be installed (found). This is more of a problem on Win95/98 than XP. > I don't know if this skipped file/belated 4 in 1 driver install caused > problems or not. I suppose I could remove the 4 in 1, USB, and IDE > drivers, and then reinstall them. Maybe I should drop into Safe Mode > first, to make sure I get rid of all the files installed by the drivers? The driver for Ultra DMA100 chipset is not installed, thus the "Generic IDE Disk Type 47". > Since the machine works a lot better with DMA turned off in Windows, it > seems like maybe I just need to optimize the BIOS settings for the > drive, and then maybe I can turn DMA back on. You need to get rid of the "Generic IDE Disk Type 47" by installing the Ultra DMA100 drivers. And then you will have a grayed out DMA check box, as DMA will always be active. You may need to install (reinstall?) this driver, hpt201019.exe found here at the bottom of the page; http://www.abit-usa.com/download_content0792.html Hope this helps you Alison. -- Daytona Beach - Winter Speed Carnival 1903 - 1935 1919 - Ralph DePalma Driving Champion and winner of hundreds of races, sets new 1 mile record driving 905 cubic inch V-12 Packard on beach at 149.875 mph. DePalma also sets World Records for distances of 2 to 20 miles and standing mile. His standing mile record of 92.713 mph is unbroken for 36 years.

I'd like to confirm what Redline says about the Highpoint driver - now that he mentions it I remember that I used to use it under Win98 as well. And Abit's page for your Mobo (the URL Redline mentions) also contains the Highpoint driver, so this could be the trick indeed. Good luck! Achim

"Joachim Trensz" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:angjm8$e1nso$[email hidden]... > I'd like to confirm what Redline says about the Highpoint driver - nowthat

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> he mentions it I remember that I used to use it under Win98 as well. And > Abit's page for your Mobo (the URL Redline mentions) also contains the > Highpoint driver, so this could be the trick indeed. > > Good luck! > > Achim >

I haven't been following this thread closely, but Highpoint has had several conflicts with cd roms and burners...I 'thought' they released updated hardware drivers to fix that tho... I seem to recall a segate/raid incompatiblity with highpoint cards. dave henrie

Thanks so much for this information, Redline! It's great to have more info about the hard drive. Also thanks to Achim and Dave. I don't know the difference between 40 pin and 80 pin cables, but I'm pretty sure I used the cable that came with the hard drive. Is it reasonable to assume that it's 80-pin? My motherboard is a KT7, not KT7A. They are different and use a different VIA chipset, Apollo KT133 vs KT133A. [The latter is a lot more stable with CPUs that use a 133 FSB.] Also it's not a RAID board, so it doesn't have a Highpoint controller. My understanding from reading my manual and the information on the Abit site and Abit FAQ is that only the KT7-RAID (and KT7A-RAID) have the Highpoint controller on them. According to my motherboard manual, the KT7 supports Ultra DMA/33 and /66 IDE protocol, but not /100. BTW, according to the Abit download page, the Highpoint drivers you mention, hpt201019.exe, are for the KA7-100 board, not the KT7-RAID. I don't know why this file is on the KT7/KT7A page! The BIOS I installed was 64. That has 1.3 Ghz support, and I didn't see any point in risking a newer, potentially less stable BIOS since they didn't have any features I needed. Maybe that was a mistake. I don't recall where I got this from, but it should be the same as the one on the Abit site. I installed the VIA 4 in 1 drivers, version 4.42. This is a little newer than the version on the Abit site, so possibly Abit is not keeping up to date with the latest 4 in 1 drivers. It does sound correct that I should try to get rid of the "Generic IDE Disk Type 47" but I haven't yet found the drivers that would seem to be appropriate for my board. Oh yes. When Windows asked for that file and I couldn't find it, I did try not only c:\windows and c:\windows\system, but everywhere else I could think of, but I couldn't find it. After I bypassed it, I unzipped the new 4 in 1 driver archive to make sure I'd have any files available that Windows needed. As I recall, after I installed the 4 in 1 driver, Windows needed a couple of files that were only in my unzipped folder! I must say I'm not impressed with the hassles that have come along with the VIA chipset and related drivers. I've struggled with USB support on this machine right from the moment I built it (it still hates my HP scanner, which works perfectly on my Asus/Celeron box), and I had hassles with the IRQ's after updating the BIOS, until I disabled a serial port and told the BIOS that the OS was not Plug 'n Play. I think my next machine will be built with a motherboard that doesn't use VIA anything! Anyway, thanks again, guys! Alison PS. If anyone has any more info on an IDE driver that might work with a plain old non-RAID KT7 (not KT7A), I'd be glad to hear about it! On Wed, 2 Oct 2002 21:57:16 -0400, "REDLINE426" <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>"Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message >news:[email hidden]... >> On Wed, 2 Oct 2002 10:26:25 -0000, "Joachim Trensz" <[email hidden]> >> wrote: > >Alison, You may need to install (reinstall?) this driver, hpt201019.exe. I >believe that this is the Highpoint? Ultra DMA100 driver, read on.... > ><snip> > >> In the BIOS, all IDE devices are set to AUTO for PIO and Ultra DMA. Is >> this correct? > >Yes this is correct. > ><snip> > >> Does this drive have Ultra DMA or even DMA? I thought it had at least >> the latter. > >Here's some info on your hard drive; > >Specifications for the WD Caviar WD450AA > >Physical Specifications > >Formatted Capacity 45,020 MB > >Interface 40-pin EIDE > >Rotational Speed 5400 RPM (nominal) << slow by today's standards. > >Data Transfer Rate (maximum) >- Buffer to Host > >66.6 MB/s (Mode 4 Ultra ATA) << Yes your Hard Drive can do Ultra ATA with >the right cable. >33.3 MB/s (Mode 2 Ultra ATA) >16.6 MB/s (Mode 4 PIO) >16.6 MB/s (Mode 2 multi-word DMA) > >Buffer Size 2 MB > >Found at; http://www.wdc.com/products/legacy/Legacy.asp?r=3 > >Abit KT7, ??? > >All I could find on Abit was the KT7A at here, > >http://www.abit-usa.com/pt_main_back29be.html?pPRODUCT_TYPE=MotherBoard&pMOD >EL_NAME=KT7A > >AMD Socket A Based ATX Mainboard With Ultra DMA100 & SoftMenu III Technology > >If this is your motherboard, it has Ultra DMA100 (Mode 5 Ultra ATA 100.0 >MB/s). >It will also run Mode 4 Ultra ATA 66.6 MB/s. Backwards compatible. > >You should get rid of the Generic IDE Disk Type 47 by installing the right >Ultra DMA100 drivers. > >To get the most speed out of your motherboard a recommendation of a ATA100 >7200 rpm drive would be the best, as the motherboard can handle it. > >Did you get the right bios, some of these motherboards have Raid, but I read >the bios update will detect if you have Raid or not. > >Latest bios is, >KT7A/KT7A-RAID (A9 BIOS Compile Date: 7/11/2002) >or, >KT7A V1.3/KT7A-RAID V1.3 (9R BIOS Compile Date: 6/11/2002). > >I'm not at all familiar with the VIA chipset, but know that there are many >drivers for this chipset. > >And did you load the right drivers for the Ultra DMA100 chipset? >Abit used to use the Highpoint Ultra DMA66 controller which on a Intel >chipset was a separate install, if I recall on my old BE6 board. > >> - installed the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers and the 1.10 USB driver > >Are these Abit VIA drivers or,,,? > >This is the Abit driver download page; > >http://www.abit-usa.com/download_content9c5d.html > >> I had to skip the file to get the Windows boot to complete (I tried >> several times but couldn't find the file and couldn't find another way >> around the problem) and then install the latest 4 in 1 drivers. Later I >> also installed the latest USB and IDE drivers. > >When Windows asks for a file that is most likely already installed and there >is no browse button to find the file, just type in c:\windows, or >c:\windows\system and it may find the file already installed. Sometimes >there will be a "info" button that gives you a clue as to what directory the >file is to be installed (found). This is more of a problem on Win95/98 than >XP. > >> I don't know if this skipped file/belated 4 in 1 driver install caused >> problems or not. I suppose I could remove the 4 in 1, USB, and IDE >> drivers, and then reinstall them. Maybe I should drop into Safe Mode >> first, to make sure I get rid of all the files installed by the drivers? > >The driver for Ultra DMA100 chipset is not installed, thus the "Generic IDE >Disk Type 47". > >> Since the machine works a lot better with DMA turned off in Windows, it >> seems like maybe I just need to optimize the BIOS settings for the >> drive, and then maybe I can turn DMA back on. > >You need to get rid of the "Generic IDE Disk Type 47" by installing the >Ultra DMA100 drivers. And then you will have a grayed out DMA check box, as >DMA will always be active. > >You may need to install (reinstall?) this driver, hpt201019.exe found here >at the bottom of the page; >http://www.abit-usa.com/download_content0792.html > >Hope this helps you Alison.

Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

Thanks, Andy! I had bizarre things happening with the IRQ's after upgrading the BIOS, but I disabled a serial port and also told the BIOS that the OS was not Plug 'n Play. That seems to have ironed out the IRQ problems. Alison On Wed, 2 Oct 2002 17:06:31 +0100, "AndyC" <[email hidden]> wrote:

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> >"Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message >news:[email hidden]... >> I recently upgraded the BIOS in my main racing computer, a T-bird 1.3 in >> an Abit KT7, so I could use the 1.3 at full speed (the original BIOS >> only went to 1.2). >[snip] > >You've got a similar setup to my machine! >And I had a mare of a problem when I updated the bios, again similar. >I realised that the problem was to do with AGP acelleration, which is >different from your issue, but anyway, running the DirectX diags caused the >machine to hang. >I tried everything, from Fdisk (I nearly cried when I found out my backup CD >was corrupt!!) through to ancient versions of drivers for everything... >What it turned out to be was that somehow I'd managed to introduce another >couple of IRQs to the PC causing a clash with the G-card. Sorting it was >easy. I simply disabled the printer and serial ports on the PC giving me >several further IRQs. Everything has been stunning since! > >The moral of all this is to disable the hardware you're not using I think. > >AndyC >

Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

Thanks, Steve! I think you're right. As I mentioned to AndyC, I had bizarre things happening with the IRQ's after upgrading the BIOS, but I disabled a serial port and also told the BIOS that the OS was not Plug 'n Play. That seems to have ironed out the IRQ problems. Alison On Wed, 02 Oct 2002 18:14:07 GMT, "Steve Smith" <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>Can such a pgm. test 32-bit under DOS? Anyway, if even *one* pgm. sez it's >working fine, then it seems unlikely that it could be a BIOS >program...unless you've checked/unchecked the part where the BIOS knows it's >running a PnP OS. One of my ME 'putas was having gawdawful problems until I >told it that it *wan't* looking at a PnP OS...and now it's fine (although >the list of IRQs is frighteningly long). If yer BIOS is set for a non-PnP >OS, then you should check for IRQ conflicts. > >"Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message >news:[email hidden]... >> Steve- >> >> No, I don't have a DOS sys burn-in program. I'd be glad to try yours! >> >> BTW, I did try George Breese's hard drive test program, and it reports >> that my hard drive is working fine and is quite fast. Here are the >> results: >> >> TST disk-speed test >> 32-bit edition >> Copyright 1999-2000, George E. Breese. Rev. 12/26/00 >> Write rate is 34.482 megabytes per second. >> Read rate is 19.230 megabytes per second. >> Testing random reading for five seconds... >> Random read rate is 14.677 megabytes per second. >> >> From these results and comments in the readme, I think this program >> bypasses Windows. It was originally a DOS program, and was adapted to >> the Windows environment but still runs in a DOS prompt. >> >> Alison >> >> On Wed, 02 Oct 2002 10:57:59 GMT, "Steve Smith" >> <[email hidden]> wrote: >> >> >First, make sure it's not a Windows prob. I have an intermittant HD prob >> >that slows everything down like pulling the boards out of a HAL 9000. >You >> >must have a DOS sys burn-in pgm., no? (Or I'll send you one.) Run some >DOS >> >benchmarks and make sure it isn't something the Evil Dr. Gates hasn't >> >initiated. >> >> >> Alison >> >> From: [email hidden] >> Reply-To: [email hidden] >> Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me. >> http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com >

Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com

Hi Alison, you can actually count the wires in the cable, but also, a 40 pin cable's wires looks a little coarse, while those of an 80 pin cable are really thin. I've checked the ABIT pages again and found that the KT7 pages also contain the Highpoint driver. The Southbridge seems to be a VIA 686B on both the KT7A and the KT7. I also think after searching ABIT's pages that KT7E, KT7, KT7A and even KA7 and KA7-100 used that southbridge. The KA7-100 is explicitely mentioned as being a board where the driver can be used, and it is not RAID (it doesn't have a Highpoint controller) according to the info on the ABIT website I could find. I can also confirm that I used this driver on an Intel board, and I think I still used it on my first Athlon boards while still using Win98. I'd give it a try, although I'd as always back up the Registry files before doing so. And maybe even the inf directory, to be entirely sure. But I think the Highpoint is for your board as well. > BTW, according to the Abit download page, the Highpoint drivers you > mention, hpt201019.exe, are for the KA7-100 board, not the KT7-RAID. I > don't know why this file is on the KT7/KT7A page! I actually think someone at ABIT just copied the descriptive text over without adapting it properly to the other motherboards. > The BIOS I installed was 64. That has 1.3 Ghz support, and I didn't see > any point in risking a newer, potentially less stable BIOS since they > didn't have any features I needed. Maybe that was a mistake. I don't > recall where I got this from, but it should be the same as the one on > the Abit site. If you got the BIOS from somewhere else but ABIT that was perhaps not such a good idea, but flashing a BIOS other than the latest is not necessarily risky. But you could of course always flash a BIOS from the ABIT pages. > It does sound correct that I should try to get rid of the "Generic IDE > Disk Type 47" but I haven't yet found the drivers that would seem to be > appropriate for my board. Try the Highpoint, seriously.

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> I must say I'm not impressed with the hassles that have come along with > the VIA chipset and related drivers. I've struggled with USB support on > this machine right from the moment I built it (it still hates my HP > scanner, which works perfectly on my Asus/Celeron box), and I had > hassles with the IRQ's after updating the BIOS, until I disabled a > serial port and told the BIOS that the OS was not Plug 'n Play. > > I think my next machine will be built with a motherboard that doesn't > use VIA anything!

Well VIA indeed has had its probs. But your scanner problem could be a problem Microsoft has a patch for. I saw such a prob on a colleague's machine in Spain and discovered that Microsoft had a patch for it. It's a communication error, a problem of Win98 rather than the USB port. Good luck! Achim

On Fri, 4 Oct 2002 05:11:41 -0000, "Joachim Trensz" <[email hidden]> wrote: >> It does sound correct that I should try to get rid of the "Generic IDE >> Disk Type 47" but I haven't yet found the drivers that would seem to be >> appropriate for my board. > >Try the Highpoint, seriously. Well, I've totally hosed my system. It looks like I damaged my hard drive. The local computer store (a very good but expensive shop in Portsmouth called Botnay Bay) estimates a week and $240 minimum to repair it, if all they have to do is fix the drive translation software in the BIOS and the hard drive BIOS. If the drive itself is damaged, it could be much more and take much longer. I can't afford even $240. Racing the Cobra has drained my financial resources dry. I'm so upset! I don't know what to do. I've never wrecked a computer this bad before. This computer has all my GPL stuff on it - all my setups, the latest tracks, car graphics, etc., as well as other stuff like special mods to F1 2001 and all the other sims I've used like N4, N 2002, Racer, N Heat, etc., many with mods and updates. It's my main racing computer. It will take me weeks to recover all this stuff, if I start over with a new hard drive (assuming a new hard drive will work; according to Botnay Bay, the motherboard's BIOS may be screwed up too). Here's what happened: I downloaded hpt201019.exe and read its readme carefully. It stated clearly that it was only for RAID boards, and I don't have a RAID board. My motherboard manual also states clearly that the Highpoint drivers are only for RAID boards. Non-RAID boards like mine don't even have a Highpoint controller on them. However, I had another VIA program, IDETool, which I had downloaded a couple of weeks ago when I started having these problems. This is in a zip archive called 580_3012.zip. I had not installed it before, but today I looked at its readme and it said it enables DMA on IDE drives, so I figured I'd try it. Before doing so, I ran ConfigSafe95 to back up the registry and drivers, because Win98 does not appear to save copies of the registry as Win95 did. I was pretty confident with that, because ConfigSafe has never failed me before. Then I installed IDETool. It hung during installation, just after the "Windows has found new hardware" message. I had to hit the reset button. I tried booting into Safe Mode, but that failed too, as did booting into DOS mode. Both hung. The only way it will boot is into DOS Safe Mode. I tried restoring the old configuration using ConfigSafe's SOS, but that got errors writing to the hard drive and failed. I tried again to boot into Windows, but now ScanDisk says that it can't write to the C partition, and it hung on the D partition at 99%. I guess I need to look at possible strategies for going forward from here. I can get a new 80 gb drive at the local Best Buy for $135. However, if the BIOS on the motherboard is possibly messed up, as Botnay Bay suggests, then perhaps I should reinstall the motherboard BIOS before installing the new hard drive, lest I screw it up too. Then, assuming the new drive works, the first step would be to partition it and copy the D partition from the old drive to the new drive. If I'm lucky, maybe the data, or at least most of it, will still be good - and readable. Then if that works I could install Windows on the C partition of the new drive, and reinstall all my programs. At least I would have a functional GPL (which is on the D partition). Does that sound like a good approach? Can anyone suggest anything else I might do that would be easier and/or safer? Or should I just take the thing to Botnay Bay and let them deal with it (with the likely unfortunate side effect of curtailing my Cobra activities)? Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.net

Alison Hine wrote:

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> > Well, I've totally hosed my system. It looks like I damaged my hard > drive. The local computer store (a very good but expensive shop in > Portsmouth called Botnay Bay) estimates a week and $240 minimum to > repair it, if all they have to do is fix the drive translation software > in the BIOS and the hard drive BIOS. If the drive itself is damaged, it > could be much more and take much longer. > > I can't afford even $240. Racing the Cobra has drained my financial > resources dry. I'm so upset! I don't know what to do. I've never > wrecked a computer this bad before.

240 ??? This means I'm not charging nearly enough for my services > Does that sound like a good approach? Can anyone suggest anything else > I might do that would be easier and/or safer? Or should I just take the > thing to Botnay Bay and let them deal with it (with the likely > unfortunate side effect of curtailing my Cobra activities)? First thing you do is remove the HD and hook it up to your other system and check it using the "LifeTools" available from WD's site http://support.wdc.com/download/ That will tell you if your drive is mechanically hosed or not, secondly, if you can manage to get your system to boot to DOS safe mode or from a floppy, there's no reason why you shouldn't be able to update the BIOS again, this time making sure you're using the correct BIOS file of course....:-/ If your BIOS/MoBo IS hosed to the point where you can't get it back to working state by updating the BIOS, you have two options Send the BIOS chip to a reputable store, they should be able to burn a new BIOS image to the chip, should cost about 50 dollars, although it hardly seems worth it for a MoBo that doesn't support 133 FSB, you can pick up MoBo's like the ASUS A7V133-C (KT133A with 133 FSB) for as little as 45 dollars at Surpluscomputers.com or something, and you can still use your old RAM sticks, I'm only suggesting ASUS as you already have experience with them from your other PC and I know them well myself If the HD is indeed hosed as you say, a new 80 GB Western Digital HD costs less than 100 dollars on Pricewatch, then I personally think 240 dollars is a rip off..... Beers and cheers (uncle) Goy http://www.theuspits.com "A man is only as old as the woman he feels........" --Groucho Marx--

Test, Alison check your mail

Alison, DON'T PANIC ! Can you boot with a Win98 startup disk and see your hard drive? Run Scandisk from a Win98 Startup Disk. If you can then your hard drive ain't too messed up. I sent a follow-up post that I guess got lost in the ether-realm. It'll probably appear in a couple of weeks. I found your KT7 mother board on the "Taiwan" Abit site. I was looking at the USA Abit site that only had the KT7A board. Your board at the Abit Taiwan site; http://makeashorterlink.com/?N26342561 On the download page is probably the file that you need. It's called VIA Service Pack 4.29v. You probably have these on your motherboard installation CD, all though older. These are the VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller drivers Download Page; http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2B122402 Don't worry about this right now, this is for later when everything is booting. Now what you have done with this IDE tool is unknown to me, but I doubt if it's that serious. I just hope it didn't do something to the VIA chipset. If your motherboard Bio's is screwed up, just re-flash it from the boot floppy that you made for your previous bios flash. I hope that you did flash from a boot floppy???? You can do this without even having a hard drive hooked up. Then if you have a spare hard drive (ya must have a drive kicking around right? borrow?) install that alone into the computer and load a OS on it. Make sure the computer boots up and runs normally. Take your hard drive with all your GLP stuff on it and put it in computer as a slave to this new OS hard drive. Remember the correct jumper settings. Don't use "Cable Select". Use master & slave. See if everything boots up and you can see all your partitions. Run Scandisk on the problem drive. If everything is OK start backing up the drive to CDR's, CDRW or another hard drive. I have 8 drives for this box, 130gb is dedicated just for file & Mp3 backups, plus incremental CDR & CDRW backups. I'm a former Macintosh user, and one thing about using a Mac is that you learn to backup your files daily if not hourly. Then you can run some more serious utilities on the drive. After you have backed it up, (if you can). Hope that 45 gigs ain't near it's capacity. Mirroring the drive to another BIG drive is the fastest and simplest. Western Digital hard drive tools is the first one to start with. You can use the disk that came with the hard drive when it was new or download a newer version at the WD website here; http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp These file may require you to build a boot floppy, read directions. When you run any of the diagnostics DON"T DO ANYTHING THAT WILL DESTROY DATA! If everything checks out OK, it probably will if you can see both partitions and backup the drive. The this IDE tool did something to the OS during the boot process that is giving you problems, which will take a little more to figure out. Let me know if you read this, I will also post this through my ISP's news service, but they have a UDP on them so... And I'll try to resend the follow up post again.

Hi Redline, I've written Alison two long mails :) advising her (among other suggestions) not to use Scandisk until she knows whether the other components like BIOS, HD BIOS etc. are ok. I said that because I am worried that if indeed the MBR, partition table or FAT got damaged, then perhaps Scandisk would convert lost clusters into files and try to correct the FAT or partition table, thus making a later restore of the files using a tool like Easy Recovery impossible. I'm not sure that this risk exists, but thought it's better to be safe than sorry. What do you think, should Alison perhaps first check everything else, then run the trial version of Easy Recovery to see what's recoverable, and only then, after she's recovered what she needs, run Scandisk again? Achim "REDLINE426" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:IQIn9.25173$[email hidden]... > Alison, DON'T PANIC ! > > Can you boot with a Win98 startup disk and see your hard drive? > Run Scandisk from a Win98 Startup Disk. If you can then your hard driveain't too messed up. > > I sent a follow-up post that I guess got lost in the ether-realm. It'llprobably appear in a couple of weeks. > > I found your KT7 mother board on the "Taiwan" Abit site. I was looking atthe USA Abit site that only had the KT7A board. > Your board at the Abit Taiwan site; > http://makeashorterlink.com/?N26342561 > > On the download page is probably the file that you need. It's called VIAService Pack 4.29v. > You probably have these on your motherboard installation CD, all thougholder. > These are the VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller drivers > Download Page; > http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2B122402 > > Don't worry about this right now, this is for later when everything isbooting. > > Now what you have done with this IDE tool is unknown to me, but I doubt ifit's that serious. I just hope it didn't do > something to the VIA chipset. > If your motherboard Bio's is screwed up, just re-flash it from the boot floppy that you made for your previous bios > flash. > I hope that you did flash from a boot floppy???? You can do this withouteven having a hard drive hooked up. > > Then if you have a spare hard drive (ya must have a drive kicking aroundright? borrow?) install that alone into the > computer and load a OS on it. > Make sure the computer boots up and runs normally. > Take your hard drive with all your GLP stuff on it and put it in computeras a slave to this new OS hard drive. > Remember the correct jumper settings. Don't use "Cable Select". Use master& slave. > See if everything boots up and you can see all your partitions. > Run Scandisk on the problem drive. If everything is OK start backing upthe drive to CDR's, CDRW or another hard drive. > I have 8 drives for this box, 130gb is dedicated just for file & Mp3backups, plus incremental CDR & CDRW backups. > I'm a former Macintosh user, and one thing about using a Mac is that youlearn to backup your files daily if not hourly. > > Then you can run some more serious utilities on the drive. After you havebacked it up, (if you can). > Hope that 45 gigs ain't near it's capacity. Mirroring the drive to anotherBIG drive is the fastest and simplest. > Western Digital hard drive tools is the first one to start with. You canuse the disk that came with the hard drive when

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> it was new or download a newer version at the WD website here; > > http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp > > These file may require you to build a boot floppy, read directions. > > When you run any of the diagnostics DON"T DO ANYTHING THAT WILL DESTROY

DATA! > If everything checks out OK, it probably will if you can see bothpartitions and backup the drive. > The this IDE tool did something to the OS during the boot process that isgiving you problems, which will take a little > more to figure out. > > Let me know if you read this, I will also post this through my ISP's newsservice, but they have a UDP on them so...

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> > And I'll try to resend the follow up post again. > > > > >

Yea, JT I hope that she understands to try to get the hard drive to mount up and be seen by a good working HD/OS and do a quick scandisk with the option to not to automatically fix errors or convert files. Just to make sure the directory structure is good. And then back it up, i.e. mirroring the drive to a known good drive is the easiest and fastest way if it has a large amount of files. And of course keeping a clean "House" (TIF folder etc.) helps also. I think her original problem can be found in her first post; >- set the jumper on the hard drive to cable select I haven't set jumpers to cable select since the 286/386 days. I don't know where she got that information. Especially with Ultra DMA. I really don't think she did much damage to the HD and files because of "The only way it will boot is into DOS Safe Mode" and my guess is that the HD is mounting, just hanging on the Win98 boot. Heh that's why the DON'T PANIC! and go crazy with the recover utilities. That's always a last resort. I'm a little worried about the use of that "ConfigSafe95" backup utility. I know Win98/ME don't like some Win95 reg backup utilities, but it sounds like she's used it before, just wondering how many times? Maybe her Win98 install is old and on the brink of disaster anyway. And Alison, if you read this, go race the Cobra and enjoy the Fall foliage. GPL and VROC will still be here when ya get back. Although I don't know about the Internet, WorldCom (UUNET) had a big outage this week. :-( REDLINE426 can be found on PalTalk in the PC Tech rooms for voice chat at times.

Allison, As an aside to your problems and for future reference, Windows 98 does in fact back up the registry. It keeps 5 backup copies and backs it up daily on bootup keeping older ones that are different than existing.These will be in either the Windows/system or Windows/sysbackup folder and are named RB00x.cab (x being a number with the highest being the newest, usually being the present days backup). These can be accessed by booting in Safe mode with a dos prompt and running Scanregw. This has a number of options for restoring the registry to the backed up versions Windows has stored. I am in agreement with what Redline said, do not panic and do not run scandisk on the drive. As long as you haven't done that, most of your data should be recoverable. I expect your o/s will have to be reinstalled but all your data should be available to you. The best suggestion was to move the hd to another machine and copy over your important stuff or use a different drive in same machine and access your existing drive as a slave to copy over your data. Steve

Thanks to Goy, Redline, Achim, Steve, and Steve for your suggestions! Thanks especially for the link to my mobo on the Taiwan site, Redline! I decided to take a day off from the computer yesterday and took the Cobra to a car show down the street. It got as much attention as a Lamborghini Diablo that was parked next to it! Anyway... I can see the hard drive by booting, hitting F8, and selecting DOS Safe Mode, so I am pretty sure I can also see it if I boot using a Win98 boot floppy. Dir on both C and D partitions works. Unfortunately I let Scandisk run before I read the posts from you guys, and it had write errors on the C partition, so my Windows installation is probably done for. But Scandisk didn't find any errors on the D partition (it hung at 99%), so it seems like there's a good chance its data is ok. If so, I should be able to get GPL off of it. My plan at this point is to buy a new hard drive ($80 with rebates for an 80 GB WD 7200 rpm from CompUSA; thanks Steve Smith!) and try to copy the D partition from the old drive to a partition on the new drive. If that works, I will be ok. All I'll need is to install Windows on the C partition on the new drive, and reinstall a bunch of programs. I've got a Cobra event this weekend, so I may not be able to put a lot of time into this till next week. Thanks again, guys! I'll keep you posted. Alison On Sat, 5 Oct 2002 17:34:31 -0400, "REDLINE426" <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>Alison, DON'T PANIC ! > >Can you boot with a Win98 startup disk and see your hard drive? >Run Scandisk from a Win98 Startup Disk. If you can then your hard drive ain't too messed up. > >I sent a follow-up post that I guess got lost in the ether-realm. It'll probably appear in a couple of weeks. > >I found your KT7 mother board on the "Taiwan" Abit site. I was looking at the USA Abit site that only had the KT7A board. >Your board at the Abit Taiwan site; >http://makeashorterlink.com/?N26342561 > >On the download page is probably the file that you need. It's called VIA Service Pack 4.29v. >You probably have these on your motherboard installation CD, all though older. >These are the VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller drivers >Download Page; >http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2B122402 > >Don't worry about this right now, this is for later when everything is booting. > >Now what you have done with this IDE tool is unknown to me, but I doubt if it's that serious. I just hope it didn't do >something to the VIA chipset. >If your motherboard Bio's is screwed up, just re-flash it from the boot floppy that you made for your previous bios >flash. >I hope that you did flash from a boot floppy???? You can do this without even having a hard drive hooked up. > >Then if you have a spare hard drive (ya must have a drive kicking around right? borrow?) install that alone into the >computer and load a OS on it. >Make sure the computer boots up and runs normally. >Take your hard drive with all your GLP stuff on it and put it in computer as a slave to this new OS hard drive. >Remember the correct jumper settings. Don't use "Cable Select". Use master & slave. >See if everything boots up and you can see all your partitions. >Run Scandisk on the problem drive. If everything is OK start backing up the drive to CDR's, CDRW or another hard drive. >I have 8 drives for this box, 130gb is dedicated just for file & Mp3 backups, plus incremental CDR & CDRW backups. >I'm a former Macintosh user, and one thing about using a Mac is that you learn to backup your files daily if not hourly. > >Then you can run some more serious utilities on the drive. After you have backed it up, (if you can). >Hope that 45 gigs ain't near it's capacity. Mirroring the drive to another BIG drive is the fastest and simplest. >Western Digital hard drive tools is the first one to start with. You can use the disk that came with the hard drive when >it was new or download a newer version at the WD website here; > >http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp > >These file may require you to build a boot floppy, read directions. > >When you run any of the diagnostics DON"T DO ANYTHING THAT WILL DESTROY DATA! >If everything checks out OK, it probably will if you can see both partitions and backup the drive. >The this IDE tool did something to the OS during the boot process that is giving you problems, which will take a little >more to figure out. > >Let me know if you read this, I will also post this through my ISP's news service, but they have a UDP on them so... > >And I'll try to resend the follow up post again. > > > >

Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.net

Hi Alison, I'm glad to see that things aren't as bad as they looked at first. If you can get a dir, and if Scandisk didn't mod anything on the D drive, your data won't be lost. However, this brings me to another thought - if I understand you correctly, the only real problem is under normal Windows mode. But you can boot into SafeMode, and there see the HD? I don't remember Win98 well enough to know wether there are two different Safe Modes, one which gets you into DOS, and one that starts a Windows GUI, but if the SafeMode you mention boots into a Windows' grafical user interface, then I'm pretty sure that not even your Windows installation is hosed. IMO this would indicate that it's really only the HD /chipset driver that gives you troubles. If this were the case, then I'd be pretty convinced that neither the Motherboard BIOS nor the HD BIOS cause any probs, in this case it would really only be a Windows driver problem. Apologies if my memory fails me and there is a SafeMode that only uses DOS... Achim "Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:[email hidden]...

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> Thanks to Goy, Redline, Achim, Steve, and Steve for your suggestions! > Thanks especially for the link to my mobo on the Taiwan site, Redline! > > I decided to take a day off from the computer yesterday and took the > Cobra to a car show down the street. It got as much attention as a > Lamborghini Diablo that was parked next to it! > > Anyway... I can see the hard drive by booting, hitting F8, and selecting > DOS Safe Mode, so I am pretty sure I can also see it if I boot using a > Win98 boot floppy. Dir on both C and D partitions works. > > Unfortunately I let Scandisk run before I read the posts from you guys, > and it had write errors on the C partition, so my Windows installation > is probably done for. But Scandisk didn't find any errors on the D > partition (it hung at 99%), so it seems like there's a good chance its > data is ok. If so, I should be able to get GPL off of it. > > My plan at this point is to buy a new hard drive ($80 with rebates for > an 80 GB WD 7200 rpm from CompUSA; thanks Steve Smith!) and try to copy > the D partition from the old drive to a partition on the new drive. > > If that works, I will be ok. All I'll need is to install Windows on the > C partition on the new drive, and reinstall a bunch of programs. > > I've got a Cobra event this weekend, so I may not be able to put a lot > of time into this till next week. > > Thanks again, guys! I'll keep you posted. > > Alison > > On Sat, 5 Oct 2002 17:34:31 -0400, "REDLINE426" <[email hidden]> > wrote: > > >Alison, DON'T PANIC ! > > > >Can you boot with a Win98 startup disk and see your hard drive? > >Run Scandisk from a Win98 Startup Disk. If you can then your hard drive

ain't too messed up. > > > >I sent a follow-up post that I guess got lost in the ether-realm. It'llprobably appear in a couple of weeks. > > > >I found your KT7 mother board on the "Taiwan" Abit site. I was looking atthe USA Abit site that only had the KT7A board. > >Your board at the Abit Taiwan site; > >http://makeashorterlink.com/?N26342561 > > > >On the download page is probably the file that you need. It's called VIAService Pack 4.29v. > >You probably have these on your motherboard installation CD, all thougholder. > >These are the VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller drivers > >Download Page; > >http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2B122402 > > > >Don't worry about this right now, this is for later when everything isbooting. > > > >Now what you have done with this IDE tool is unknown to me, but I doubtif it's that serious. I just hope it didn't do > >something to the VIA chipset. > >If your motherboard Bio's is screwed up, just re-flash it from the bootfloppy that you made for your previous bios > >flash. > >I hope that you did flash from a boot floppy???? You can do this withouteven having a hard drive hooked up. > > > >Then if you have a spare hard drive (ya must have a drive kicking aroundright? borrow?) install that alone into the > >computer and load a OS on it. > >Make sure the computer boots up and runs normally. > >Take your hard drive with all your GLP stuff on it and put it in computeras a slave to this new OS hard drive. > >Remember the correct jumper settings. Don't use "Cable Select". Usemaster & slave. > >See if everything boots up and you can see all your partitions. > >Run Scandisk on the problem drive. If everything is OK start backing upthe drive to CDR's, CDRW or another hard drive. > >I have 8 drives for this box, 130gb is dedicated just for file & Mp3backups, plus incremental CDR & CDRW backups. > >I'm a former Macintosh user, and one thing about using a Mac is that youlearn to backup your files daily if not hourly. > > > >Then you can run some more serious utilities on the drive. After you havebacked it up, (if you can). > >Hope that 45 gigs ain't near it's capacity. Mirroring the drive toanother BIG drive is the fastest and simplest. > >Western Digital hard drive tools is the first one to start with. You canuse the disk that came with the hard drive when

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> >it was new or download a newer version at the WD website here; > > > >http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp > > > >These file may require you to build a boot floppy, read directions. > > > >When you run any of the diagnostics DON"T DO ANYTHING THAT WILL DESTROY

DATA! > >If everything checks out OK, it probably will if you can see bothpartitions and backup the drive. > >The this IDE tool did something to the OS during the boot process that isgiving you problems, which will take a little > >more to figure out. > > > >Let me know if you read this, I will also post this through my ISP's newsservice, but they have a UDP on them so...

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> > > >And I'll try to resend the follow up post again. > > > > > > > > > > > Alison > > From: [email hidden] > Reply-To: [email hidden] > Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. > http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.net

Achim- In my version of Win98, there are two different Safe Modes. One Safe Mode boots into the Windows graphical interface. This no longer works on my machine; the system hangs before it gets to the Safe Mode desktop. The other Safe Mode goes into DOS. This is the one that boots. BTW, it won't boot into the normal DOS Mode; that also hangs. This plus the fact that both ScanDisk and ConfigSafe95 reported errors when trying to write to the C partition make me feel that it's likely that data on the C partition is corrupted. It also seems likely that my Windows install (which is on the C partition) is hosed. Even if it's not, I'm not sure how to recover from the installation of the IDE driver which caused the problem, unless I can get it to boot at least into Windows Safe Mode. Hmm. The IDE driver's setup program does have a command line uninstall option; perhaps I should boot into DOS Safe Mode and try that? Anyway, the first thing I want to do is install the new hard drive, partition and format it, and copy the old drive's D partition contents to the new one. Then I will feel a little better about messing with the old drive. Alison On Tue, 8 Oct 2002 00:02:01 -0000, "Joachim Trensz" <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>Hi Alison, > >I'm glad to see that things aren't as bad as they looked at first. If you >can get a dir, and if Scandisk didn't mod anything on the D drive, your data >won't be lost. > >However, this brings me to another thought - if I understand you correctly, >the only real problem is under normal Windows mode. But you can boot into >SafeMode, and there see the HD? I don't remember Win98 well enough to know >wether there are two different Safe Modes, one which gets you into DOS, and >one that starts a Windows GUI, but if the SafeMode you mention boots into a >Windows' grafical user interface, then I'm pretty sure that not even your >Windows installation is hosed. IMO this would indicate that it's really only >the HD /chipset driver that gives you troubles. > >If this were the case, then I'd be pretty convinced that neither the >Motherboard BIOS nor the HD BIOS cause any probs, in this case it would >really only be a Windows driver problem. > >Apologies if my memory fails me and there is a SafeMode that only uses >DOS... > >Achim > > >"Alison Hine" <[email hidden]> wrote in message >news:[email hidden]... >> Thanks to Goy, Redline, Achim, Steve, and Steve for your suggestions! >> Thanks especially for the link to my mobo on the Taiwan site, Redline! >> >> I decided to take a day off from the computer yesterday and took the >> Cobra to a car show down the street. It got as much attention as a >> Lamborghini Diablo that was parked next to it! >> >> Anyway... I can see the hard drive by booting, hitting F8, and selecting >> DOS Safe Mode, so I am pretty sure I can also see it if I boot using a >> Win98 boot floppy. Dir on both C and D partitions works. >> >> Unfortunately I let Scandisk run before I read the posts from you guys, >> and it had write errors on the C partition, so my Windows installation >> is probably done for. But Scandisk didn't find any errors on the D >> partition (it hung at 99%), so it seems like there's a good chance its >> data is ok. If so, I should be able to get GPL off of it. >> >> My plan at this point is to buy a new hard drive ($80 with rebates for >> an 80 GB WD 7200 rpm from CompUSA; thanks Steve Smith!) and try to copy >> the D partition from the old drive to a partition on the new drive. >> >> If that works, I will be ok. All I'll need is to install Windows on the >> C partition on the new drive, and reinstall a bunch of programs. >> >> I've got a Cobra event this weekend, so I may not be able to put a lot >> of time into this till next week. >> >> Thanks again, guys! I'll keep you posted. >> >> Alison >> >> On Sat, 5 Oct 2002 17:34:31 -0400, "REDLINE426" <[email hidden]> >> wrote: >> >> >Alison, DON'T PANIC ! >> > >> >Can you boot with a Win98 startup disk and see your hard drive? >> >Run Scandisk from a Win98 Startup Disk. If you can then your hard drive >ain't too messed up. >> > >> >I sent a follow-up post that I guess got lost in the ether-realm. It'll >probably appear in a couple of weeks. >> > >> >I found your KT7 mother board on the "Taiwan" Abit site. I was looking at >the USA Abit site that only had the KT7A board. >> >Your board at the Abit Taiwan site; >> >http://makeashorterlink.com/?N26342561 >> > >> >On the download page is probably the file that you need. It's called VIA >Service Pack 4.29v. >> >You probably have these on your motherboard installation CD, all though >older. >> >These are the VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller drivers >> >Download Page; >> >http://makeashorterlink.com/?H2B122402 >> > >> >Don't worry about this right now, this is for later when everything is >booting. >> > >> >Now what you have done with this IDE tool is unknown to me, but I doubt >if it's that serious. I just hope it didn't do >> >something to the VIA chipset. >> >If your motherboard Bio's is screwed up, just re-flash it from the boot >floppy that you made for your previous bios >> >flash. >> >I hope that you did flash from a boot floppy???? You can do this without >even having a hard drive hooked up. >> > >> >Then if you have a spare hard drive (ya must have a drive kicking around >right? borrow?) install that alone into the >> >computer and load a OS on it. >> >Make sure the computer boots up and runs normally. >> >Take your hard drive with all your GLP stuff on it and put it in computer >as a slave to this new OS hard drive. >> >Remember the correct jumper settings. Don't use "Cable Select". Use >master & slave. >> >See if everything boots up and you can see all your partitions. >> >Run Scandisk on the problem drive. If everything is OK start backing up >the drive to CDR's, CDRW or another hard drive. >> >I have 8 drives for this box, 130gb is dedicated just for file & Mp3 >backups, plus incremental CDR & CDRW backups. >> >I'm a former Macintosh user, and one thing about using a Mac is that you >learn to backup your files daily if not hourly. >> > >> >Then you can run some more serious utilities on the drive. After you have >backed it up, (if you can). >> >Hope that 45 gigs ain't near it's capacity. Mirroring the drive to >another BIG drive is the fastest and simplest. >> >Western Digital hard drive tools is the first one to start with. You can >use the disk that came with the hard drive when >> >it was new or download a newer version at the WD website here; >> > >> >http://support.wdc.com/download/index.asp >> > >> >These file may require you to build a boot floppy, read directions. >> > >> >When you run any of the diagnostics DON"T DO ANYTHING THAT WILL DESTROY >DATA! >> >If everything checks out OK, it probably will if you can see both >partitions and backup the drive. >> >The this IDE tool did something to the OS during the boot process that is >giving you problems, which will take a little >> >more to figure out. >> > >> >Let me know if you read this, I will also post this through my ISP's news >service, but they have a UDP on them so... >> > >> >And I'll try to resend the follow up post again. >> > >> > >> > >> > >> >> >> Alison >> >> From: [email hidden] >> Reply-To: [email hidden] >> Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. >> http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.net >

Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker NOSPAM to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.net

Hi Alison, > ...the first thing I want to do is install the new hard drive, > partition and format it, and copy the old drive's D partition > contents to the new one This is definitely the safest approach! Achim

Hi Alison, This is definitely the safest approach! Achim

Alison, I missed the beginning of the thread, but the facts are quite clear: The HD is messed up, might be only the bios-setting. Take out the Harddisk and first try to get your mobo going with another HD (any attempt to access your HD using wrong bios-settings could damage the contents). Get the correct bios and create a start-disk with it. Could be that the mobo with the damaged bios does not start up from floppy anymore, just try it out. There are some other hammer-methods like burning a new eprom (small hammer) or exchanging the eprom after starting with an intact one and before re-flashing with the correct version (big hammer). Install win98 and only then connect your old HD as second HD. Get the bios-setting right (auto-detect should do, as long as your HD is not too new or your mobo is not too old) Retieve all data you need to reconfigure your win98-environment. For further info what to retrieve contact me by email. HTH Jens BTW: as you already found out, all those rescue and system-saving gimmicks are rubbish. At least they would never restore to a stable running system. --------------------------------------------- LWFF Ball Bearing conversion at: http://jensschumi.bravepages.com/ GPLRank: -14.82 Monsters of GPL: sub 95

On Mon, 7 Oct 2002 09:27:18 -0400, "Steve" <[email hidden]> wrote:

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>Allison, As an aside to your problems and for future reference, Windows 98 >does in fact back up the registry. It keeps 5 backup copies and backs it up >daily on bootup keeping older ones that are different than existing.These >will be in either the Windows/system or Windows/sysbackup folder and are >named RB00x.cab (x being a number with the highest being the newest, >usually being the present days backup). These can be accessed by booting in >Safe mode with a dos prompt and running Scanregw. This has a number of >options for restoring the registry to the backed up versions Windows has >stored. I am in agreement with what Redline said, do not panic and do not >run scandisk on the drive. As long as you haven't done that, most of your >data should be recoverable. I expect your o/s will have to be reinstalled >but all your data should be available to you. The best suggestion was to >move the hd to another machine and copy over your important stuff or use a >different drive in same machine and access your existing drive as a slave to >copy over your data. > >Steve >

I just wanted to follow up on this thread and let everyone who made suggestions know that all is well. Following your advice, I got my main racing computer running again (this is the one that I killed a few weeks ago while trying to get it to use DMA access on the hard drive properly). I bought a new hard drive, partitioned and formatted it, and copied the D partition from the old drive to the new one. Then I installed Win98 on the C partition of the new drive, and installed all the sound and Voodoo drivers, Logitech Wingman software, etc. Luckily I had kept detailed notes about what I'd done on the previous installation, so it went pretty smoothly. I did the disk copy and Windows install one evening, and spent a day installing everything else and trying to tune the Voodoo5 driver to get it to look as good as it used to. That was one thing I hadn't taken notes on: my 3Dfx Tools settings! Unfortunately the Web site that I used before as a reference when tuning the V5 is now gone. I should have saved the pages! Anyway, the computer runs very well and looks almost as good as it used to. It feels great to be able to run GPL well again! Incidentally, I've found that I have the exact same problem with the new hard drive (an 80 GB WD) as with the old: with DMA access turned on, writing to the hard drive takes forever and the computer is brought to its knees while the writing is going on. With DMA turned off, it's faster and less intrusive, but I still get little pauses in GPL when GPL accesses the hard drive. FWIW, immediately after installing Windows, I installed the latest version of the VIA 4 in 1 drivers, which is supposed to have the proper drivers for my motherboard's IDE controllers. Also, I am using a DMA cable, and have DMA set to Auto for the hard drive in the BIOS. I guess for now I'll live with the way the hard drive behaves with DMA off. I wish I could fix it - but I'm not going to mess with it unless I know for sure I'm doing the right thing! Thanks again to everyone who made suggestions! You were extremely helpful in getting me calmed down and figuring out the right path to take to recover. BTW, I bought yet another hard drive and am now routinely backing up to it my entire GPL installation as well as all my other critical data. Alison From: [email hidden] Reply-To: [email hidden] Remove the spam blocker ARGLEBARGLE to email me. http://eaglewoman.maximumspeed.com