Win98 - IDE controllers problem

[jward52]

OK, fellow techies, chew on this one:
I'm helping a friend with his problem... he said he used McAffee that he downloaded from aol to scan for viruses, then deleted what showed up on the scan. That must have removed some windows files cuz it wouldn't boot or would boot but freeze. I took the pc home and hooked up his drive to my tester and it booted while finding and installing the IDE controllers on my mobo. Ok, cool, I thought. I ran system file checker on it, but that found no problems.

I put the drive back in his PC and it did boot but wouldn't reload the correct IDE controllers for that board, which left me with no functioning cdrom. I found an Intel utility that installs chipset drivers and fit on a floppy too, so I ran that exe. The pc went thru all the paces loading all the drivers and finding all the hardware, then did the reboot only to find that device manager still shows the IDE controllers as not functional with the yellow "i." Is this a windows (98se) problem or are the IDE controllers dead meat? He has some folders that he wants saved in case I have to wipe the drive and start over, but I was just thinking of renaming and moving them to another dir and reloading windows. A related problem at the onset was his agp video card. It is running at vga resolution, can be changed to 800x600 or higher, but upon reboot, it returns to the vga setting.

Thanks to all for your thoughts on this vexing issue!

 

[edfair]

Were they Intel chips? The same that are on the board?
I've found that it is better to use the board manufacturer's implementation ,if available, because they have made it work the first time. Plus you should have the drivers available there for the video too.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[TekTippy4U]

IMO and AFAIK
this may not be precise info, but
The vga agp problem is probably linked to the IDE Busmaster Controller which controls the flow of data, not only between the North and South bridge, but all the transfers thru the FSB(hence Busmaster...UDMA/33 and up.
Check the "Dual" IDE Setting under "Hard disk controllers" in Device Mangler
"Use both channels"
especially if it's only the CDROM with the yellow "!"

Check the BIOS settings for "Dual IDE"...

Does the POST see both the HDD and CD?
Are the PriMast and SecMast in BIOS set to "Auto"
Can you get to 16bit color with video at 800x600, or at even any resolution,
even though it loses it on reboot?

For some odd reason....i'm thinking the ACPI may have something to do with this(no proof yet)...
Did your mobo only have APM and his has ACPI?
"View devices by connection" in DM
Ask yourself what are the major diff's in your setup and his...

One more thing .....are u sure you have the correct mobo chipset drivers
Does he have original system disks? the correct drivers should be on there..
or if it's a non-major manu....does he have mobo drivers on cd

Maybe an update of the BIOS is necessary?
It may be that the BIOS may be corrupted.....ugh!!

If any one of the above things helps....ignore the rest of the gibberish


TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[jward52]

Thanks for the reply, Ed. Yes, the board, an Atrend ATC-6120, has Intel chips on it. The Intel utility did load the correct drivers for the IDE controller. A Google search did not find drivers for that board, so I entered the bus master IDE controller info as stated in device manager and the search result yielded the intel utility. I'm not concrerned about the agp video driver at the moment, will take care of that later. I have an updated driver for that card but will see if I have to reload windows or wipe the drive and start over. So do you think it's a windows problem?

 

[jward52]

Hi TT -
Thanks for the reply. Yes, the drivers are correct, I'm sure. His pc is an older custom-build that he bought used several years ago, so no cd set with it. CMOS setup has been config'd properly and POST sees all the devices (two HDDs, 1 cd rom, one floppy, all are properly jumpered). Not sure about the APM-ACPI issue. Will have to check on that.

 

[edfair]

Don't know if the 98 issues are the same as the 95 issues, but with 95 the problem was a missing .inf file that was required to load the correct drivers. And the intel patch added that file to the system. Then the next reload could pull the right drivers off the 95 install set. They were there all the time, just no pointer to name them so they could be found.
My next step would probably be to remove everything IDE and let them reinstall. Then reboot, and if they have installed correctly, the CD will show up next. Or more correctly, in the end, the CD shows. Sometimes takes 4 or 5 reboots to sort it all out.
And make sure that the mangler doesn't have multiple listings. That will be a sure killer.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[TekTippy4U]

Hi jward52;
you said: I put the drive back in his PC and it did boot but wouldn't reload the correct IDE controllers for that board, which left me with no functioning cdrom.
does this mean
Pri Mast HDD
Pri Slav HDD
Sec Mast CD
Sec Slav free

do you have (3)items listed under HDD controllers in DM
1 Intel Busmaster, and 1 Primary and
1 Secondary

most newer HDD has it's own built in controller chip also.(pretty sure)

Ohhhh...... wait just a second there, just remember i don't profess to completely understand how all this works but.....

Do you have the ESDI_506.pdr file in your
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS folder?
and VMM32.vxd in
C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM
take look here

http://home.earthlink.net/~billselk/al440lx/bmide.html

and scroll down 3/4 page first to win98 area


TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[TekTippy4U]

You can go here

http://www.motherboards.org/manuals/p/A-Trend-ATC-6130/591.html

and download a .pdf manual for the
Atrend AT-6130....which is close, right?

Also from a google ..

http://oldlook.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Win98/Q_20709334.html

found this link with same prob and the guy fixed it by Disabling BIOS "Boot Sector Write Protection" and there were files= and buffer= entries in Config.sys.
Go down to post from ACz , Date: 08/19/2003 06:47PM PDT

You can easily use SFC to extract and overwrite system files if necessary...

In Start>Run> MSCONFIG >advanced tab
is "Use SCSI DoubleBuffering" checked off and greyed out?



TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[TekTippy4U]

And here's a google who's HDD was fried

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Win98/Q_20296071.html#1

.....and it's a good read w/good Tshooting steps...and also mentioned is it's most likely a Hardware issue, and either the HDD or the Controller that's bad.

Hope all this noise helps
I'll rest awhile now

TT4U

Notification:
These are just "my" thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[jward52]

Pri Mast HDD
Pri Slav HDD
Sec Mast CD
Sec Slav free

>>yes, exactly<<

do you have (3)items listed under HDD controllers in DM
1 Intel Busmaster, and 1 Primary and
1 Secondary

>>yes<<


Will print these tips and go frog with it some more. Thanks, Ed & TT!!!
Jim

 

[jward52]

I gave up and went the fdisk & reformat route. Was spending way too much time on this problem! Thanks, TT & Ed for your assisstance!
Jim

 

[TekTippy4U]

No prob...your welcome jward52
Hope she's a purrin' now!
post back if necessary or
with just an update

TT4U

Notification:
These are just &quot;my&quot; thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.

 

[jward52]

After scrubbing the hdd, I could not load win98...the IDE controller has gone kaputz, which explains the inability to accept the intel chipset drivers utility and possibly the screwy agp card resolution problem. My friend has decided to spring for an Athlon XP or P4. Know anybody that wants a p2-266? Time to ebay-it?

 

[TekTippy4U]

Well, that explains it then
not in need myself, thank you, though there's plenty who are......


TT4U

Notification:
These are just &quot;my&quot; thoughts....and should be carefully measured against other opinions....I try very hard to impart correct info at all times.