Corrupted Win2K on ABIT KT7-RAID. Any ideas?

[spurdy]

This is a strange problem. I'll start with the specs:

ABIT KT7-RAID
BIOS: UL (with HPT370 v1.0.3 embedded)
Duron 650 @ 1.65v
128MB Infineon PC133
2x Western Digital WD205BA (20.5GB, ATA66, 7200rpm)
Creative 4x2x24 CDRW
EPO 10x DVD
WinFast GeForce2 MX
SB Live! Value
Samsung SC1200-TX 10/100 NIC

(All BIOS adjustments to most conservative settings.)

I start with a clean system, setting up RAID 0 (16K block size) with the two Western Digital drives. I go through the disk setup for Win2k, being sure to press F6 to install the HighPoint drivers (making sure they're v1.0.3 to match the BIOS) and set up one 6GB partition (boot) and one 34GB (storage), both NTFS. The install completes normally and I set up my DSL and grab SP1 and the VIA 4-in-1. Everything seems peachy as I set up all other drivers, rebooting often in between.

The problem comes when I actually power off the machine. Invariably, when I try to start it the next time some system files come up corrupted, usually resulting in a blue screen STOP error during Win2k boot. Everything is great until then. I can warm boot (via Start Menu) as much as I want, but as soon as I shut down completely, the install's toast.

My guess is that it has something to do with the cache not flushing completely/correctly from the HPT370 or the hard drives themselves. The shutdown procedure seems awful quick, and I'm wondering if perhaps windows thinks all disk activity is done before it actually is, pulling power from the drives in mid-write.

I've heard of problems with Win2K and ACPI on the KT7 and have used modbin6.exe to allow control of ACPI in my BIOS (this was done AFTER experiencing the above problem many times), but I have yet to disable it. Could this be ACPI related? What would I lose by not using ACPI? If I do disable it, should I enable APM instead, or leave them both off? I was of the understanding that they are redundant (ACPI being a more advanced version of APM?).

On last, possibly unrelated question. Should "Plug and Play OS" in the BIOS be enabled or disabled on a Win2K system? I know that for NT it should be off, but I'm unclear about its applicability to 2K.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer!

 

[spurdy]

I tried disabling ACPI in the KT7-RAID's BIOS (thanks to modbin6.exe) and reinstalled Windows 2K. I pressed F7 for good measure at the beginning when it says "Press F6 if you need to install third party SCSI or mass storage devices" (and F6 too, since I needed to install the HPT370 driver) which I heard is supposed to suppress ACPI installation even if it is enabled.

The result?

My computer has healed! No longer allergic to Windows 2000, I can shut down and restart without file corruption! I decided to enable APM since I didn't like to have to shut down manually, but it seems to behave itself (unlike ACPI) and not jump the gun turning off the drives before they've finished writing. I don't get all the fancy-shmancy power features, but that doesn't really matter to me anyway. APM is good enough.

So, after several weeks of headaches and wondering if I had bad hardware, I've learned:

KT7-RAID + Win2K + ACPI = BAD!

KT7-RAID + Win2K + APM = GOOD!

PS- I'd love to point people to modbin6.exe (Award v6.00 BIOS .BIN file editor), but I can't for the life of me find where I stumbled across it. If anyone wants it, feel free to email me and I'll send it in an attachment. Wonderful little utility. I found some other disabled options besides control of ACPI in my BIOS that I could enable too (Gate A20 speed, RX/TX polarity for the IR ports, display of the SDRAM operating voltage in the BIOS hardware monitor, etc).

 

[KGB]

Spurdy makes some good points but.........

before you do anything, UNINSTALL SP1 !!!!

Try it and get back to us.

 

[Steelo]

Spurdy, i have exactly the same problem as you have experienced. I understand that ACPI and the write cache are to blame for the corrutption. My question is this. I have disabled acpi and installed win2k and everything is fine. But, now when i shut down, i have to manually power off the system. How / where do i enable APM?.. Another note, i also used modbin6 to edit the bios files, but when i went to save the changes, i get the error message 2Mbios Can't write... or something.. ring any bells?.. Anyway, i've been pushing this issue at apu's hardware forums.. if you want more info, check out...


http://www.apushardware.com

Check out the forums and in the technical support forum ( not kt7 specific - i cant post the link at the moment, as their site seems down at the moment... i'll try again later..

Cheers

Steelo

 

[spurdy]

The APM control (assuming that you've left it on in the BIOS) is located at
Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Power Options

Go to the APM tab of the Power Options Control Panel and check the "Enable Advanced Power Management support" checkbox and hit OK.

It took a while after hitting OK for APM to be enabled, so don't be alarmed if it looks like the system hangs for a few seconds. Just be patient.

As to the modbin6 issue, I had the same problem. I just couldn't get it to work under Win2K. I ended up booting from a Win98 startup floppy and then running modbin6 from a temp directory on the hard drive (I actually did it on another machine, since the Win98 system wouldn't be able to read my NTFS partitions). That seemed to work fine though.

Good luck!

 

[spurdy]

As per my second post, everything seems fine now that ACPI is gone. I had done some experimenting previous to implementing the ACPI fix and found that the same error occured whether or not I had installed anything at all besides clean Win2K. I don't think SP1's to blame. I'm fairly convinced it was a cache flushing issue.

 

[Steelo]

hey all,

good to hear you got your system up and running stable now spurdy. Just a quick question for you, are you having to manually power the system down now, or does apm shut down for you? I too have disabled the acpi in the bios and done a fresh install of win2k - system seems more stable, but i just dont get the apm option in the power applet to enable advanced power management.Have i missed something?. Do you know why?.. If you have managed to get apm to work properly,, i would be most grateful if you could tell me how you configured that, as i cant seem to get it to work. What settings did you configure in the bios / os?

By the way here's the link to another forum that talks about this very issue if your interested...

http://www.apushardware.com/vb/showthread.php?threadid=263

Any help would be much appreciatted.

Cheers

Steelo

 

[spurdy]

No, I don't have to do manual shutoff. Windows shuts the machine down quite nicely now.

Hmmm... I don't know what else to say about the APM issue other than I had it enabled in the BIOS during the Win2K install. I had just assumed that the APM tab would be there for you too. I can't think of anything I did that was particularly special (aside from adding in the HPT370 drivers, which wouldn't have anything to do with it I don't think). I'm stumped as to why you're missing it.

Anyone else?

 

[Steelo]

hi all,

i have finally sussed out what i was doing wrong. I was installing win2k advanced server... The silly thing is that i knew that apm is not installed on any version of win2k server!!! So as you can see, it was a case of not seeing the wood for the trees!.. Much apologies for wasting anyones time out there.. I switched to win2k pro and installed just fine, with acpi disabled at the os level ( remains enabled at the bios ) and apm enabled at the os. Brilliant - no corruption and no problems...

Thanks all

Steelo

 

[spurdy]

Steelo,

Is there anything different when having ACPI enabled in the BIOS, but not in the OS as opposed to having it disabled for both? I'm just curious. I would have thought it would give the same end result.