Highpoint controller on Abit KT7-RAID

[GT1999]

I am running the Abit KT7-RAID in my system, and am having a bit of trouble getting the Highpoint controller to work. I'm using an IBM 75GXP 45GB drive and want to run it off of the Highpoint ATA-100 controller, so I installed Windows with my HDD off of the ATA-66 controller on the board, and it worked fine. I then installed the drivers onto Windows 2000 for the Highpoint controller, turned off the system, and hooked the HDD into the Highpoint. But, it would not let me boot into Windows, period. I tried the other IDE channel on the Highpointwith no luck. Plugged it back into one of the other ATA-66 channels, and it works.

Hrm..

So, I check to see if the driver is still installed for the Highpoint within Windows. Yep, it's there, showing up. I then go into the BIOS configuration utility for the Highpoint, and my hard drive is showing up fine in there - but I still can't boot off of the Highpoint, either channel.

I'm guessing it's a bad controller for the Highpoint on my motherboard. If anybody has any tips or recommendations please let me know.

---

As you requested, I "killed" this thread.

AnandTech Moderator

 

[mHubs]

I think that you might have to set the boot order to SCSI or something like that, cuz it probably treats the highpoint stuff as a SCSI card or ATA100 card or something like that..
I dont have a KT7 (yet! about to order it now) so I dont know what has to be done..

 

[Dameon]

RTFM

In the BIOS, if you read the manual.... it says to be able to boot from it you have to change the boot device to ATA100RAID for all devices (first thru third). To be exact, CHAPTER 4, Section 2

See if it boots then, have the same HD and it works fine and dandy for me.

 

[GT1999]

Well, in the BIOS the Highpoint controller is enabled, and I have the order of devices as:

Floppy, ATA-100, and then CD-ROM. I've also tried other combinations, doesn't seem to work, such as all ATA-100. Damn, and I threw the Alpha and everything on here for nothing then, RMA here I come. I'm giving it another day to see if I can't find a solution. Here's the error it spits at me:

Windows 2000 could not start because of a computer disk hardware configuration problem. Could not read from the selected boot disk. Check boot path and disk hardware. Please check the Windows 2000 documentation about hardware disk configuration and your hardware reference manual for additional information.


Then I plug the hard drive back into the ATA-66 controller and it works fine. Windows 2000 has the driver installed, etc. The motherboard works great otherwise..

 

[mHubs]

See see see!! I was right and I have had no experience with the mobo!
Booya!:Q

Dameon - Thanks for clarifying and proving my *slightly* educated guess right

 

[GT1999]

<< RTFM

In the BIOS, if you read the manual.... it says to be able to boot from it you have to change the boot device to ATA100RAID for all devices (first thru third). To be exact, CHAPTER 4, Section 2

See if it boots then, have the same HD and it works fine and dandy for me. >>




I've read the entire motherboard manual cover to cover, and then touched back to the RAID section countless times. I believe I am capable of reading the motherboard manual - otherwise I would not be waisting people's times by posting here. If you don't have anything else to add - thanks for your cooperation, but for your information, I just checked my BIOS and ALL THREE IDE bootup devices are set to &quot;ATA100RAID&quot;, with boot other device Enabled, and I've also of course tried Disabled. So no, that is not the problem. As for the Highpoint device driver, I'm staring at it in the Device Manager right now. No IRQ conflicts, and it's working just dandy. Too bad it doesn't work. Thanks for the try..

 

[oreoafk]

hey wierd i have the same setup no problems but im running win98 at the moment

 

[Dameon]

Two other things to try:

- Latest BIOS - available here

Main reason: *Adds RAID BIOS version v1.03b1(KT7-RAID only)

What drivers are you using? Try These

 

[GT1999]

Thanks, trying those now; I will report back shortly.

 

[trmiv]

Sorry to somewhat change the subject, but let me ask a question to those with this motherboard. Is it worth it to run a single hard drive no raid on the Highpoint controller just to get ATA-100? I have an IBM 75GXP ATA-100 hard drive as well, but I currently just have it hooked up to the ATA-66 controller. Should I go ahead and switch it to the highpoint to get ATA-100, or is it not that much of a benefit?

BTW, I dual boot Windows 98 and 2000

 

[Insane3D]

You might want to give this a try if nothing else works. I installed Win2K with the drive connected to the Highpoint controller. Make sure you have he latest Highpoint Win2K drivers on a floppy, and run Win2K setup. It will ask you to hit F6 when it first starts the setup program if you want to install 3rd party RAID drivers. Hit F6 and further into setup it will ask you for the driver disk. Pop in the floppy, choose the Win2K driver from the list on the screen and continue with setup. This has worked fine for me several times with my KA7-100, and it has the same controller that the KT7 does. It is a pain to reinstall windows, but it's worth a try. The latest drivers are here...

Highpoint Drivers

Pick the ones with the *, they are the most recent.

 

[Dameon]

trmiv, that's really personal preference - haven't noticed much performance improvement personally. With one drive it's easier to stick with ATA66 in my book, as no weird drive issues trying to get bootable or running diags if having HD problems.

 

[GT1999]

Well, I would've &quot;reported back shortly&quot;, but the BIOS update kind of fried the board/BIOS chip. Booted her up after the BIOS update (followed readme file) and it did a long hanging beep (I tried resetting CMOS after that, still a no go). I called up for an RMA today from the place I ordered it from. Hopefully the next board will have a working Highpoint controller. It will work with just ONE IBM 75GXP 45GB, correct? I can't see why it shouldn't. It was even set as boot device within the Highpoint BIOS Configuration Utility. That was an excellent board (benchmarks, stability, etc) except for the HPT controller being disfunctional. It's weird that the drivers were in the device manager fine, but the controller still wouldn't work. Ah well. Just goes to prove my recent quote from experience: &quot;Boards go bad&quot;.

Thanks for the help everybody.

 

[Fumiup]

Doh

 

[Pederv]

I was going to suggest checking to see if you made the drive bootable in the highpoint bios, but I see you already had that set. The controller will work with just one drive. I did it with my WD 18GB for a couple weeks before I set up the RAID using 2 IBM 20GB's. I didn't see an improvement taking the 18GB from the ATA66 to the highpoint, but then the 18GB was a slow drive.

 

[John]

Tomz, it sounds like you need to go back to the MSI K7T Pro2a

 

[DesignDawg]

I can't help but think there was nothing wrong with your HPT to begin with. What you should have done was put your HDD on the highpoint, put your Win2K CD in, set your BIOS to boot from CDROM, then hit F6 when the install is starting, install the highpoint from THERE, then do a Windows REPAIR. That way, it would have checked your startup environment, seen that it should be booting on the Highpoint, used the drivers, and configured everything properly for your next bootup. I don't think that doing it the way you did it originally is enough to make it boot from the highpoint. It doesn't have enough info. (Basically because it still thinks it should be booting from one of your other ports. But now you've fried your BIOS, and it doesn't matter. If I were you, I would make a BIOS recovery disk on a friend's computer and see if you can't bring it back to life. At any rate, when you get the new mobo (if you go that route), install Win2K with the HDD on the Highpoint. And yes, it will work, and without any problem, because that's exactly what i have at home. A single IBM 75GXP 30 GB on the Highpoint controller on a KT7 RAID.

Ricky
DesignDawg

 

[Fumiup]

I agree with DesignDawg. It sounds like your MBR needs to be corrected to the Highpoint controller.

Can't you load up a boot disk and use Fdisk /MBR ? That might do it.

 

[GT1999]

<< What you should have done was put your HDD on the highpoint, put your Win2K CD in, set your BIOS to boot from CDROM, then hit F6 when the install is starting, install the highpoint from THERE, then do a Windows REPAIR >>



Been there, done that. My Windows 2000 CD-ROM is NON-BOOTABLE, it needs the boot up disks, so I used those. After reading the motherboard manual, it says to use the bootup disks and hit F6, like you mentioned. I did that, but it could NOT detect the Highpoint controller. I tried selecting &quot;Other&quot; and it prompted saying the diskette (HPT driver diskette) could not be used for any hardware I had, or something close to that. I tried it at least half a dozen times, waiting through the slow floppy boot up. Also, as I read in the motherboard manual, the way I described IS supposed to work. It specifically says in Chapter 5 under Windows 2000 installation of HPT controller in Note &quot;5-4-1&quot; that it will work to install the drive from Win2000. I'd like to try and do an fdisk /mbr like in '98, but I have no idea how to do this with Windows 2000 boot disks (set of 4).


John,

I've already gone through 2 MSI K7T Pro2-A's. This is like a hardware NIGHTMARE. Every KT133 based board I try just seems to give me nothing but problems. And this doesn't mean all KT133 systems I've set up have been problematic - I set up a friend's system, as an example, off of the K7T Pro2-A and it works just fine, running with a 1GHz Thunderbird. I get my mobo the next day, plop it in, works great! Too bad the floppy controller was bad on that board. Second Pro2-A: I installed all of the VIA 4in1 patches etc, and Soltek UDMA/100 drivers to get UDMA working just like my friend's. Then I try Counterstrike and Quake3, which are my fav games, and in the middle of the game the sound will just sit there and repeat, 90% of the time it will lockup with that sound repeating and/or have a high pitched beep coming through the speakers. Sometimes it would work great for up to an hour or so, but it usually would have the sound loop problem in about 15-30 min into the game. Tried the MSI AGP patch for Win2000, beta 4in1s, switching PCI slots fot the SB Live!, etc. I went to the motherboard forum and it seems like there were a few other guys with the same problem. That's when I gave up on the MSI Pro2-A, and then I returned (paid restocking, shipping, all over again) and bought the Abit KT7-RAID. Here I am with a Highpoint controller that isn't working, but is being detected in the device manager.


I'm giving it one more shot with a replacement KT7-RAID, and I will again try to install the drivers upon bootup via F6, and hopefully it will detect it this time. Of course if that doesn't work, I will try secondary way through Windows 2000 as stated in the motherboard manual. I've set up what I consider to be quite a few systems (15 or so in the past 2 years), and I find it so ironic that most of the problems happen with hardware that I buy for MYSELF. The CPU works great - if it just so happens that I have problems with the next board I am considering myself cursed with these damn KT133 motherboards, selling my 1.1GHz Thunderbird + Alpha PAL6035 in FS/FT and getting an Intel setup, as much as I don't want to.

I hope this thread dies, I'm sick of sticking up for my intelligence..