IWill KK266 - Prepartion?

[gizbug]

My MB should be here tomorrow, and my new CPU is in my hand.
What bios do you all recommend for the IWILL KK266? The newest?

Hope all goes well on the install =) Been a year since putting new mb in =)

 

[gizbug]

Also.

Will I need to download UDMA 66/100 drivers for the motherboard for use with windows 2000? Or will this disk be provided with the motherboard? Reason I ask: My be6 now, I had to get highpoint drivers off high points webpage to use windows 2000.

 

[WetSprocket]

As for the BIOS, I run 307 it has been the best for me with Win98SE. The latest one 515 should be the best for Win2k from what I've read.
As for the HD drivers, it should be installed with the VIA 4 in 1's. Unless it is different for Win2k.
Hope you enjoy the Iwill it is a very good board...

 

[gizbug]

VIA 4 in 1. Is that something I need to download, or provided on a disk?

 

[Basie]

You can download them from the Via site. But I would check around in this forum at see what the best configuration of the drivers would be.

 

[mlchang]

For some real quality preparation reading check out this site here...
fullon3d KK266 FAQ

Installation instructions (like what order to install drivers, etc...)
BIOS notes (revisions, performance...)

Really useful site. Answered a lot of my questions.

Also amdmb.com has a great Iwill forum. Check them out too.

Congrats on the new board. Oh and one more thing...the DIMM slots on the KK266 can be a little tight...so even though the RAM looks properly seated, it may not be. What I found to be useful is that when inserting the RAM, DO NOT use the plastic tabs to leverage the DIMM in. Rather, push down on the center of the DIMM only to seat the RAM into the slot and close the clips using only the RAM and not the clips. A couple of other people have run into this too, and this solution worked for all of us. Good luck.

 

[gizbug]

Thanks!

 

[gizbug]

People been having luck with the 4.32 Beta drivers?
Or stick with the 4.31 final/

 

[bonkers325]

4.31 works fine here

will be getting kk266 friday

 

[compuwiz1]

I'm still running an old bios. I am getting ready to update it and see if it helps anything.

gizbug, get the machine all set up before you overclock it. All components and drivers first. It just makes it easier.

 

[shawnman]

I will be getting my new T-bird 1.33 / KK266 combo thurs. Finally jumped ship from Intel. I have a feeling that I am going to be very happy with this combo, can't wait to get it!

 

[BaldingLoser]

I just did a W2K install on a Iwill KK266R this weekend (raid turned off via jumper so it is the same as KK266). I actually did many many installs as I played around with several versions of drivers and here is what worked the absolute best for me:

Used the bios that comes with the board (march 5).
Partition and Format Hard in FAT32 and install W2K.
Install the via 4 in 1 drivers version 30.
Get them here (zip file, so I used WinZip): 4 in 1 v 30
Install the Iwill recommended via 4 in 1 drivers version 23 from Iwill website. Get them here: 4 in 1 v 23
Install audio drivers from cd that accompanies board.
Drivers for whatever else you got.....

The reason for the two layers of VIA drivers is that the IDE driver for version 30 works great with W2K, but the other three drivers in version 30 don't work as well with the iwill board as the version 23 drivers. I think this is why on iwill's support sight they say "please use version 23 drivers". The 4 in 1 version 23 from the iwill website is really 3 in 1 since it doesn't have the IDE driver (hence your version 30 IDE driver will stay on there when you install the version 23 from iwill). If you install the IDE driver that comes with the power installer cd then it will do crazy stuff like say your IDE drives are SCSI drives. I really got great benchmarks on the system, memory, and hard drives with the above installation method. The only thing I used from the cd was the audio drivers.

 

[mlchang]

I would like to add a few comments to BaldingLoser's notes...

Sound advice.

I am using the 0426 BIOS. It works well. It is very stable and I haven't run in to any strange problems with it. FSB is currently at 157, CAS 3, Fastest memory setting, 4 Bank Interleave .

Anyway, if you are going to use Win2K, I suggest going with the NTFS file system. The reasons are numerous, and noted in other threads so I won't reproduce them here. Just search for NTFS and FAT32.

Finally, I'm using the VIA 4.31 drivers and they seem to work well.

With WIN2K my system has been running non-stop with daily use for gaming, surfing, writing, whatever for about 2 weeks continuously now. No reboots, no lockups. Only when I first got the board and was messing with it did I have any problems. Truly a great motherboard.

 

[Insane3D]

gizbug:

You have got yourself a great board there. If you need any help with your setup when you get it, feel free to PM me and I will help you out with any questions you have...

 

[Thegman240]

I need Help!

Ok this is what happens. I have everything hooked up properly with a cdrom drive on the regular primary ide controller and a cdrw drive on the reglar secondary ide controller. I'm able to access the raid setup by hitting Control M when booting up and I configure the array to stripe the one hard drive that I have hooked on the primary raid channel. It recognizes the hard drive just fine.

When I go to setup windows 2000 by leaving the cdrom in the drive, It boots up from the cdrom and begins setup. Then it asks me to hit F6 if I want to install any other drivers whick I do. I then hit "S" and insert the drivers disk into the floppy drive and then it comes up with 4 possibilities so I choose the one that says win2000 hpperdisk 100 raid driver and it continues to install its other drivers. When I get to the end where it asks me what i want to do, I choose "install" and then I get this bull message that says that no mass storage devices are present and setup cannot continue. WTF? The system then rebootrs and i'm back to the beginning.........OH GOD why did I buy this MB. Please HELP Guys !!! PLEASE

Greg

 

[BaldingLoser]

If you only have one hard drive then why are trying to stripe it on one of the raid ports? Don't you have to have two drives to stripe, one on each of the yellow raid ports? If all you got is one hard drive then turn off that raid via jumper and just put the drive on a regular blue ide port. Put those cdroms together as a master and slave on the secondary ide channel. Thats what my setup is, no problems so far...as stable as can be....