Re: Patrick Palm
Ok, here are some answerings to your questions about my original post:
The problem I experienced was related to the harddrive and IDE DMA Bus Mastering drivers.
To be very specific, the system locks up/crashes during harddrive intensive usage/activies.
Sometimes the system reboots. Sometimes it just freezes. Sometimes it freezes, with a green
line at the top of the screen.
I found what caused this problem, which many others experienced. It was due to the VIA 4in1
drivers that came on the CD that shipped with my MSI motherboard. Now you want to know the
version, unfortunately, I can't tell you for sure what it is. Why? Because theres so many
damn different versions out there, it's almost impossible to keep track. Although the version
number is 4.205, I'm not sure if it's 4.205(1) or 4.205(2) or 4.205(3) or 4.205(b) or whatever.
All I know is that it's buggy and it caused the crash problem for me.
How did I solve it? Through the help of others on this forum, I got a link to Soltek's website
and downloaded the VIA 4in1 ver 4.28(v) and the newest IDE driver from the same page. I
installed the VIA 4in1 ver 4.28(v), it installed everything except the IDE driver for some
reason. So then I installed the IDE driver by itself and things started to look better.
No more crashes, no more problems. That's when I started benchmarking, and realized that I
only got 66.9 burst read speed, whereas others with my same system setup get on average, 75-77
burst read speed. Now, I realize you can't get full 100mps, but note that my harddisk seems to
be running slower than others who have my same setup. I think the reason my system is slower
could be because of all the different versions of VIA 4in1 I installed, including 4.205(3),
4.27, 4.28(b), 4.28(v), etc. As a side note, my friend, who has the same harddrive as me,
but different motherboard, benched 80 burst read speed. Go figure.
Anyway, I don't think there is really any major problems with MSI motherboard. It's the drivers
that come with the motherboard that screw you. Had I installed the newest drivers off the net
in the first place, I'm sure I would have had no problems. My only other gripe is that my
harddisk seems to be running slower than others, the cause is still unknown.
P.S., theres a difference between Mini-port and VXD options on the IDE drivers. With Miniport,
there was a high CPU usage (22%), and burst read of 66.7 However, the drivers have a newer
datestamp, and they enabled Windows to recognize my IBM harddisk.
With VxD, the drivers seem older, but they use less CPU (7.7%) and burst read of 66.9 The
only thing is Windows doesn't recognize my IBM harddrive and only lists it as "Generic Harddisk".
Also, the IDE Tool that comes with the IDE drivers don't work for me, they don't detect *any*
of my drives
-Bane25