Onboard Promise controller

[Jetboy55]

I just got my new system running. ITs Asus A7V133 with Thunderbird 1.2ghz 266fsb cpu. The mobo has its regular uata100 ide connectors, but also has a Promise ATA100 raid capable controller onboard with two more ide connectors. Im not using them at the moment. I went to install my USR Winmodem and the installation assistant told me I didnt have any free IRQ's and I needed to free some up. Now I had already installed the Promise ATA100 drivers from the utility disk that came with the Asus mobo, so I uninstalled them, uninstalled the Promise ATA100 controller from device manager, rebooted, went into the bios, and disabled loading of the Promise's controllers onboard bios (it was taking forever for the machine to boot up) and restarted. However, windows keeps seeing the "pci mass storage device" and trying to load drivers for it. I cancel at that point. Is there any way to disable the onboard Promise controller for now? It is taking up IRQ that I need. Or is there no such process? Thanks
PS: I disabled the second serial (com2) port on my motherboard in bios, and freed up an IRQ (i think) that way, does that sound reasonable? Thanks.

 

[TripleJ]

Dunno. Does 'Disable in this hardware profile' in the device manager work? I'm not sure, I'm just bumbing it so somebody else might see.

 

[jcwagers]

Hmm......I would go along with the other reply to begin with. Check and see if the Promise controller is shown to be disabled in the device manager. If not, disable it. If it IS....you might want to reenable it temporarily and go to Asus's site and get the newest Promise controller driver. Then, after you install that, the "pci mass storage" message should go away. Then, you can go into safe mode or regular device manager and disable it again. I have mine disabled...as my sblive emulation wouldn't work properly. The difference in the Promise controller and the VIA controller wasn't that significant. The promise was like 17506 in Sandra....and the VIA was 17311....so....I won't complain. But....I disabled my Promise controller as well so I understand what you're going through. Good luck!
BTW....here's the link to the promise controller on Asus's site!
http://www.asus.com/products/Motherboard/driver_ide.html#ata100

jcwagers

 

[knutp]

Why not disable lpt ports, com ports, ps2 (if you are using usb keybord), And if you are using sb live, disable the sb16 emulation. That would be a better way of getting more irq's available. And did you try to move the modem to another pci slot?

 

[10101a]

I'm working from memory here (and sometimes that ain't so good...)

I think whatever is in PCI Slot2 has to be able to share resources with the onboard Promise controller. If you are using slot 2 for the modem, try another slot.

You are smart to install the modem last. Modem setup is F#*#$)&$ing whack (usually)! Plug and play my ass!

HTH,

-Dennis

 

[Jetboy55]

I did disable one of he serial ports in bios. I have to use the other one for my cheap digital camara interface. Im not using a SB Live card, its a MaxiSound Muse, had to cut costs somewhere ya know. But in device manager there is a listing for Maxi Sound Muse legacy device thats using IRQ 5. Is that for dos emulation or something, is that what I should get rid of? Should I remove it or disable it? If I remove it, will it come back when I reboot. I dont really understand sound cards and legacy stuff. I remember reading about going into the bios to reserve irq5 for legacy device or something somewhere, but I cant remember what that was suppose to fix, I think it might have been irq conflicts with GF2 video cards, but I cant remember. Thanks.

 

[knutp]

Well if you aren't playing any dos based games you could disable that legacy device. And are you using the lpt port? if it is a printer, and it supports usb, move it to usb. And try to put the modem in another pci slot.