Promise Ultra100 Freezes Win2K

[NoDamage]

I'm having a little trouble getting my Ultra100 working properly. It seems that my computer freezes whenever I attempt to access a drive attached to the controller card. I have tried the following, none of which fixed the problem:

Upgrading to the latest drivers for the Ultra100
Flashing the bios on the Ultra100 to the latest version
Upgrading from SP2 to SP3
Trying the card in 4 different pci slots
Assigning the card various irqs in the bios
Flashing my motherboard bios
Installing Windows XP

I've also basically tried every possible configuration of devices: Maxtor drive on ide card, Western digital drive on ide card, DVD drive on ide card, CD burner on ide card. Regardless of the device, whenever I start reading data off of it my computer freezes.

At this point I started thinking it was just a bad card, but oddly enough I gave it to a friend to try and it worked perfectly for him. I can't think of anything else to try, does anyone have any possible suggestions?

Relevant system specs:

1.4 Ghz Thunderbird
Epox 8K7A
512 MB Crucial PC2100 DDR RAM
Asus V8200 Geforce 3 with 43.45 Detonators
Hercules Gametheater XP
Pioneer 106S DVD-Rom
Lite-On LTR-16101B
2 Maxtor 60 GB drives
1 Maxtor 80 GB drive
1 Western Digital 40 GB drive
2 Realtek NICs
Antec 300W Power supply

 

[DieHardware]

Assigning the card various irqs in the bios

Why would you do that? Let the BIOS/WinXP set them for all the peripheral devices.

Have you tried different MB chipset drivers? Have you tried flashing the IDE BIOS with a Promise BIOS?(if its a maxtor card). No luck when its the only card installed?(beside video).

 

[hrstruggle]

On a similar note, I have an ASUS A7V133 MB, 2 hard drives, a CD burner and I just got a Pioneer DVD-RW (A05 model).

I have:

Primary Master: WD20 GB
Primary Slave: none
Secondary Master: WD40GB
Secondary Slave: LG CD-RW

I have a dual boot with W2K and Win98SE.

When I previously did the install, I can't remember if I ever installed the Promise drivers during the install but all my devices are working off of the Primary and Secondary IDEs. I have nothing connected to the ATA100 ports because I could never get them to work.

I could slave the DVD burner (to Primary Slave) but my IDE cable isn't long enough.

I want to get these damn ATA100 controllers working but I'm getting the "Ultra100 BIOS is not installed because there are no drives attached" message at bootup but it seems to detect my Pioneer DVD burner also.

Is there any way to enable this burner on the ATA100s without reloading Win2K?

I hope so,

Howard

A7V133 MB
Athlon TBird 900Mhz
512MB PC133 SDRAM
WD20GB
WD40GB
LG CD-RW 8x4x12
Floppy
SB Live
Nvidia 32MB 400MX (I think)
NIC

 

[CraigRT]

Damn Promise cards... I never had any luck with those.... :|

 

[DieHardware]

Originally posted by: hrstruggle
On a similar note, I have an ASUS A7V133 MB, 2 hard drives, a CD burner and I just got a Pioneer DVD-RW (A05 model).

I have:

Primary Master: WD20 GB
Primary Slave: none
Secondary Master: WD40GB
Secondary Slave: LG CD-RW

I have a dual boot with W2K and Win98SE.

When I previously did the install, I can't remember if I ever installed the Promise drivers during the install but all my devices are working off of the Primary and Secondary IDEs. I have nothing connected to the ATA100 ports because I could never get them to work.

I could slave the DVD burner (to Primary Slave) but my IDE cable isn't long enough.

I want to get these damn ATA100 controllers working but I'm getting the "Ultra100 BIOS is not installed because there are no drives attached" message at bootup but it seems to detect my Pioneer DVD burner also.

Is there any way to enable this burner on the ATA100s without reloading Win2K?

I hope so,

Howard

A7V133 MB
Athlon TBird 900Mhz
512MB PC133 SDRAM
WD20GB
WD40GB
LG CD-RW 8x4x12
Floppy
SB Live
Nvidia 32MB 400MX (I think)
NIC

Is the the controller enabled in BIOS?(should be by default) I think you can only use HDDs on the onboard Promise controller.

 

[hrstruggle]

Yes, the controller is enabled in BIOS.

So, you're saying I should move both hard drives to the ATA100 controllers and move my CD and DVD burners to the Primary and Secondary ATAs?

 

[Ilmater]

I have used my Ultra 100 with windows for years. It works the same as any hard drive plugged into my motherboard, except that it's always asssigned a lower drive letter than anything plugged directly into my mobo.

 

[DieHardware]

Originally posted by: hrstruggle
Yes, the controller is enabled in BIOS.

So, you're saying I should move both hard drives to the ATA100 controllers and move my CD and DVD burners to the Primary and Secondary ATAs?

Yes.

 

[ElFenix]

my promise ata 100 card would make the computer freeze for a second every 30 minutes or so. windows keeps logging the ata 66 card has having outdated firmware. the ata 133 card times out every once in a while.

 

[DieHardware]

Originally posted by: ElFenix
my promise ata 100 card would make the computer freeze for a second every 30 minutes or so. windows keeps logging the ata 66 card has having outdated firmware. the ata 133 card times out every once in a while.

Have you tried a different BIOS version? Different drivers?

 

[J1600B]

My ATA card will still show what devices are attached even if the drivers haven't been installed (for the card). I have installed the wrong ones and it does the same thing. I vote for drivers wrong/missing.

I believe "Ultra100 BIOS is not installed because there are no drives attached" will show when drivers are not installed also.

 

[steell]

On my Promise ATA-100 card, I had to config the drives as "Master, single" instead of "Master with slave present" to get them detected.

 

[hrstruggle]

Hmm, so I moved my HDDs over to my ATA100 ports and then I got a STOP error on booting W2K. It said:

*** STOP 0x0000007B
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
(..and then gave some instructions on how to fix it, supposedly)

So, then, I got all my devices back to their original location so I could post this and then my Win2K started and rebooted itself after loading my printing device (Epson 785epx-USB). And it wouldn't let me in at all - every time in rebooted it rebooted at the same spot making a loop.

Luckily my Win98Se seems to work and that's what I'm in now.

HELP!!

 

[DieHardware]

Did you enable the controller in BIOS then boot into w2k and install the drivers before you switched the HDDs over the the controller?

 

[hrstruggle]

I think my computer was looping because I had a new device attached to it's IDE port (why that should matter, I have no idea). So when I re-attached my LG CD-RW, the looping stopped and I was able to get into W2K.

At this point, I was able to load the drivers for the mass storage controller (yay!) and I thought I finally had it licked.

I shut the thing down, switch my HDDs over to the ATA100 ports, rebooted, changed the boot order and rebooted again. It seemed to start fine but once all my backround apps loaded, I get an error message similar in look to the blue-screen STOP ERROR message I got before . . .and I don't have the error written down with me at the moment but it mentioned something about "Beginning .... memory dump" and also the file ntoskrnl.exe was mentioned. (I'll edit this post later and add the exact STOP ERROR number).

THEN, I rebooted to see if that was a fluke and it comes up again with the old STOP ERROR message about INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE.

I just can't help feeling that some of this is out of my control.

I suppose I could hook everything back up the way it was on my IDE ports, back-up everything and re-load my OSs. It would probably be less work/frustration than what I'm going through now. ugh.

 

[DieHardware]

Did you correctly setup the HDDs in the controller's BIOS?

 

[hrstruggle]

Maybe not. How do you access the controllers BIOS?

 

[DieHardware]

Ctrl-F to enter Promise BIOS. Also check that the ATA100/RAID jumpers are set correctly on the motherboard. Intructions are described in the manual.

 

[hrstruggle]

Oh, OK. Where do I hit Ctrl-F? During POST or once W2K has started?

Thanks for much for you ongoing advice.

 

[hrstruggle]

My jumpers for the ATA100 are fine. Still not sure where the right place is to enter the Promise BIOS.

My Win2K seems to work tonight on my old setting (HDDs in IDE slots), so I'm backing stuff up to prepare for wiping everything just in case this doesn't work out.

 

[DieHardware]

If the controller is enabled in the MB's BIOS you should see it after the MB's POST screen, but before the Windows splash screen. Its all described in your manual, I suggest you read it. Goodluck.

 

[hrstruggle]

Hmm, so I don't hit Ctrl-F somewhere?

Yes, I've seen the Controller BIOS after the POST all along. But, I still get the blue screen and STOP ERROR message. And, I've read the manual quite carefully, so that's not helping.

Tonight, I was able to get W2K working and I'm still backing stuff up. I'm just gonna reload everything. I've heard doing this every 6 months is good for the system anyway, to flush out all the crap that builds up on the computer.

Thanks anyways.

 

[DieHardware]

Originally posted by: hrstruggle
Hmm, so I don't hit Ctrl-F somewhere?

Yes, I've seen the Controller BIOS after the POST all along. But, I still get the blue screen and STOP ERROR message. And, I've read the manual quite carefully, so that's not helping.

Tonight, I was able to get W2K working and I'm still backing stuff up. I'm just gonna reload everything. I've heard doing this every 6 months is good for the system anyway, to flush out all the crap that builds up on the computer.

Thanks anyways.

Hit Ctrl-F when you see the controller's BIOS screen then setup your drives.

 

[hrstruggle]

The Ctrl-F didn't do anything while the ATA100 BIOS was loading.

I'm beginning to think the ATA100 isn't the problem. I was able to load it about 4 days ago when I discovered a configuration that made my Win2K work. Now, I see it in my Device Manager under SCSI Devices.

In each configuration, the computer doesn't work when my Pioneer DVD burner is hooked up. Even though I can see the DVD burner in the POST.

Safe mode doesn't even work.

I also discovered that I had only 2 80-pin IDE cables in my case. I'm not sure I need an 80-pin cable if the DVD burner is plugged into my IDE port but I'm pretty sure I need one if it goes into the ATA100. In an ideal world, I'd like to have each device on it's own 80-pin cable, especially for debugging purposes.

The other thing I've verified with some local help is that the ATA100 ports should run any ATAPI compatible device, not just HDDs. Nonetheless, I still would prefer my HDDs running off of them to boost their performance.

So, I'm beginning to think that a piece of hardware in my system is faulty, possibly the DVD burner but I may have to test each piece separately in safe mode.

Now, if I could just get the time to do this . . .

I'll try to post the resolution of this problem for others to see.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: hrstruggle
Yes, the controller is enabled in BIOS.

So, you're saying I should move both hard drives to the ATA100 controllers and move my CD and DVD burners to the Primary and Secondary ATAs?

I would do that. That's basically what I'm doing. HDDs on the Promise, everything else on the MB IDE's.