ECS K7S5A: CD-rom slow downs (after installing the AGP drivers)??

[edm]

Ever since I put my new system together (ECS K7S5A) I've been having major slow down issues with both my CD-Rom drives (DVD & CD-RW) with any software I try to install.

So after a slew of formats and clean installs of win98SE to narrow down the cause, I'm now 99.9% sure the issue pops up after installing the ECS AGP drivers (tried both the 1.07 & the new 1.08b). Because when I install software (before installing the AGP drivers) *DMA enabled* both drives work just fine, no slow downs or squeaking from the drives what so ever.

But after installing the AGP drivers, *DMA enabled* and trying to install the very same software, it becomes unbearably slow. Taking approx. 1-2 minutes for the install progress bar to move just 1%, and the drives make a noticeable squeaking noise.

A couple notes:

---- Disabling DMA helps significantly, but it's still not as fast as before the AGP drivers with DMA on.

---- I've tried both running, and not running the DMA98.exe file included with the drivers, but it doesn't help either way.

---- The hard drive doesn't seem to be affected, just the CD-ROM drives.

As you can probably tell by now I'm pretty much a newbie when it comes to this stuff and I'm not sure where to go from here... so a couple questions.

1. Would just not installing the AGP drivers make sense, do they make a big difference with gaming?

2. Is a better option to just leave the DMA for my DVD drive disabled?

3. Has anyone with this set-up come across similar problems, has anyone heard of this issue with this board?

Thanks in advance for any help.

Specs:

ECS K7S5A
Athlon thunderbird 1400
Geforce 2 GTS 32MB - 21.83
Win 98SE
256 PC2100 Crucial DDR
Toshiba SD-M1212 (DVD-ROM)
Sony CRX120E

 

[jfunk]

Hmm, I can't think of any reason why your AGP driver should affect this.

Have you installed the latest version of the rest of the chipset drivers?


Bump.



j

 

[edm]

From what I can tell the only other thing I need to install is the LAN drivers which I did. I'm not using the on-board audio and didn't see anything else. I'm also using the latest bios version.

And the only reason I can think of that the AGP drivers could be causing this, is I think they also install the IDE drivers. Does anyone know for sure if it does?

Anyway, I'm about to run a fresh install now, I'm not going to install the AGP drivers this time around and we'll see what happens.

- Ed

 

[Toonces311]

I am pretty sure that the IDE drivers get installed with the AGP install. You may want to manually install the AGP driver or manually uninstall the SIS ide drivers. Also, SIS has recently released so new AGP and IDE drivers 109m you can get them below
http://203.66.2.110/ftp/agp109m.exe

 

[edm]

Ok, after this last install there's no doubt it's the AGP driver installation causing the problems. I installed everything just like before (except the Sis AGP drivers) and the CD drives are working fine now.

Still not sure if it's the AGP driver itself, or the IDE drivers that gets installed along with it. Obviously the chances are it's the IDE drivers.

So how would I go about manually installing the AGP driver? I looked under device manager and didn't see AGP listed anywhere under "system devices".

Or If I run the setup.exe like normal, how would I manually uninstall the SIS ide drivers after?

Thanks again

 

[HappyPuppy]

After installing the AGP drivers, you need to run DMA98.exe. It's a utility that turns on DMA on the K7S5A, or at least that's how I understand it.

 

[edm]

thanks, but I've tried both running, and not running the DMA98.exe file included with the drivers, but it doesn't help either way.

 

[Toonces311]

I know this probably won't help but in WindowsXP, you can remove the SIS IDE drivers from under add remove programs in the control panel. I just installed the new 109m AGP driver and it installed the IDE drivers too. I then uninstalled them from the add remove program icon in control panel. Can you do this in Win98?

 

[edm]

Well.... It's still a little too early to say for sure or not, but I installed those new 1.09m AGP drivers tonight, and so far so good! didn't even have to mess around with uninstalling the ide drivers or anything.

I'll give it a few days then post back if they continue working or not.

Many thanks for the link Toonces, thanks for the help everyone!

- Ed