I think my nightmare is almost over, but not quite. LONG--Sorry

[FOH]

I have a friend who bought a used IBM Aptiva that was full of junk, so I told him I would erase, format and reload windows for him -- that is where my nightmare began. With the help of many of you (THANKS!!! 🙂 ) I have been able to get the OS loaded (Win98) and, with the help of a patch from WesternDigital, the computer now recognizes all of the hard drive. Now the last of problems (I hope) I need help with:

When the Win98 install completed, the hard drive controller in the device manager would not work right, both of the channels were displayed with the exclamation marks and as a result the CD-ROM drive does not work. It will sometimes hang on start-up and a blue-screen message will say:

<< Your multi-function device (Opti 826612A or Viper-M/N+ Dual PCI IDE Controller) has some child devices using 32-bit drivers and others using compatibility-mode drivers. This configuration is not supported, so your computer has been halted to prevent corruption. >>

Then it would place a NoIde entry in the registry. I can go into the registry and delete the NoIDE, but when I restart, I get the blue screen again and it automatically puts it back in the registry.

The chipset that the computer uses is Viper-M from Opti. Windows98 claims support for 2 or 3 Opti chipsets. Searching internet I went to Opti's web site and they say:

<< OPTi does not provide drivers for its IDE controllers, since they use the standard drivers found in Windows that are loaded automatically during Windows installation. >>

So here I am -- OPTi does not provide drivers and the ones in Windows don't work. I have searched and searched on the net, and have found many people complaining of the same issue, but haven't found any solutions. So I came here, if I can get help anywhere it will be here!!! 😀 Any Ideas???????????

 

[WarCon]

<< This issue can occur if your computer has an IDE controller that requires serialization between the primary and secondary IDE channels. The protected-mode drivers for these IDE controllers may not be initialized if one of the following situations occurs:

If one IDE channel has a supported hard disk, and the second channel has a CD-ROM or another type of drive that requires Real-mode drivers. Because there must be serialization between the two IDE channels, Windows cannot access the hard disk in Protected mode and use the other device in Real mode. When this occurs, the Protected-mode driver is not initialized and the NOIDE switch is placed in the registry to prevent future errors. Both disk devices can then operate in Real mode.

-or-

If you manually remove the driver for the IDE controller from Device Manager and then reinstall it, or if you disable and then re-enable the protected-mode driver. Some PCI controller drivers are not designed for dynamic enabling and disabling, and can cause the Protected-mode driver to not initialize properly.

The Windows device drivers for the following controllers may cause this behavior:
CMD PCI-0640 PCI-IDE controller
Standard Dual PCI-IDE controller
Opti Dual PCI-IDE controller
Intel 82371 AB/EB Pci Bus Master IDE Controller
Ali M5229 PCI Busmaster IDE Controller >>



From Microsoft database. I know this didn't help, but from the read it looks like the something that you have on the other channel is using real mode drivers. Are you using a CDROM driver in your config.sys and Autoexec.bat? If so you might try removing the reference to it. Or just rename config.sys and Autoexec.bat.

If you not using a real-mode driver then try unpluggin whatever is in your secondary IDE channel and see if the problem goes away after you remove the NOIDE again.

............................edit..................................
I don't have any idea if this works, but if you remove your hard drive controller in safe mode and reboot. It seems to me to that it sometimes works to make the primary and secondary (child devices) IDE channels to behave.

 

[FOH]

Thanks for the reply, I tried the tips you gave -- still the same. Any other ideas???

 

[WarCon]

Did you use a software like EZ-DRIVE to format and partition your drive so that you can get all of a bigger drive? It might be the real-mode driver that is causing the problem.

Do you have an old hard drive laying around (something that will fit the OS that you have already installed?) See if you can copy (using something that will do a complete copy) one hard drive to the other. Then start up with the old drive and leave the new one out. If you can clear the Noide tag in bios and then it works then you have found the problem. If not then pull everything but the hard drive and see if the exclaimation marks dissappear from the primary and secondary.

If that don't help then short of reformatting and trying again, I don't know......Sorry.