Please need help! Friends computer has strange problem..

[LiekOMG]

My friend has the exact same computer as i do (Asus A7V mb, Tbird 800, etc),
however she's been experiencing some problems recently with the computer
randomly crashing. She was running windows 98 previously, and so i wanted to
try to see if formatting and installing winME would help any. Unfortunatly,
it didn't. However, this time I noticed windows has some strange things
going on (it was also shown in win98, except i didn't pay it any mind).

Under system properties -> performance, windows says that the computer is in
MS-DOS compatability mode. Further inspection into that small box below has
3 things listed inside:
1.) compatability-paging mode reduced system performance
2.) drive C is using MS-dos compatability file system
3.) drive D is using MS-dos compatability file system

I have NO idea what could be causing this. i didn't set the computer to any
kind of compatability mode - i just did a fresh format right now! Btw, she
is running an IBM 30gig HD.

My only connection is that under device managers, under hard disk
controllers, the "primary IDE controller (dual fifo) has an exclamation next
to it. Double clicking says that there is no driver loaded for it. But
these things don't need drivers! I installed the VIA 4in1 drivers, and
although that added the via bus mastering controller, it didn't help get rid
of that exclamation mark. I tried to disable it, but windows still reads the
drives are in ms dos compatability mode. Nothing else in device manager has
an exclamation point. I'm really at a loss here because I have never seen
this problem before and i have no idea what could be causing it. Oh yeah,
from what i can tell, the hard drive (there is only one, its partitioned into
2 drives), is NOT conntected to the ATA100 controller on the A7V. i'm only
guessing on this because the hard drive light on the case doesn't flash with
HD activity - which only happens when its connected to the regular HD
controllers.... at least, thats how it is with my older A7V. Also, i
disabled the ATA100 controller in the BIOS, so the HD can't be connected
there..

Does anyone have any recommendations with what i can do/try? I'm really out
of options here. Anything will help! Thanks again anandtechers!

 

[LiekOMG]

bump

anyone?

 

[lazyboy]

When you say the HD isn't connected to the board I'm assuming you have a controller card.
If so:

You need to install drivers for you controller card. I had the same problem after reformatting a clients computer. I figured there wouldn't be drivers for their card, but I checked the gateway cd and there were some drivers on there. I'm guessing that is your problem, or those 4in1's didnt get installed properly. You gotta get rid of that exclamation to get out of MS-DOS mode.

 

[LiekOMG]

No no, thats not what i meant - On the A7V, there are 4 controller ports - 2 are "regular" (ATA66/33), and 2 ATA100. I said that the drive is connected to the "regular" port. As far as i know, no drivers are needed for it (they certainly weren't needed for my computer!)

 

[LiekOMG]

^

 

[lazyboy]

Ok then your right no drivers are needed. I'm not sure about that one.

 

[LiekOMG]

Anyone please? i'm at a loss here

 

[bacillus]

Both Windows95 and 98/ME have a bug: Sometimes, Windows can't work out the IDE controller, and therefore ceases to use its 32-bit drivers for it.

Symptoms:
- CDROM drive disappears
- In device manager, both "Primary IDE controller" and "Secondary IDE controller" appear with a yellow exclamation mark
- In device manager under "performance", all HD's appear in compatibility mode.

Solution:
Click Start, then Run... , and type regedit
Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\IOS
You should see a value named "NoIDE". Delete it, close regedit and reboot!

 

[LiekOMG]

Hmm... thats interesting. The only strange part is that i know 3 other people with nearly identical setups (a7v MB, ibm hd, Tbird 800), and only one of them have this problem. Also, only one of the IDE controllers has theh exclamation mark, not both (the first one has it). Also, her DVDrom (the only cd access in her computer) works perfectly. I can give that a shot, but i'd like to hear if anyone else has any suggestions. Is it possible that something (say her PCI modem, or SBlive) is conflicting with the IDE controllers on the A7V?

 

[bacillus]

<< Is it possible that something (say her PCI modem, or SBlive) is conflicting with the IDE controllers on the A7V? >>


the ide controllers use irqs 14 &amp; 15! highly unlikely that this is an irq conflict with your drives in compatibility mode.
as far as I'm aware, this problem has three known causes.
1) Wrong IDE drivers installed.
2) the NOIDE entry in the registry
3) a bad master boot record.
The master boot record may not be really bad but if Win doesn't like it then your stuck in DOS Mode and no CD-rom support. Try to do a quick FDISK /MBR commandfrom a good boot floppy!

 

[Junior77]

Check the jumpers on the harddrive. Remove the ide controller with the exclamation mark, then reboot. It should pick it up again. If all else fails, WIN2K.

 

[NovaTone]

hey,
I had the same performance and driver problems on an old computer of mine. On my old system, a &quot;stealth C&quot; virus (Yes, I said virus) caused windows to have performance and driver issues. Because it utilized stealth, I didn't detect it for a long time.

Don't worry, it's not damaging to the system. Try running a virus scan on the hard drive. Because it's memory resident, you may need to boot into dos and run an antivirus in dos ( I used a dos antivirus program called f-prot). After you clean out the virus, the drivers should work properly, and the performance should be back to optimum. Hope this helps.

 

[littleprince]

I think everyones off....
the msg in his original post.... isn't it suppose to mean hes not using fat 32... or maybe fat 16
i think the hd is partitioned using the old dos partition or wutever that was called...
i had this problem like YEARS AGO! when i switched from i think 3.1 to 95, or 95 to 98. i can't remember...
its so vague in my mind... but i believe thats what the problem is.

However, that probaly wouldn't solve random crashes. for that, i bet on crappy ram. or a bad ps, or heck, just horrible power. For example, i just moved to a new apartment... and for the first few weeks, man the power fluctuated badly!! causing my computer to lose power... not enuf so it turns off, just enuf so i would get a random freeze, or crash etc...

but you definitely wanna switch to fat 32 if ur not using it. unfortunately that requires a format... and an fdisk. well fdisk, than format.
gd luck!

 

[LiekOMG]

Thanks for all the suggestions. The computer isn't mines so i haven't had a chance to look at it yet. In responce to the last post about the HD being formatted in fat16 - if that were true, why would windows be putting an exclamation mark next to the primary IDE port? Seems a little strange. Its possibly a virus, but i'm not really too sure about that. I formatted the hard drive, so could it have lived through that? I'm guessing that whoever put the computer together (wasn't me!) did something freaky.

I have one question, which *might* be the cause of this problem, although i doubt it. The drive is a new IBM 30gig drive. However, its NOT connected to the ATA100 connections on the A7V. I'm not sure what cable was used to connect the drive to the MB, but is it possible that this error would occur if the ATA100 cable (the high density one) would be used instead of a normal ATA66 cable? Although i doubt it, hey, you never know. thanks again for all the help. and keep those suggestions comming!

 

[NovaTone]

Because a &quot;stealth C&quot; virus infects the master boot record, and is memory resident, i think it's possible that it can survive a simple formatting of the hard drive. It doesn't matter if you formatted the drive in windows, cause the virus is already loaded into memory(hence memory resident), and it will write itself onto the hard drive's master boot record.