Problems installing Win2k with Promise IDE controller

[Slammy1]

So, my friend has a very old PC I'm having troubles reinstalling Windows onto. It's a Pentium 3, Asus P3B-F board. I'm trying to install onto a drive on a Promise ultra 100 tx2 controller. I have the drivers on floppy, but there's where I'm having problems. I have a USB floppy and a regular floppy, but the USB floppy won't load the drivers on that system (doesn't seem to run the drive outside of Windows) and either the regular FDD I have or the MoBo controller is bad. I have the ability to create a slipstreamed install, but I don't know how to put the controller drivers on (just the service packs). Can anyone help? TIA.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Long shot, but try disabling the onboard FDD controller, and check you BIO boot order for an option on USB-FDD. normally, disabling the onboard is enough.

 

[Slammy1]

There is an option in BIOS for boot order - removable disk, but setting it one way or another doesn't make any difference. If I enable the FDD (drive A, I have a drive b option as well) it returns an error in boot. This board is a different era, when USB was just getting started (it has 2xUSB 1.0). Maybe I'll start another thread soon on the cheapest MoBo/CPU/GPU/Memory upgrade. I don't remember how I got it to install before, running on the 33-MHz bus I have what are probably unique issues with the Promise controller. The GPU is a 32MB Rage Fury. I'm at the point already where the time I've spent on it is more valuable than the system itself... Thanks for the thoughts!

 

[redbeard1]

Try moving the Promise controller to another slot. We just ran into the FDD problem on an XP system and moving the card was the fix.

 

[Slammy1]

Hey, thanks for the solution. I don't have the PC to try it out on anymore, but it sounds like a good thought. My friend had a few viruses on the PC, I ended up running them down and cleaning his install (I'd prefer a clean install with that amount of infection). I'll remember that trick for the next time we install, what a PITA that all was. I think I'll be able to convince them to upgrade before the next time, at least I sure hope I can. When I initially installed the controller on their system I had a lot of weird issues like not being able to use the primary position on any channel except the Promise controller's IDE1. I thought at the time it was the 33-MHz bus vs the spec'd ATA/66 requirement for the card (it's supposed to support ATA/33, but cannot run ATA/100 on that Bus), but it seems more like a conflict in retrospect. It's so very depressing how friends become so dependent on your ability to fix problems that they refuse to learn habits to prevent those problems from occurring. A/V was over 6-months out of subscription, it had been a year since they scanned anything (at least based on the last update for the AdAware). I have this other friend who, whenever he tries to fix what may be a problem or simply a Windows quirk, will start doing random things that make you wonder if he's trying to kill the PC (deletion of system files, reboot during write operation, that sort of thing). Free tech support has its drawbacks.