Problems with A7V133 and Promise ATA100/Raid controller?

[IBuySouls]

Has anyone out there had any problems with this board and the Promise controller? If you have, what kind of symptoms were you having with it? I think mine failed on me, not too sure. Here's what happened. I couldn't format a drive without some lost clusters being detected (tried 2 brand-new Maxtor 7200rpm drives) and I also couldn't even get through the win98 install without a screen coming up saying "Setup cannot continue" and it then shutting the computer down. So, now I have to send my board back and wait for a new one. Does anyone have any suggestions as to what else it may have been? Or did I make the right assumption? Thanks!

 

[heffe734]

did you install the promise ata 100 drivers from the asus website. I only installed win2k with that parituclar board and you have to install the promise ata 100 controller at the beginning of the installation of win2k by pushing f6 and then following the steps to install it. Sorry if this sounds a lil confusing and it's not answering your question directly but i hope it helps.

 

[IBuySouls]

Yeah, I know all about pressing f6 to install the drivers. The thing is I can't even get to that point in the install without getting errors. If I do a fresh format and then run scandisk it tells me there are lost clusters and the drive has errors. If I fix it through scandisk, it shows up next time I run scandisk. Also, I tried to install win98 just as an experiment to see if I could get things running and it quits out right at the beginning of the install telling me that install cannot continue. I will also sometimes get bluescreens on install of 98, reboot and the install is corrupted. Me thinks my board is f%$#ed!

 

[sanz]

Hmmm.. never had that problem.

Why dont you try to install from Via's IDE controller. You can always move the hdd to Promise controller afterward.

Give it a go before you send it back. Good luck.

 

[Ceres]

Hi IBuySouls,
possibly the MBR on your HDs is corrupted. With a W98 bootdisk you can write it new with "fdisk/mbr".
If you intended to use w2k only, w2k will overwrite it during the installation and you should be able to setup the
Promise drivers with the F6 procedure.
Good luck
Ceres

 

[IBuySouls]

Well, I have tried two low level formats on two different drives. I have also taken the drives over to a friend's house who has an A7V133 and reformatted and the they scandisked with no errors in his machine. Tried switching to the VIA ide controller and doing a low-level format and regular format with both drives. No Luck! Thanks for the input everyone, I guess I should have been more thorough telling you what I have tried first. Any other ideas? I'm sending the board back within 2 days, I need this problem fixed by the end of the month as I'm going away to school. Anyway, thanks again for the ideas, it's appreciated