Promise / Raid Drivers for MSI and Asus - new question

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Recently setup new MSI Turbo R, and am having an apparent fight between Windows and the Promise drivers.

I'm running a dual boot 98SE and 2000 on this board with a pair of IBM Deskstars on the RAID controller, a CD ROM, and the video card only. Micron RAM. Latest x016 BIOS from MSI is installed, set to the "should always work" defaults, and using the latest Promise drivers from their website.

98SE seems to run without the drivers... but when I install them, either from the CD included with the board (on the page with the VIA drivers) or from the Promise site, it won't boot back up - locks up solid when Windows starts. If I get into Safe Mode I can uninstall it, and get back into Windows again on the next try. But if those drivers are reinstalled, it freezes again.

For 2000, I have something that may be similar. "One of your drives needs to be checked for consistency" shows up on every boot part way into Windows loading. My research shows that this is "normally a hard drive problem..." The drives pass scandisk and my Partition Magic tests just fine, so I'm thinking that this is not a disk problem but also from the Promise drivers. In 2000 those drivers did not show up on the CD as an option to begin with, so there isn't anything I can uninstall to test there.

Anyone else see this on their MSI, or on the similar Asus? It's wierd. Affects both O/S's. Everything is fresh install too.

Please help!

 

[tracerbullet]

I must ask the tough questions, no one has ever answered one!

I spent the evening repartitioning, formatting, and checking for errors on my drives. Nothing came up. After another completely new and fresh install of '98 only, with just the vid card, it works a little better but not perfectly...

It always boots now. Time and again, though I probably just jinxed it. However, I still have the yellow "!" in front of it under systems - properties. Drives are noticeably slower in '98 than 2k because of it.

Tried the motherboard drivers, the ones on the floppy with the board, and the latest from Promise. All give the !.

Windows tells me it's conflicting with an IRQ of another device that can't share it's IRQ... Except the video card, there's nothing else attached! Parallel and serial ports are disabled, as well as on board sound. I have 3 free IRQ's... I can't get it any more basic than this. Conflicting with what?

Ideas guys?

 

[jfkaiser]

Tracerbullet....
Have your tried throwing in a PCI video card and seeing how controller comes up. I have noticed some issues between the Promise and certain Nvidia cards. Below are some earlier observations (even though you're already using the v16 Overclockers Bios).

Try a cheap PCI video card and let us know if exclamations go away or not.

Thx,
Jon

Earlier summary info
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Hi Guys,

Just update to the issue of the Promise RAID controller not always displaying its BIOS screen at bootup of the MSI K7T Turbo when used with certain Nvidia AGP cards (Leadtek TNT2 Ultra, Hercules Geforce 256 DDR).

In MSI Bios version 2.4 If user chooses "Load Optimal settings" in bios, this will turn on the "Enable USB Mouse" option by default. In version 2.4 this setting must instead be changed to "Disabled" or it will cause the effect of not displaying the Promise Bios screen when used with select Nvidia cards.


In MSI Bios version 2.5 (new) If user chooses "Load Optimal settings" in bios, this turns on the "Enable USB Keyboard" AND "Enable USB Mouse" by default. In version 2.5 BOTH these settings must instead be changed to "Disabled" or they will cause the effect of not displaying the Promise Bios screen when used with select Nvidia cards.

The only Bios versions which do not seem to share this problem is the Overclockers Bios. They seem to work fine with all the Nvidia cards.


Thx,
Jon Kaiser

 

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Thanks for the info, and for the great idea. I tried a PCI video card, made no difference.

I've had a dozen configurations over the last weekends, nothing worked, ever. But apparently I fixed it this time around. No idea why, but that mark is gone...

Installed Windows on a blank drive - drivers for all cards - VIA 4.28 - then to VIA 4.29 - had been skipping the RAID the whole time, as in the past loading those drivers caused a range of problems. Well, like a dork I tried it again, from the CD with the Motherboard. (Have tried it before, along with those on the floppy and the ones from their site. Well, it installed, rebooted, found new hardware, rebooted again. I expected it to freeze like usual. But NO! Boots up, and the yello "!" is gone too.

Whatever!

Thanks for the help. I'm off to making a backup of EVERYTHING so I can at least get back to here in the future...