to not boot from ATA card

[Bfavre444]

I just installed a new Promise ATA100 card and when the computer starts, it searches for the onboard IDE channels and then the ATA100 is detected and it searches for HDDs on the card. But the computer always wants to boot to Windows from a HDD on the card. I don't know how to get the computer to boot from the onboard IDE channel (HDD-0).

And I tried putting the booting HDD on the card with another 40GB HDD. The booting HDD I put on the card's Pri/Mas and the 40GB hdd on the card's Sec/Mas. That way it boots to the first HDD fine since it's on the card but half-way through loading Windows with the Windows splash screen, the computer freezes. That's why I am asking how to make the computer boot from the onboad channels instead of always booting from the card.

Right now, the IDE cables are unplugged on the card, and I'm running the Windows HDD on the onboard IDE channel. It didn't freeze half-way through the splash screen.

 

[rw120555]

Some Bios let you control the boot sequence. For example, on my Dell, I can tell it to first try A:, or the CD-Rom, or the HD. When I briefly had both SCSI and IDE drives, it let me pick which to use. So, go into your Bios, and see if you can control the boot sequence.

 

[michec]

Quick question here...does your system boot up fine with the bootable HDD on UATA100 primary master with the 2nd HDD not attached?

Also, I think there is a setting you can toggle in BIOS (like rw120555 said) that lets you choose if you want IDE or SCSI to be loaded first. The BIOS treats the Promise cards as SCSI cards, so if you want the on-board IDE to load first, see if you can select IDE for that setting.

 

[rw120555]

Also, you might be running into some IRQ conflicts, which could be causing your lockups. When I added a Maxtor ATA100 controller, I kept on getting bootup lockups too. I finally resolved it by hooking up all my IDE devices to the ATA 100 controller (which the docs say I wasn't supposed to do -- I was supposed to keep running the cdrw off the original motherboard IDE controller -- but hey, it worked, and the controller's docs said I wasn't supposed to be having a problem in the first place). In the Bios, I then disabled the onboard IDE controller. Then, all was well.

My situation may be further complicated by the fact that I used to have SCSI HDs, got rid of them, but kept the SCSI card to use with my external SCSI scanner. I want to get a USB scanner just so I can get rid of this SCSI card once and for all.

I don't know if this is your problem or if the same solution will work for you, but whenever you add something I think an IRQ conflict is at least possible, isn't it?

Also, sometimes IRQ problems go away just by putting cards in different slots.

 

[Bfavre444]

Hi, thanks for the help. I did a bunch of things since the first post and it doesn't freeze anymore half way through the splash screen. I put the booting HDD on onboard and booted up it windows like usual, and I then installed the card drivers from a floppy in Win98. I also put the pin of the 40GB harddrive on sec/slave. Then I went into BIOS and selected "yes" for "PNP Capable OS" I guess Win98 is a PNP capable OS. After that, I booted up into command prompt and formatted the 40GB. So after all this, I put the booting HDD back on card pri/mas and 40GB on card sec/slave and it doesn't freeze anymore. Those 5 things that I did, I don't know which one did the trick.

Thanks for the help anyway.

BTW, anyone have a Kouwell KW582v2 firewire card? Someone in another forum told me to install Windows generic firewire drivers instead of the TI chipset drivers.

 

[Bfavre444]

I think I found the problem. It seems like it's the power supply. When I connect the CDRW, it does the freezing thing during the splash screen. When I disconnect the CDRW or the CDROM drive, it runs fine with 3 devices. I have the 2 HDDs on the card and CDRW and CDROM on each of the onboard channels.
The question is: is the computer supposed to load up and freeze at the Windows splash screen half-way if the problem is power??

I have a 300W power supply with 4 PCI slots taken up (out of 5 PCI slots), one is an Ethernet card, one is ATA card, one is ATi tv tuner, and one is firewire card. One AGP is taken up by a Geforce2 GTS, plus the above 4 storage devices, and a 12 volt 5000rpm cpu fan. Should it freeze like that with these things in the computer? Is it supposed to freeze at all with this stuff in a 300W power supply, or is it typical to freeze during the splash screen?

 

[rw120555]

I suppose it could be power, but I'd be more suspicious of IRQ conflicts. When you turn the power off to a device, you also get rid of any IRQ conflicts that device is causing. Or, maybe there is something else about the device that causes problems. I'd be surprised if a lack of power was the issue though.

 

[Bfavre444]

If it's an IRQ conflict, would it only be for one device, namely the CDRW? I've unplugged the CDRW and only plugged in the CDROM, and I've unplugged the CDROM and plugged in the CDRW, either one works, but not both at the same time. And how would I find out if there's an IRQ conflict? How do I check the IRQs of the devices at bootup?

 

[rw120555]

Excellent question, BF. If you've got a conflict that keeps you from booting, then how do you track down the conflict?

I notice you said before that



<< I have the 2 HDDs on the card and CDRW and CDROM on each of the onboard channels. >>



So, rather than using each of the onboard channels, why don't you just use one of them, and see where that gets you. That is, make them master and slave on the same channel, rather than master on both channels. If it doesn't work on one channel, then switch it to the other channel and try again.

If you can get both to work this way, then it presumably means you don't have enough IRQs to use both the primary and secondary IDE ports on the motherboard. But once you have all devices working, you can fiddle around and see if there is some other option that will resolve all conflicts and keep all ide ports available.

If it still doesn't work -- darned if I know. It is a little hard for me to believe that that one extra device is pushing your power supply over the brink, but who knows?

Let us know what happens. RW

 

[michec]

Let's see...you have the following peripherals:

sound card? (not mentioned in your list)
Geforce 2 GTS video card
NIC
Promise ATA100 card
ATI TV Wonder
firewire card
mouse (PS/2?)

Typically, you have 4 free IRQs to use up: 5, 10, 11, 12

IRQ 12 is taken up if you're using a PS/2 mouse. If you need additional IRQs, you typically disable COM1 and COM2 to free up IRQs 4 and 3. If you didn't disable your serial ports, you have 6 cards trying to share 3 IRQs (assuming you're using a PS/2 mouse), and that would tend to be very problematic. You also have an onboard USB controller that will take up or share another IRQ. It might be a good idea to consider if you need all of those cards.

As for the CD-ROM and CDRW, did you try both of them in the same channel when you plugged just one or the other in at once? (i.e. plug CD-ROM in primary channel, works, disconnect and switch with CDRW, plug CDRW in primary channel, works) Did you test both channels? Does the CD-ROM by itself show up properly if you put it on the primary channel or on the secondary channel? Same with CDRW? If you go into device manager, is your IDE Controller set to enable both IDE channels? Typically, it's set to detect default settings, but you can manually set it to enable both channels.

 

[Bfavre444]

Yes, I just now put the CDRW on the same onboard channel as the CDROM and it doesn't freeze midway through the splash screen anymore. I don't know why putting both CD drives on the same onboard channel works now, but it works. Does putting them both on the same onboard channel lessen an IRQ? Is that why it's working now?

And as for the sound card and mouse question, I'm using the onboard sound and I'm using a serial mouse (not PS/2).

 

[rw120555]

On one of my computers, IRQ 14 is used for the primary IDE controller, IRQ 15 is used on the secondary controller. So, one less IRQ is used when both devices are on the same channel.

Take a look at device manager and see if any conflicts are showing up. Maybe there is a message in there about a conflict, but the conflict doesn't matter so long as nothing is hooked up to one of the channels. Then again, maybe no conflict shows up until the devices are actually hooked up to both channels.

Michec's ideas for disabling ports may free up some IRQs for you and solve your problems. Then again, maybe not; I may be wrong, but I don't think it is enough just to have free IRQs, they have to be the right free IRQs. But I know I did have to disable a COM port to get my modem to work ok on one of my machines. You may have to do some combo of disabling things in both your bios and in device manager.

If freeing up some IRQs doesn't solve your problem, you can (a) just live with it -- do you really need that IDE channel anyway? Or (b) you can try a few other things. These include (1) moving cards to different slots (2) delete devices in Device Manager, and then let Windows redetect at bootup -- it might get assignments right the next time around (3) make sure you've got the latest drivers -- I had a weird problem with &quot;unknown device&quot; taking up an IRQ and it went away when I got the latest sound card drivers.

No guarantees these will work, so if the current setup works ok you may just want to declare victory and move on to other things.

 

[Bfavre444]

Yup, if it works, keep it. So I'll just leave the two CD drives on the same onboard channel. Thanks.