Windows 2000, A7V133 and Promise ATA100 Controller

[Garet Jax]

Hello all,

I am trying to re-install Windows 2000 on my machine with the A7V133 MB. I am having a hell of a time getting it to work. My Maxtor 20GB hard drive is plugged into the Promise ATA 100 controller on the MB.

When Windows 2000 starts to install, I hit F6 so I can provide additional drivers. I have downloaded the drivers from Promise.. Once I provide the drivers, the install continues until the point where you have to create/delete/configure partitions. The installer always says that it was unable to find any HDs and therefore unable to continue.

I have tried the following:
1) I have tried different versions of the driver. The link points to 36. I have tried 32 and 25. None have worked.
2) Each driver typically provides support for different OSes. I have tried NT and 2000 drivers on each driver as appropriate to no avail.
3) I have changed the ATA100 cable in case the cable was bad.
4) I have pulled the hard drive out and tried it in master and slave configurations. Neither worked.
5) I plugged the hard drive into the regular IDE channel and Windows found it and installed itself no problem. Therefore I know the HD is not the problem.

The only thing left to try are different drivers. I have looked on Asus' site and was unable to find any other drivers. Can someone help me find other promise drivers or give me other suggestions?

Thanks a lot.

[EDIT]
Windows 2000 has been installed on this machine before. I just can't remember what I did back then.

When the machine is started or rebooted the Promise Controller does find and is able to correctly identify the HD.
[/EDIT]

 

[cbuchach]

I have an A7V133 set up in RAID mode and have found that the drivers from Asus's site seem to give me better luck than the Promise site drivers. The chip Promise puts on the Asus boards is a little different from their retail controller chips. It basically has a different chipID or what not which can confuse Windows.

I looked and found some Asus Ultra100 drivers at the asuscom.de FTP server. Here is the address:

ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/TREIBER/CONTROLLER/IDE/PROMISE/PDC2026x/U1xx_v200_b29.zip

Download the U1xx_v200_b29.zip driver and try that during install.

I'll make it easy for you--click here to download

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

why not put the hard drive on the normal IDE channel, install windows, install promise drivers, move drive to the ATA100/RAID port.

 

[authenticate]

Will installing the ata100 drivers whilst attached to a non-ata100 device cause any problems or only after a reboot?

 

[cbuchach]

What are you tlaking about Authenticate?? The drivers are for the Ultra100 controller and not for the attached devices. It makes no difference what ATA mode any attached device can support.

 

[authenticate]

I think he said his drive is attached to the ata100 card. The drivers are loaded into 2K not the ata100 card. 2K communicates to the card via the drivers. If he installs the ata100 drivers (and reboots) 2k will use these new drivers to communicate to the drive but if the drive is connected on the ata66 bus it may not work. He needs to power down, disconnect from ata66, connect to ata100 and boot up as BigBongWongFooey says.

 

[Barnaby W. Füi]

whatever drives are connected to the thing when you install makes no difference. you're installing a driver for the controller. the controller is always there.

 

[Bglad]

There is no no reason to use the Promise controller unless 1. you are using RAID or 2. you already have 4 devices on the main controllers.

The regular controllers are ATA100.

 

[Garet Jax]

Hello all,

Thanks a lot for all the suggestions.

cbuchach,

I will keep this in mind. I never tried the drivers from the ASUS site.

BingBongWongFooey,

That is a good idea and I was going to try that, but the promise drivers weren't working when I tried to install them into Windows (besides that the ATA100 BIOS was disabling itself on startup when no attached devices were found.

Bglad,

I didn't know that.
If I had, then I probably wouldn't have posted this issue.