damn win2k !!!

[wkulecz]

LC1104,

One more thing, I just discovered that the Fasttrack driver for W2k is very badly behaved if you have a bad drive in your array.

One of my Maxtor's apparently died over the weekend and w2k was acting very strangely with lockups, sponteanous reboots and blue screens. I never did get far enough to try and access the RAID so I was looking elsewhere for the trouble. I eventually tracked it down from the funny noise the drive was making when the problems occured.

Removing the bad drive cured the troubles.

I'd suggest doing your w2k install without the Fasttrack installed and add it once things are working.

--wally.

[LC1104]

Ok, all i want to do is install win2k, i took the scanner off. It has a termination switch on the back that i enabled. But i don't even have the scanner connected now. I took out the fasttrak and have only one drive connected to the ide primary connector on the motherboard. But i still got the error while installing. It randomly says that a file is not the correc one from the installation CD or harddrive. I have trid both cd installation and copying to the harddrive and installing.

P3B-F 450 PIII
2 x 128 MB Viking CAS2
1 x 22 GB IBM 7200 RPM ATA 66 drive on the
ATA33 controller of P3B-F
G400 MAX with RRG
3Com 905B ethernet card
SB Live! value
Plextor 40x max ultra
Plextor 8/20 CDR
Adaptec 2940U scsi card

The ID's for the CDROMs are not in conflict. they are are different ID's. I have disabled termination on the adaptec card. Should i do this? Remember i don't ahve the scanner connected anymore. The CDROM's are connected on the same cable. THank you

jason

[wkulecz]

Without the scanner the Adaptec controller termination must be enabled. Only the physically last drive on the intenal cable should be terminated.

Check the IBM web site (ibmstorage.com ??) to be sure your drive is not one of those ATA66 drives that needs a firmware mod to work on an ATA33 controller.

Simplify as much as possible. Remove the CD-R and and leave only the controller and CDROM at the ends of the SCSI cable -- insure both the CDROM and controller are terminated. Pull the network card and sound card. Pull one memory stick and swap in the other if you still have trouble. Reduce the number of components to the absolute minimum and then sub in known good replacements one at a time.

Definitely remove the RRG, as its not supported with drivers on the w2k CD. Also someone else might know, but is the G400 supported with the drivers on the CD? I know the G200 is, this is a long shot, I hope someone else will pipe in having done a w2k install with a G400 installed, I assume an unrecognized video card would just install as a minimal VGA. I had no trouble installing with a G200.

Once you get the basic system installed PnP works very well with w2k. The trick is figuring out the problem that is corrupting data from the CD to the Hard drive.

--wally.

[LC1104]

I tried installing Win2K after taking out the SBLIVE, RR-G, Promise fasttrak card, the network card and haveing the harddrive on the primary ide controller. The CDRom on the end of the daisy chain IS terminated and so is the card itself, i have no externl devices connected to the scsi card. And after all this, i got the same results!!! The files randomly get corrupt. Could it be my CPU or motherboard or RAM and if so, how can i check???

[ScottV]

Go to :-
http://www.storage.ibm.com/techsup/h...rive%20fitness

and download IBMATASW if your drive is one of the ones listed.

I installed a new IBM 75GXP drive on my system and I couldn't enable DMA until I set the disk's firmware to UDMA33 with this utility (my motherboard only supports UDMA33).

[DentyCracker]

Gibverse, I got AGP4x with no hacks on my Abit KT7 (VIA KT133) in win2k straight up. I had to force it in win98se. Go figure.

Wkulecz, I can actually get my Duron 700 to boot into Win2k at 1G (It dumps shortly thereafter) Win98 gives me a windows protection error at that speed. 950 is more stable in win2k. This is with all the memory and processor tweaks on.

[DrFaust]

I'm pretty sure that the source of your problems is the fact that you may be trying to run your HD at ATA66 speeds on the ATA33 interface. I'm a bit surprised that no one has mentioned it before.

The ATA66 spec runs at a higher speed and the normal IDE cables used for most HD are not adequate. If you are running the drive at ATA66, then you'll need an a cable to handle the data without noise corrupting your data. You should have received an 80 conductor(40 pin) cable for the HD when you purchased the drive. This cable has extra grounding wires to eliminate crosstalk - it looks very much like a SCSI cable and should have a blue connector on one end.

Either try setting your system to run at ATA33 speeds (you may need to flip a jumper on the drive, or perhaps a firmware patch from the HD manufacturer) - or - use a proper cable for ATA66.

Hope this helps.

DrFaust

[heringja]

I had the exact same problem, I was using an Asus cusl2 motherboard and 2 128 meg sims. I could not install w2k. I took 128 meg simm out and it installed fine. I could also use 1 256 meg simm. But 2 128 meg simms screwed everything up, it was not a bad simm, because I tryed many 128 meg simms. You might want to try and remove one simm.

[LC1104]

Thanks so much for the help! I think I will try that tomorrow. but then i have a question, does this mean that I can never have more than one dimm chip? This sucks!!! I will try installing Win2K. But what do i do with this ram now? I want my computer to work properly with more than one DIMM chip.

[Dr Mordrid]

Just for the helluvit check your CUSL2 board and see if it has a CMD controller on it. Asus has been having fits with the CMD controller on the CUBX. Another problem was the vcore setting being off.

Dr. Mordrid


[This message has been edited by Dr Mordrid (edited 26 October 2000).]

[LC1104]

Can the same thing be said for the P3B-F Dr Mordrid? man i am starting to dislike this motherboard. but it's so stable otherwise! BTW, does anyone want a PS2 for $2000 free overnight shipping? hahaha, just thought i'd plug an ad for teh unit i got today...

[LC1104]

I actually tried to install Win2k with only one Dimm chip. It didn't help. I got the exact same results as before. I am too frustrated to even explain. I want to throw my computer at the wall. Yes, i know that i just explained my frustration, thus negating my prior sentence. What can i do? Is there any kind of diagnostic software that could test my motherboard/ram/cpu/etc to see if any component is faulty? This is maddening! I just want a stable system. It is not stable even in Win98SE - random errors occur, eg: I will have a problem with a corrupt file unzipping but if i reboot, for some reason, the file is ok. It is so random. Grr...

[LC1104]

I am thinking that maybe it is the ram. I have Viking PC100 CAS2 ram. I have 2 x 128MB DIMMs. I have tried with one in or the other, or putting them in different dimm slots. nothing helped. COuld it be that my motherboard is not compatible with this ram? Also, what should the timings be for the ram in the bios? I think it was 2-2-3. I have no clue what this means. Thanks.

[LC1104]

Actually the settings were 2-2-2. I also tried 3-3-3, but i got the same errors. I am starting to consider buying a new motherboard, ram, cpu. I don't know how I would be able to find what is wrong with my computer. There is no way to find which part is faulty or waht the problem is.

resigned,
Jason

[Pertti]

LC1104,

Which bios version you are running on your P3B-F ?

---------------------------------------------
P3B-F (6 PCI/5 PCI, 4 DIMM, Jumperless BIOS, STR, ATX)
- BIOS Upgrade and Road Map :

bx3f1006.zip
P3B-F BIOS Ver. 1006. 06/30/2000
Fix Windows 2000 cannot be installed if all PnP devices in Super I/O are disabled.
Support 566MHz and 850MHz CPU with clock ratio equal or greater than 8.5x.
Revise Coppermine Vcore limit for 128K cache Coppermine.
Fix Hardware Monitor false alarm of CPU vcore when using old celeron CPU.
---------------------------------------------



[This message has been edited by Pertti (edited 31 October 2000).]