promise ultra66 + winNT4

[diewlei]

dear friends,

i just brought a harddisk previously running winNT4 on the motherboard's primary ide channel over to this new board which has a pci promise ultra66 controller card.

how can i make this harddisk - which can run at ata66 - boot with the OS. it involves editing the boot.ini file right?

i've already updated the mobo / ata card drivers and bioses. and made the scsi boot device as the first boot device. booting up starts normally, the ata card's bios initialises and detects the HD but after the "summary of system" screen, the system stops responding.

using a 650mhz p3 on a p3bf. no overclocking, yet.

connecting this HD to this board's ide controller boots the OS up as per normal.

any ideas?

[High_Jumbllama]

It's because NT, 2K, and XP unlike 95, 98, and ME all expect the hard drive to be on a particular controller on a particular channel on master or slave. I don't know how to change this if at all possible though.

[The PIT]

Heres my boot.ini with a promise tx2 133.

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect


Nothing special there.

From my XP dual boot booting from the onboard sis controller. Note XP is on the second drive in this case hence rdisk (1).

boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOW S
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
C:\="Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition"

You should have a normal controller on the motherboard if they're the same type so stick your drive on that and then install the promise drivers once you booted and then you should be able to transfer over. Thats all I've done in the past. If the controllers aren't the same and since NT4 isn't a plug and play I think you gonna be stuck with an blue screen saying unbootable device or something similar.
You'll find the steps you need to do here at page 11 onwards.

http://www.promise.com/support/file/U100_Manual_En.pdf

Okay it's for a 100 but the steps are the same.

[diewlei]

thanks thepit.

i read from somewhere i am suppose to replace the term "multi" in the boot.ini with "scsi". so i replaced all instances of "multi" with "scsi" too but to no avail!

i will try your method.

thing is, i've already installed the promise NT drivers when on the mobo's ide channel prior to transferring to the ata card, but it didnt work.

[Dilitante1]

the only way i know of to get the promise to work is to install the OS while on the card (from scratch)

i searched some of my fav NT sites and didnt find any success stories when swapping ide controllers on an existing system

[The PIT]

The only way you can do it is if the same controllers are built into the motherboard or as in the case of win2k and Xp which are plug and play the drivers are part of the default install.
I've moved my win2k and Xp to onboard controllers while swapping out promise controllers and it's worked. While one NT install I had to add the controllers before I moved otherwise unaccessable boot device occured.

[diewlei]

i took out the card.
i gave up.

no gonna try to re-install the OS again.

[The PIT]

What happened???

[diewlei]

Originally posted by The PIT
What happened???

i did what you said, to the letter. but i couldnt get it to boot the OS. i didnt even have any error messages like "no boot or inaccessible device" etc. the promise card definitely detected the HD - it was on channel D0. after that, it just hangs there for eternity.

all my drivers and bioses are proper. i un-installed, i re-installed. i edited the boot.ini files playing around with all the syntax and variables (x,y,z a,b,c multi / scsi, whatever). i had to shuffle between DOS's attrib and edit commands to get the boot.ini file up again. and i visited the bios page so many times i could change the settings with eyes closed.

all these during office hours. it just couldnt work. so i gave up.
thank you microsoft windows nt!

[The PIT]

So you get the bootloader then or does it hang before that?

[UtwigMU]

You need to install Promise drivers in NT4.0

[diewlei]

Originally posted by The PIT
So you get the bootloader then or does it hang before that?

it hangs b4 the OS loader.

[diewlei]

Originally posted by UtwigMU
You need to install Promise drivers in NT4.0

i did those, and more.

[UtwigMU]

Did you try to reinstall NT4.0.

Connect HDD to promise.
Boot of NT CD-ROM or Bootdisks (WINNT/OX IIRC is the line to make them, type WINNT/? to make sure)

Start WINNT install and have promise drivers handy on Floppy.
Press F8 (or is it F10) when prompted for aditional mass storage drivers in the beginning of install.

Fire up (install) WINNT and all apps.

[diewlei]

Originally posted by UtwigMU
Did you try to reinstall NT4.0.

Connect HDD to promise.
Boot of NT CD-ROM or Bootdisks (WINNT/OX IIRC is the line to make them, type WINNT/? to make sure)

Start WINNT install and have promise drivers handy on Floppy.
Press F8 (or is it F10) when prompted for aditional mass storage drivers in the beginning of install.

Fire up (install) WINNT and all apps.

no i did not and i couldnt. or else i would had done that long time ago. it's an office PC which cannot afford to be "down" again. so i am opting for a quicker, if possible, fix.