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G'day,
I've just received my computer; I ordered it over the net from a place in Sydney (about 1000km from where I live, Melbourne), and assumed I would be able to install an operating system and all myself. However, that was not the case.
I have a DVD+RW drive and a DVD-Rom drive, as well as two Maxtor 160GB hard drives. The thing is, in the BIOS, it recognises the two DVD drives as primary master and slave.
Not only is this happening, but I'm getting an incredibly annoying B.S.O.D every time I try and install Win2k using the boot disks and cant seem to get past it.
Anyone have any ideas as to what's happening? I've formatted the primary HDD as the primary partition, but I wasnt sure what to fdisk the second hard drive to, so I just made it a primary partition as well. Except i did it in the reverse order; i made HDD #2 the primary partition, then made HDD #1 the primary partition.
Hope this makes sense...
G'day,
If you did the fdisk with w9x or ME, that may be a problem. AFAIK they are limited to about 137GB.
If using only the w2k CD, try connecting ONE HD and ONE CD to try to get beyond BSOD.
If no joy get DocMem or MemTest86.
You DID reseat all the cables and memory and made sure the CPU cooler is running, didn't you?
HTH
M2
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Yep, all the cables are working and so is the memory and CPU fan.
I've just tried again, after leaving the compy off for about an hour, and got past the BSOD. HOWEVER, to my great dismay, I've found that (this was happening before), after I get past the stages of running all of the boot disks, and choosing to create a new installation of Win2k, I get a message saying that:
No hard disk could be found
I think this might be because the Bios is recognising the primary master and slave as the DVD drives, and not the HDD's...I might try re-replacing the hard drive cables, seeing if that works.
The mobo is an Asus P5GD1-VM; the optical drives are in the Primary IDE Connector, and the hard drives are in the PCI IDE Connector (this is what the manual recommends)
ACTUALLY, now that I re-read the manual, it says that if I'm connecting any IDE or ATAPI drives to the PCI IDE connector, i should "prepare a driver disk with the ITE 8211F controller before installing the operating system".
I have no idea what this is, would it help?
0
Have you got the DVD's connected to IDE1 or IDE2 channel? The hard disks should be connected to the IDE1 channel AFAIK.
0
Optimal configuration:
primary master = HDD1
primary slave = DVD-ROM
2ndary master = DVD burner
2ndary slave = HDD2Use 80-wire IDE cables on both channels. Use master or slave jumper settings, don't use cable select.
Why do you need boot disks? Isn't the W2K CD bootable?
Asus A7N8X-X
1800+ @8x210mhz
512mb PC3200
Ti4200/8X 128mb
WDC 60GB
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I'll try removing a dvd drive and a hard drive, just having a hard drive as primary master and dvd as primary slave, see if that remedies it in any way. I've been using cable select, but I'll change the jumpers as well.
Cheers, I'll post back in an hour or so
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I just got the same motherboard. I am kind
of a newbie but I believe if you install
that F1182 driver from the CD that came with
the Mobo it will make the new PCI IDE 133
connector on the Mobo work and you will see
your drives in Windows. It seemed to go that
way for me although I am running XP Pro.Now that I installed the driver in windows,
though, I'd like to install it so that it
runs before windows boots so I can connect
that channel to my boot drive. I don't know
how to do that though.Roberta
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Hi Roberta,
Many, if not most, controller drivers are for windows and not for DOS. This mobo may be an exception.
James, did you solve this?
M2
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Certainly did, I just got a longer IDE cable and ran the primary HDD into the other connector with the dvd rom as slave, and the dvd burner and second hard drive in the 'primary' ide slot. It doesnt run as fast as I would like it to, but I couldnt see any way around it...
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>>I just got a longer IDE cable and ran the primary HDD into the other connector with the dvd rom as slave, and the dvd burner and second hard drive in the 'primary' ide slot<<
I have a similiar setup now but in the manual it says the pci_ide channel should be used for the HDs and the pri_ide channel for the optical drives. I thought I might try that because I am also not getting as much speed as I'd hoped. Is there a reason why that might not work, though?
>> Many, if not most, controller drivers are for windows and not for DOS. This mobo may be an exception.
In that case I should be able to boot up from the drive attached to that connector, right? I was afraid it wouldn't see the bootdrive if the driver wasn't installed in DOS.
I hope my questions aren't too basic. I'm pretty new at this.
Roberta
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RLP,
Yes I think it will boot.
My setup is very simple; 2 IDE mobo IDE; no drivers in DOS, only in windows.
I have not tested the HDs with and without drives. I just installed the drivers and forhot about it.
To me, it's far more important to have stability than to try to save a few milliseconds
James,
Glad you hammered it out. I'll bet your PC was not looking forward to a round trip to Sydney.
:(
M2
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Hi there, i just got this asus mobo. All u have to do is to prepare the drivers disk (as Roberta suggests) in order to activate the ITE 8211F controller. Put your Asus motherboard cd in (i did it in another computer myself) and go to F:\DRIVERS\ITE8211_ITE8212. (i guess u all know what f: means:-) There u c the MAKEDISK.exe... Create the disk. Start up your computer from the windows cd... Press F6 when the computer has started running Windows (u r watching the blue screen now) and choose the appropriate driver for your windows... Your disk on the PRI_PCIIDE1 is not unknown any more... the Good luck...
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Alexandros,
Thanks. I wish I'd known that a few days ago. I think what we did is use the other channel (pri_ide) for the boot drive, and I installed the driver in Windows. Now I am thinking maybe I can switch the drives around to connect the PRI_PCIIDE1 to the boot drive since the driver is now installed. I will try it. Your way would certainly have been simpler.
M2,
>>To me, it's far more important to have stability than to try to save a few milliseconds
I agree. The friend who was helping me and is supposed to be the expert does not like to read manuals, so instead we wasted a few HOURS trying to figure out why the connector didn't work right before I realized we needed the driver.
Thanks for your advice.
Roberta
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James,
I just reconfigured my drives as it says in the manual (after installing the 8211f driver in Windows), with the two HDs on the PCI_IDE connector and the two optical drives on the PRI_IDE connector. The first time I booted the bios didn't detect the second HD but when I rebooted after making sure it was well-connected it detected everything and so did windows. This is the way the manual said to connect everything, and even though it worked the other way, this way is definitely faster. I notice it when I use the CD-burner drive to access a CD. Before the system would slow down, now it keeps going. It's blazing fast!
May I suggest that if you are still unhappy with you speed, you install the 8211F controller (on the CD that came with the mother board) and then reconnect the drives as it says in the manual.
BTW, I am running XP Pro.
Roberta
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