Hi All, I recently purchased a COMPUSA brand ATA/100 PCI adapter card for my Pentium 133MHZ system. Following the adapter card's installation instructions, I ran the installation cd to install the ATA/100 drivers on the harddrive, and then installed the ATA/100 adapter in an empty PCI slot. After installing the card, I booted my system. During boot-up the usual post-tests were performed, and my IDE/ATA devices were detected. My system configuration is as follows: a) Primary Channel - 13.6 GB Western Digital Ultra ATA/66 drive(Single), and b) Secondary Channel - 1.6 GBJTS Corp ATA/FAST-2(Master), and Toshiba ATAPI Cd-Rom(Slave). (The Western Digital drive was partitioned and formatted using Western Digital LifeGuard software which incorporates EZ-BIOS on the harddrive to overcome the 2.0 GB barrier inherent in the old system bios.) As the Boot-up continues detecting all my drives attached to the ATA/100 card, an error message flashes that states, "113: Primary HDC Failure". This message quickly goes away, and then the "Windows 98 Logo" screen quickly flashes. Finally, I see the following message, "Type the name of the Command Interpreter (e.g., C:\Windows\Command.com)", followed by a "C>" prompt. At this juncture Win98 stops loading and my system looks for some input. I try typing Command.com at the prompt with every possible path variation (c:\, c:\command.com, c:\windows\command.com), but nothing works. I am aware that COMMAND.COM is the command interpreter for DOS. I also know that COMMAND.COM is located in the root directory of my C: drive. 1- Can someone explain. What does this message mean? 2- Why doesn't the system see the COMMAND.COM file, that it needs to continue loading Win98, already on the C: drive? 2- How can I correct this problem? All help is appreciated. Thanx.

Buy a different card. I installed the same card for a client who wanted to save a $1. I tryed installing W98 3x's before I called tech support. Buy a bette card was their advice. I then installed a name brand card, no mo problem. It's a cheap card.

Sounds like the drive letters have been changed by adding the controller card. (by the way, hit escape when the logo screen comes on, then you'll be able to see what the machine is doing)Will it boot if you disconnect the drive attached to the new controller?

Thanks for responding DR_GLE and S. DR_GLE: I had suspicions about an electronic retailer-branded card, but said I'll give it a try anyway. By the way, was that CompUSA tech support who gave you that advice? S: Good advice, I'll give it a try. But the Win98 logo screen only flashes for a brief instance. And YES, when I boot the PC from the on-board ide controller everything works fine, and Win98 loads as expected. The problem occurs with the ATA/100 card installed - and the drives attached to it.

I know with my server (with a scsi card), if I attach an IDE drive it will try to boot from it. I'm assuming that for some reason, the controller card you have installed wants to be the primary controller and the drive attatched to it becomes the c drive.

Go with a Promise Technology eide controller. They do REQUIRE you to have a minimum of 1 hard disk connected to it, for it to load its bios into ram. Keep your boot drive on mobo eide controller and you will be fine. I use the Promise ultra100 and have used the ultra66 pci controllers. I have heard that Maxtor's controller card is made by Promise. My current setup is: Gigabyte GA-7IXEH mobo w/ata100 onboard 2 60 gig WD ata100 HDs on mobo primary cd-rw and dvd-rom drives on mobo secondary 2 61 gig maxtor ata100 HDs on Promise ultra100 Combo floppy drive (no need to go into other HW) Everyting is running just fine. Do NOT install drivers FIRST!!! Drivers NOT needed for DOS. Card will be seen as a SCSI controller by windows (prevents conflicts w/mobo eide). You can find Promise ultra100 and ultra66 on eBay and newer ones at online retailers, etc. For the Maxtor controllers, try Staples. (I saw them there in store). I bought both of my cards via eBay and have had NO problems. Charles

Thanks S and Charles: Charles: I had been thinking about a Promise card, and consider it a good bet. Currently, the boot drive (active partition) is the C: drive on the Western Digital, which I'm trying to get to perform at 66mhz by connecting it to the ATA/100 card. My slower drive(ATA/Fast-2 @ 16.7MB/s) is on the Secondary channel of the ATA/100 card. 1- One question, how do I "Keep my boot drive on the mobo eide controller"? 2- Are you suggesting that I leave the Western Digital attached to the ATA/100 card, but connect the slower drive to the Secondary motherboard eide controller and make it bootable(with the operating system installed on it)? Will this create a conflict between the ATA/100 card controller and the motherboard eide controller? I thought the motherboard eide controller needed to be disabled for my ATA/100 card to work. Thanks for your help.