Asus A7V/ Win98 Probs

[TheAntipop]

Im so happy to see a forum go up here, now manybe I can get some help for problem I've had for a while now. About September when the Socket A Athlons came out I decided for a CPU, mobo upgrade. After reading the raving reviews of the Asus A7V both from Tom's and almost every site that had a review of the Socket A mobos, I decided that this was the best option for my new Athlon. After installing it with an old hard drive, memory, vid card, etc. I was forced to reinstall Win98 (not SE). But after doing so, the damnable OS doesnt recognize the "VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller". I dismissed this at first because I had my hard drive connected to Asus' ATA100 controller on the board. But after trying to access my CD Rom drive, I realized this was a problem.
So right now my CD rom is on a slave to the HD on the ATA100 controller. I have tried Win2k, which does recognize the IDE controller, but I have found Win2k isnt a viable option for my computing (esp. gaming) habits. My question is, would Win98 SE solve this problem? because eventually I will need to use my IDE channels. Has anybody else had this problem? Ive had this problem for a while and have been looking everyhwere for a solution.

 

[JOJO]

hey,
I have an A7V as well, and I love it (win 98SE though)
It shouldn't matter if you have win 98, have you tried installing the latest VIA 4 in 1 drivers? There are more recent ones than the ones that were included with the board.
Go to their web site, (there's a link somewhere in the a7v review on tom's page) and get the latest 4 in 1 drivers. Hopefully this helps out.

 

[RavenPrime]

I upgraded past win98SE to winME and installed the new Via 4in1 drivers and this fixed the problems you are describing.
I recommend a fresh install of the new OS--this is only a little more work but saves a lot of headaches!
I had another similar problem with the A7V but the other way around. I have a smart and friendly CDRW drive and it doesn't get recognized if it is hooked up to the ATA100 as a slave or secondary. It works on the standard IDE slots but hangs the OS. I finally gave up and I am going to give it to a friend.

James

 

[Guest]

Install the win98 on a hd on an ata 66 channel, then install ide drivers for ata 100 channel from utility disk, as well install via 4 in 1 driver. Then switch your hd to the ata 100 channel.

 

[Guest]

I am not quite sure on how you would go about fixing your problem. Maybe run a bios flash update or a motherboard driver update. I think that the best solution for you would be to put your drive, if you have under four, on the onboard ATA-66 controler. The onboard Promise ATA-100 controler does not give you any better speed, because there are no drives that can currently use the full bandwith potential of ATA-66. I believe that Windows 98 SE recogonizes the Promise controler as a SCSI controller. My advise is to just put all of your drives onto the regular ATA-66 controler, which will work fine until you have more than four drives or until you have a drive that is faster then ATA-66 supports.

 

[TheAntipop]

My problem is not with the ATA100 controller but with the main IDE Controller itself, thats why I am putting my drives on the 100 channel instead of the 66. Im gonna try the Bios 1004c update for the mobo, then install the latest 4in1 drivers, hope it works!

 

[TheAntipop]

OK, the flash program that I got off Asus' website wont run properly. Windows reports illegal operations and shuts it down. So does anyone know how or where I can get a program to install the BIOS update for the ASUS A7V?

 

[RavenPrime]

It sounds like you are trying to use the windows bios flash. It worked fine on my system but that is after I upgraded Win98. Try the DOS bios update--it is also available from the Asus website.
Also, is the "update bios" setting enabled in your bios?

James

 

[Guest]

I hope you've solved your problem by now. I had a similar problem with the os not recognizing the cd rom. Eventually we solved the problem by making the hard drive and cdrom masters each on its own separate cable. Then everything worked fine.

 

[Guest]

OK i have just built a AMD thunderbird 800mhz on the A7V platform, 128mb pc133 ram, 32mb nVIDA tnt2 video, hp9350i cd-r, 19" monitor, IBM 20gig 7200rpm ata100 HD, internal zip, creative live value soundcard - this machine rocks but i did have problems getting the win98se OS installed when i had the disk in the ATA100 slot - i ended up loading the OS via the dma 33 slots and then installing the primrose scsi driver after and then shifting the HD to the ATA100 slot, all worked fine - this machine is now a rocketship, you have to make sure the primrose HD controler is set to load first b4 any other HD's in the bios lineup and that you have disabled HD's in the normal HD check within the bios.

one question though - can you have 8 ide devices with this board ? it would be of some help.

 

[TheAntipop]

yes you can have up to 9 ide devices, as for the things you guys have said, im tryin them now.

 

[Guest]

Try downloading and installing the updated promise driver from www.asus.com. I think that will fix it. Keep in mind that VIA chipsets have problems with CDRW and DMA (see FAQ on www.plextor.com and www.via.com.tw), and even Win98 has some DMA problems (look up article number Q235859 in the Knowledge Base).

The A7V won't run my Plextor 12/10/32A in DMA mode, it crashes the system or it isn't recognized outside of Device Manager. If I disable DMA for it in Device Manager, it works fine. The BIOS shows it as Mode 4 even though it is a UDMA 2 device.

You don't have to go through any special gyrations with the hard drive. I configured 2 A7V's with Win98 off the ATA100 controller without problems.

I have a DVD as the primary IDE master, the Plextor as the secondary IDE master and an IBM 75GXP on the ATA100 all working without problems, except for the DMA issue with the CDRW described above.

Jub

 

[acron1]

I had the same problem and this is what I did:
Go to your bios and enable both primary and secondary IDE channels. Then check and see if your CD-ROMs are there.
If not then go to Control Panel\Add/Remove Hardware and
manually install "primary PCI IDE controller" under "Disk controllers" reboot and you should be OK
Make sure you have VIA 4-1 drivers installed.
Good luck,
Steve.

 

[Guest]

I just built a duron 700 with a A7V and 64mb of crucial memory with a western digital ata 100 10.2 gb hard drive. I can only install win2k on it...it will not let me install win98se. When I install it it locks up the last time that it reboots before it starts up for the first time. I can only boot up in safe mode...and suggestions

 

[Guest]

AntiP....
Where do you get 9 ide devices from? I count 8 (4 channels x 2 = 8). Are you including the flopy or something. Please explain.

Thanks,
Al

 

[RavenPrime]

I had the same problem when I first setup my system. It hangs for about a minute but finally loads. It has to do with the hard drive driver not wanting to load. My system would bootup in logged mode just fine though--try it.
You need to update to the latest driver for the promise controller and the via 4in1 drivers.
Also make sure the bios setting is:
Onboard ATA device first [Yes]
1 or 2 Other boot device [SCSI/Onboard ATA Boot Device]

James