HD's not recognised after reboot on PromiseUltra133TX2

[AlfaStation]

Trying to re-install win98SE from scratch on 80GB hd on PromiseUltra133TX2 controller on Asus Cusl2 mobo.
Whenever a re-boot occurs, the Promise controller doesn't recognise the HDD anymore and so the necesary
bios drivers are not loaded.
When i do a "cold" boot, the Promise 133TX2 bios does recognises HDD correctly and W98 setup allows me to start.
Setup verifies the hd and copies files to the newly formated C:-partition (6GB). But, as soon as setup restarts,
the Promise controller doesn't find any harddrives attached and setup cannot continue.
At that point I am forced to do a cold-boot and the hd is recognised again and (usually) setup continues where it left off.
After several tries and many hard/cold re-boots i finaly manage to get win98 installed, but then,
as soon as i install either the Asus chipset drivers or the Promise TX2controller drivers,
Win98 starts freezing over and over and after a few cold-reboots it's as if the boot-sector gets messed up
and i have to start everything all over again.

Specs:
on Asus Cusl2
IDE 0 (M): Nec1300A-DVD-/+RW
IDE 0 (S): Plexwriter 161040
IDE 1 (M): LiteOn DVD-rom
IDE 1 (S): LiteOn CDRW 321240

on Promise Ultra 133 TX2 controller
channel 1 (M): ( - disconnected for now - 40GB HDD 7200 ata100 - with win2k intalled for duall boot later-on)
channel 1 (S): ( - disconnected for now - 30GB HDD 7200 ata100)
channel 2 (M): 80GB HDD 7200 ata100
channel 2 (S): ( - disconnected for now - 120GB HDD 7200 ata133)

P III 733 (5.5x133mhz not overclocked -for the time beeing)
128+256 SDRam 133mhz
Ati Radeon 7200 AIW (AGP)
SBlive 1024 player
Pinnacle PCTV rage

Any suggestions?
Or am i forced to do a compleet install of win98 first using one of the IDE channels on Asus mobo,
and afterwards move the hd to the Promise controller? (which has worked like that before...)

[TotalChaos]

I'm not sure what your exact problem is. I'll mention that it might be a driver issue.... win98 doesn't allow installation of a RAID controller driver during initial setup. Does the RAID controller BIOS forget the HDD drive? Like is there ever a time during boot that you notice the 80GB HDD missing from the RAID BIOS HDD list? Also make sure the HDD is labeled as a bootable drive/array.

[AlfaStation]

That's correct. When i'm doing a "cold" boot, the controller's Bios recognises the 80GB HD, but upon the "reboots" (during the W98 setup) the HD is NOT recognised anymore by the controller's bios.

Maybe you're right about win98 not allowing a fresh setup when it's on a controller (ps: it's NOT a Raid controller b.t.w., but an ATA133 controller)

So, after almost losing all data on my 120GB data HardDisk (setup created a new primary partition on that for some reason, and i can't seem to get rid of it...) I dicided to tackle the problem the other way round:
Setup:
on Asus Cusl2 motherboard (Intel 815E chipset)
IDE 0 (M): Nec1300A-DVD-/+RW
IDE 0 (S): Plexwriter 161040
IDE 1 (M): 40GB HDD 7200 ata100 - with win2k intalled
IDE 1 (S): 30GB HDD 7200 ata100
on Promise Ultra 133 TX2 controller
-nothing installed-

Result: Everyting works perfect. W2kPro (SP4) takes about 1'20min to fully load (...nice and fast)

Now, when i move the HD's with Win2k to the Promise UltraATA133tx2 controller, Win2k takes AGES to load (5'20min to be exact).
So-far I've tried 2 different driver versions 2.0.0.39 and 2.0.0.42.
I also swapped the controller to another PCI-slot and tried it on PCI1, giving it "high priority" in bios. Nothing makes any difference.
It acts as if it is working in Pio-mode.
It does however (upon a reboot) keep recognising HD's correctly.

Can anyone help...pls...?

[AlfaStation]

So-far the set-up below works best, but people on other forums advise to put all ATAPI (optical-drives) on the motherboard.

On Asus CusL2 (Latest Bios-chipset 815E-PIII 733)
IDE0 (Master) Barracuda III ST340824A - 40GB (W2kPro/SP4)
IDE0 (Slave) Barracuda IV ST380021A - 80GB (W98SE)
IDE1 (Master) NEC ND1300A - DVDRW
IDE1 (Slave) Plextor PX-W1610A - CDRW

On Promise Ultra/ATA133 TX2 (latest Bios & drivers)
1 (Master) IBM Deskstar DTLA307030 - 30GB (only data)
1 (Slave) Maxtor 133 DiamondmaxPlus9 - 120GB (only data)
2 (Master) LiteOn DVD LTD163 - DVDrom
2 (Slave) LiteOn LTR-32123S - CDRW

I tried several different setup-combinations, but the above seems to be the only more or less "stable" setup so i could install and properly boot both OS's (I choose which of them i boot directly from bios, so as to keep W98 & W2k completely seperate).
Other Problems I encountered:
- Booting W2k from the Promise controller takes +/-10min. for windows to load and 3min to shut down (+/-1'30min to load on IDE)
- When the bootable HD-drives are on the Promise controller they make a strange "TIC-TIC....TIC-TIC" noise.
- Similarly, the Plextor "dislikes" beeing on the Promise controller. (gave me all sorts of "strange" problems, so moved it to IDE)
- And Nero Info Tool crashes if an optical/ATAPI drive is connected to the controller.

Any ideas? Suggestions? Tests i can do to see if everything runs ok?
I allready tested with DiskSpeed32 (for HDD read), DVDDecryptor (for DVD-rip speeds) and CDEX (for DAE-speeds). Results seem normal.

Oh, and did i mention my HDD's get real hot: +/- 43°C? Or is that a normal temp.?

Greetz, -Alfa-

[TotalChaos]

The only thing sticking out in my mind is that your controller card may be on its way out. There are many controller cards that don't support anything but HDD, but I can't say about your promise card. The only noise making things in the HDD are the spindle and the read/write heads. Tic-Tic-Tic sounds like the heads are being used. No answer as to why the controller would constantly move the heads. As far a nero goes I had a similar problem.... it wasn;t untill I upgraded the CD-Burner's firmware that the problem stopped. One last thing, with all those drives running make sure your power supply is enough to handle the burden or many problems will occur or continue to occur. The boot time thing I have def experienced, but with win XP instead of win 2000. I can't tell you what the exact problem is, but I too used a promise controller. (mine was a RAID controller) Instead of installing win 2000 on the mobo IDE then moving it too the PCI controller card, try pressing F6 during win 2000 install and completing a full win 2000 install with the drive connected to the PCI controller.

PS sorry for the rambling answers/questions...... am probably too tired to think straight!!!

[AlfaStation]

Problem solved:

- Running full diagnostics on all HDD did not reveal any errors. HDD's passed all tests with flying colors.
- Moving Promise controller to PCI-slot 2 or slot 6 did not help.
- switching cables did not work.
- Having just W2k on the controller made no difference.
- Using different bios-versions for the controller changed nothing.


BUT-------

"Instead of installing win 2000 on the mobo IDE then moving it to the PCI controller card, try pressing F6 during win2000 install and completing a full win 2000 install with the drive connected to the PCI controller."

-------DID WORK!


So, in order to get everything working properly for a duall boot-setup i have to:



1) Install W98se on the motherboard's IDE controller, then move it to the Promise controller.

2) Install W2k directly on the Promise controller, NOT move it from the mobo to the controller.




Thanks to everyone who helped me with this and thanks in particular to "TotalChaos" from the Doom9 forum who suggested the above.



-Alfa-