Ultra ATA 133 PCI skipping problem

[Peter]

Recently I upgraded from a Promise ATA 100 storage
controller to a Maxtor 133 Ultra ATA storage controller.
Since the upgrade my machine has begun to suffer
intermittent skipping when reading/writing to a disk on
the new controller. The correct drivers are installed.

For example my outlook *.pst is on this drive, so whenever
outlook receives email, the whole machine momentarily
freezes, the mouse skips across the screen and winamp
stutters.

Maxtor's advice is as follows:
------------------------------
I believe your problem relates to the hardware change when
you moved the drive from an ATA 100 card to the ATA 133
card. Windows XP is very sensitive to hardware changes
within the system. Since you moved the drive from one
interface to another, from the ATA 100 card to the ATA 133
card, it is likely this hardware change is giving XP
problems. The only real workaround for this issue is to
reinstall XP with the drive on the new controller card.
-------------------------------------------------------

Machine Specs:
--------------
- Dell 8100 Dimension
- P4 1.4Ghz
- 2GB RAM
- Win XP Pro
- No hardware conflicts/problems reported.

I am not sure I buy the advice from Maxtor - so before I
reinstall my OS from scratch I thought I should check here
for potentially more sensible advice..or at least
confirmation.

Any takers?

Thanks!

 

[Peter]

Found the answer to my problem so I figured I would post
here in case it helps someone else in future.

The problem is simply the current driver for the Promise
TX2 133 chipset on the controller card. For some reason
it's batty as hell and creates this stuttering effect
interrupting the operating system whenever
reading/writing. Apparently a PCI bus latency issue.

Anyway to fix it just use the older version 2.0.0.29
driver available for download from the promise website.

This totally rectified the problem. Glad I didn't
reinstall my entire OS as the Maxtor tech suggested. Why
is it that so many stupid people out there think that is
the universal remedy to any problem at all? Dicks.