I/O error

[RJK]

Oh Dear -

I've been leisurely working away, off and on for days, on a friends PC
(Pcchips M830 / xp1800+ / 512mbPC2700 / 40gbST340810A + 40gb2B020H1 on IDE0
/ Panasonic slot loading dvd ROM + Liteon cd rw on IDE1),
and after zero-filling IDE0, installed XP Home ed., installed (downloaded
from SIS), ide bus master drivers, 7012 onboard sound driver and AGP Gart
driver and all seemed lovely.

First sign of a problem was when I tried to drag a directory off a dvd+r and
onto C:\ The progress bar in the "file copy" box that pops up only went
about half an inch and stayed like that for ages and then I got a big
rectangular error box :- "The task could not be completed because there was
an I/O error."

Yesterday, I found that copying directories from master hd to slave hd, and
vice-versa, generates the same error. I rolled the SIS ide driver back to
the one that XP put in and this still happens.

There are two slave hd's located just below the master hd and I have been
swapping the slave drive ide plug from one to the other for various reasons
.....haven't swapped out the ide ribbon yet

Do you think this motherboards gone bang ?

Any tips appreciated.

TIA

regards, Richard

 

[Jay]

Oh Dear -

I've been leisurely working away, off and on for days, on a friends PC
(Pcchips M830 / xp1800+ / 512mbPC2700 / 40gbST340810A + 40gb2B020H1 on
IDE0 / Panasonic slot loading dvd ROM + Liteon cd rw on IDE1),
and after zero-filling IDE0, installed XP Home ed., installed (downloaded
from SIS), ide bus master drivers, 7012 onboard sound driver and AGP Gart
driver and all seemed lovely.

First sign of a problem was when I tried to drag a directory off a dvd+r
and onto C:\ The progress bar in the "file copy" box that pops up only
went about half an inch and stayed like that for ages and then I got a big
rectangular error box :- "The task could not be completed because there
was an I/O error."

Yesterday, I found that copying directories from master hd to slave hd,
and vice-versa, generates the same error. I rolled the SIS ide driver
back to the one that XP put in and this still happens.

There are two slave hd's located just below the master hd and I have been
swapping the slave drive ide plug from one to the other for various
reasons ....haven't swapped out the ide ribbon yet

Do you think this motherboards gone bang ?

Any tips appreciated.

TIA

regards, Richard

On both occasions I've had similar problems it's been faulty ram.
Do you have some spare sticks that you can mix and match to test the theory?

Jay

 

[RJK]

Thanks Jay

Memory is OK ...a distant bell ! ...reminded me of a problem with these
M830 boards and certain problems with certain IDE boards on certain brand
hard-disks !
I think that if I reduce the data transfer speed on the IDE0 ribbon, (it is
80 core!), down to ATA66/UDMA4/ 66mhz, from ATA/100 UDMA5 100mhz my problem
should go away. I've forgotten how to do that as well !

The SIS IDE utility was reporting that both hd's were running ATA100 / UDMA5
but, one of the slave drive hd's is an IBM-IC35L040AVNN07-0 and it's ide
board supports up to UDMA6/ATA133-mhz. In other words, there is the odd
condition where even though bios/hd IDE has set ATA100 for both drives, hd
manufacturer incompatibilities mean that a Seagate/or WD as master with a
IBM Deskstar as slave could be happy with ATA66 but, not ATA100
....having uttered that rubbish, (just babbling while Windows is on its way
in on that PC),

The slave drive should default to the same speed as the Master drive
i.e. a newer slave drive will only run at ATA100 if that's the max. spec. on
the master hd - if you see what I mean.

Barring a knackered IDE ribbon, (where I've been pluggin and unplugging'em),
am currently reinstalling Windows ! ...going to check out file copy
operations across hd's with XP's generic SIS 735 chipset ide driver in place
before I start tweaking !!!

regards, Richard

 

[RJK]

THANK GOODNESS for that !

....swapped out IDE0 ribbon | reinstalled Windows with 2nd hd unplugged |
changed dvd reader & cd rewriter drives on IDE1 to letters Y and Z | plugged
in slave hd on IDE0 (d:\) | copied XP Home cd-rom onto drive D:\ | ...then
copied it from d:\ to c:\ ...no sign of an I/O error ....HEAVEN !

I soooo love his "old" system box now !

....now I am about to install SiS 735 agp/ide/7012sound drivers ...I wonder
if I ought to use the ones that came on the PCChips lottery cd-rom rather
than the ones I collected from SiS ?

If I make a system restore point and install the SiS ide driver and get the
I/O error back, will restoring that restore point, (taken whilst XP's
generic ide driver is in place), "roll-back" to that driver, if you see what
I mean ? ...or have I got use that horrid "backup system state" in XP's
backup program ? ...I suppose I could Ghost ..mumble...mumble....

regards, Richard