Should I Do This?

[Bill Anderson]

A couple of months ago -- some of you may even remember this -- I
replaced the 1.9 GHz P4 in my P4T-E mbo with a 2.8 GHz P4 that I bought
from Powerleap: http://www.powerleap.com/

The new processor works fine and I've noticed an improvement in
performance. Nice. I ought to be happy.

But.

I have installed Windows XP Media Edition on a spare partition (I have a
multi-boot system). It's working OK, and I wanted to use it to run the
tuner on my ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 AGP video card. But WinXP's Media
Center wouldn't recognize the tuner. So I went to the ATI site and
discovered that in order for Windows to recognize and control the
All-In-Wonder's tuner, I needed special drivers that cost me $30
including shipping.

OK, so I bought the drivers from those cheapskates at ATI, but when I
tried to load them, the installation program told me that the
installation failed because my processor didn't support Hyperthreading.
Looks like my new processor is fast, but it's still old technology.
Sigh.

So I've been looking for new equipment that will support Hyperthreading.
Why? Why not be satisfied with what I have? I dunno. That's part of
the question I'm asking, I suppose. Maybe I should be happy with what I
have.

It looks like if I want hyperthreading, I'll need to replace both my
processor and my motherboard, which also means I'll need new DDR2 memory.

So I've been shopping and I've found (at Monarch Computer Systems) the
following:

Asus P5AD2 Premium Mbo for $269
Intel P4 Prescott 3.2 GHz 800 FSB processor with fan for $224
1 Gb Corsair DDR2 (667) PC-5400 RAM in two matched 512 Mb sticks for $365

And that totals $858.

Now it's not worth $858 to me just for the pride of watching WinXP Media
Edition run my video card's tuner. I already have ATI software that
will run the tuner. But I figure it might be worth it if I ended up
with a blazing fast machine that would enable me to manipulate, edit,
and compress video noticeably faster than I can now. I do a lot of work
with large video files.

I'm not wealthy, but I do have $858 to spend if I choose to. I just
wonder if it's worth it.

The new mbo will have only three PCI slots, but with onboard sound and
LAN, I can get by with just three (fax modem, SCSI, and HDTV Wonder).
And the new board would have USB 2, which would be an improvement over
the USB ports on my P4T-E. And it would have a few other neat features,
some of which I don't fully understand yet.

But apparently the new board will support only two IDE devices on one
cable. Can that be correct? That's what the manual I downloaded says,
I think. However, it looks like there are two IDE sockets. And the
manual says something about configuring SATA as standard IDE. So maybe
I could intall my three EIDE hard drives and one IDE DVD-R drive on the
new board just as I have them installed on my current board? Could I?
My 120 Gbyte and 250 Gbyte drives are both Western Digital and appear to
be ATA100. My Maxtor 40 Gbyte drive appears to be ATA133. I want these
drives to be in my new system. I need the space, and as best I can
tell, even if I bought three new Serial ATA drives, they couldn't hold
this much data.

I've never set up a RAID array. Hardly even know the principles behind
such a thing. Could I set up my current drives in a RAID array with
this new board?

I'm not an overclocker. So I worry that the P5AD2 has more capabilities
than I actually need.

That's about it. Those are the thoughts going through my head. Anybody
got any advice or words of caution? Thanks.

 

[DonC]

A couple of months ago -- some of you may even remember this -- I replaced
the 1.9 GHz P4 in my P4T-E mbo with a 2.8 GHz P4 that I bought from
Powerleap: http://www.powerleap.com/

The new processor works fine and I've noticed an improvement in
performance. Nice. I ought to be happy.

But.

I have installed Windows XP Media Edition on a spare partition (I have a
multi-boot system). It's working OK, and I wanted to use it to run the
tuner on my ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 AGP video card. But WinXP's Media
Center wouldn't recognize the tuner. So I went to the ATI site and
discovered that in order for Windows to recognize and control the
All-In-Wonder's tuner, I needed special drivers that cost me $30 including
shipping.

OK, so I bought the drivers from those cheapskates at ATI, but when I
tried to load them, the installation program told me that the installation
failed because my processor didn't support Hyperthreading. Looks like my
new processor is fast, but it's still old technology. Sigh.

So I've been looking for new equipment that will support Hyperthreading.
Why? Why not be satisfied with what I have? I dunno. That's part of the
question I'm asking, I suppose. Maybe I should be happy with what I have.

It looks like if I want hyperthreading, I'll need to replace both my
processor and my motherboard, which also means I'll need new DDR2 memory.

So I've been shopping and I've found (at Monarch Computer Systems) the
following:

Asus P5AD2 Premium Mbo for $269
Intel P4 Prescott 3.2 GHz 800 FSB processor with fan for $224
1 Gb Corsair DDR2 (667) PC-5400 RAM in two matched 512 Mb sticks for $365

And that totals $858.

Now it's not worth $858 to me just for the pride of watching WinXP Media
Edition run my video card's tuner. I already have ATI software that will
run the tuner. But I figure it might be worth it if I ended up with a
blazing fast machine that would enable me to manipulate, edit, and
compress video noticeably faster than I can now. I do a lot of work with
large video files.

I'm not wealthy, but I do have $858 to spend if I choose to. I just
wonder if it's worth it.

If you do, buy it from newegg and save some money --- $830 shipped.

 

[Bill Anderson]

If you do, buy it from newegg and save some money --- $830 shipped.

But Newegg doesn't have the mbo in stock. I checked there first.

 

[DonC]

But Newegg doesn't have the mbo in stock. I checked there first.

Right you are. FWIW, they do have the P4 3.0 on special for $192 shipped.
Is point 2 worth $32 more? : )

 

[Paul]

A couple of months ago -- some of you may even remember this -- I
replaced the 1.9 GHz P4 in my P4T-E mbo with a 2.8 GHz P4 that I bought
from Powerleap: http://www.powerleap.com/

The new processor works fine and I've noticed an improvement in
performance. Nice. I ought to be happy.

But.

I have installed Windows XP Media Edition on a spare partition (I have a
multi-boot system). It's working OK, and I wanted to use it to run the
tuner on my ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 AGP video card. But WinXP's Media
Center wouldn't recognize the tuner. So I went to the ATI site and
discovered that in order for Windows to recognize and control the
All-In-Wonder's tuner, I needed special drivers that cost me $30
including shipping.

OK, so I bought the drivers from those cheapskates at ATI, but when I
tried to load them, the installation program told me that the
installation failed because my processor didn't support Hyperthreading.
Looks like my new processor is fast, but it's still old technology.
Sigh.

So I've been looking for new equipment that will support Hyperthreading.
Why? Why not be satisfied with what I have? I dunno. That's part of
the question I'm asking, I suppose. Maybe I should be happy with what I
have.

It looks like if I want hyperthreading, I'll need to replace both my
processor and my motherboard, which also means I'll need new DDR2 memory.

So I've been shopping and I've found (at Monarch Computer Systems) the
following:

Asus P5AD2 Premium Mbo for $269
Intel P4 Prescott 3.2 GHz 800 FSB processor with fan for $224
1 Gb Corsair DDR2 (667) PC-5400 RAM in two matched 512 Mb sticks for $365

And that totals $858.

Now it's not worth $858 to me just for the pride of watching WinXP Media
Edition run my video card's tuner. I already have ATI software that
will run the tuner. But I figure it might be worth it if I ended up
with a blazing fast machine that would enable me to manipulate, edit,
and compress video noticeably faster than I can now. I do a lot of work
with large video files.

I'm not wealthy, but I do have $858 to spend if I choose to. I just
wonder if it's worth it.

The new mbo will have only three PCI slots, but with onboard sound and
LAN, I can get by with just three (fax modem, SCSI, and HDTV Wonder).
And the new board would have USB 2, which would be an improvement over
the USB ports on my P4T-E. And it would have a few other neat features,
some of which I don't fully understand yet.

But apparently the new board will support only two IDE devices on one
cable. Can that be correct? That's what the manual I downloaded says,
I think. However, it looks like there are two IDE sockets. And the
manual says something about configuring SATA as standard IDE. So maybe
I could intall my three EIDE hard drives and one IDE DVD-R drive on the
new board just as I have them installed on my current board? Could I?
My 120 Gbyte and 250 Gbyte drives are both Western Digital and appear to
be ATA100. My Maxtor 40 Gbyte drive appears to be ATA133. I want these
drives to be in my new system. I need the space, and as best I can
tell, even if I bought three new Serial ATA drives, they couldn't hold
this much data.

I've never set up a RAID array. Hardly even know the principles behind
such a thing. Could I set up my current drives in a RAID array with
this new board?

I'm not an overclocker. So I worry that the P5AD2 has more capabilities
than I actually need.

That's about it. Those are the thoughts going through my head. Anybody
got any advice or words of caution? Thanks.

I would break the problem down into two pieces.

1) Find a PCI tuner card that MCE understands and supports. I wouldn't
have paid ATI money for software, instead investing in a different
tuner. The idea being, the video card can evolve separate from
the tuner, and I can shop for the best tuner (i.e. best output
modes, for PVR purposes, or best output modes for uncompressed
video, which may offer improved quality for post processing). A
company selling a tuner alone, has more to gain from making it
versatile/supported, then when it is bolted to the side of a
gaming video card.
2) Investigate the best way to manipulate, edit, and compress
video. When it comes to hardware, there are some PCI cards
that are used for special effects (with a co-processor for
compression), that can provide some benefit. But many of the
more exotic special effects are still done with the motherboard
processor, so unfortunately, even though the PCI hardware
is expensive, it doesn't solve the whole problem on its own.
Check out rec.video.desktop and seek their advice.

I cannot help but feel right now, that the 915/925 family is,
itself, a dead end. Yes, it offers the LGA775 socket, and that
aligns with Intel's mainstream plans. But, to me, that is all
it offers right now. All that it does, is add the expense of
conversion to SATA, PCI Express Video, DDR2 memory, and so on.
You have a motherboard, with a compromise mix of PCI/PCI Express
connectors, which is a problem if you run a bunch of special
PCI cards for what you do.

Intel gave us the stick, but they forgot the carrot.

And, with the move to dual core processors, I'm not sure that
in the future, people will want to upgrade to a dual core
processor, only to have to re-buy all their application software,
which will have to be coded to use multiple processors/threads.
There hasn't been a pronounced move in that direction, even
though the idea has been around for a while, so don't expect
software that can use both processors in a dual core, any
time soon. (Sure, you can use two separate programs to good
effect, but to me that is not seamless - the user has to think
about keeping both cores busy.)

I guess my answer to you would be, buy a P4C800-E, some DDR
memory (CAS3 is good enough), a Northwood processor (or whatever
you can afford in a socket 478 processor, before they are completely
gone from the market). That way, you'll have PCI slots,
slightly cheaper memory etc. With two IDE connectors on the
Southbridge, that is support for four drives right there.
(Intel, on the new boards with ICH6, has four SATA and two
IDE drives supported, to transition away from IDE.)

If you are a cheapskate, you could even buy a lower speed
processor, and overclock it.

The idea behind overclocking, is not to run the core faster than
the processor family can handle, but to enhance the speed the
memory can be run at. Buying the slower speed processor is so
you get a lower multiplier, and can run the FSB/memory faster.
Visit http://www.cpudatabase.com/CPUdb and see what the average
overclock is, for a given processor. For example, a 2.8C can be
run at 3.4GHz, meaning the memory can be run DDR500 instead of
DDR400.

(Mostly) Newegg prices:

Overclocker approach -
P4C800-E Deluxe $179
2.8C/FSB800/512KB ($191 retail w. HSF, $181 OEM w. no HSF, for a Zalman)
2x512MB PC4000 DDR memory 3-4-4-8 or better $277
Optional: Zalman 7000A/B AlCu quieter cooling $32
Total = $669 for a 3.4GHz system

Conservative approach -
P4C800-E Deluxe $179
3.2C/FSB800/512KB ($249 with HSF)
2x512MB PC3200 DDR memory 3-3-3-8 or better 2x$96 (crucial.com)
Total = $620 for a 3.2Ghz system

There are other approaches, like P5P800, if you only want to
go LGA775, and keep the rest of the legacy interfaces. I don't
know how problem free this board has been, so you may want to
investigate via Google or Abxzone forums.

In all of the above, I haven't mentioned AMD. My reason for
not mentioning them, is if you decide to buy a hardware video
acceleration card, some companies don't support AMD platforms
that well. If all you want to do is software video editing, it
is possible an Athlon64 solution would work for you as well.
After all, the AMD boards are still AGP/PCI/DDR, so they will
allow reuse of your other hardware. No hyperthreading, of
course, for any software installers stupid enough to
actually mandate its use.

A8V Deluxe (Athlon64, Socket 939, dual channel) $129
Athlon64 3500+ retail with HSF $283
2x512MB PC3200 DDR memory 3-3-3-8 or better 2x$96 (crucial.com)
Total: $604

HTH,
Paul

 

[Venom]

You should take this project right to the finish because you will forever be
wondering if it could do better than it is.
Money is only money and you can`t take it with you if you died tomorrow.
Finish your project in a full and complete manner.

 

[Noozer]

So I've been shopping and I've found (at Monarch Computer Systems) the
following:

Asus P5AD2 Premium Mbo for $269
Intel P4 Prescott 3.2 GHz 800 FSB processor with fan for $224
1 Gb Corsair DDR2 (667) PC-5400 RAM in two matched 512 Mb sticks for $365

And that totals $858.

Don't forget to add in a few hunder dollars worth of frustration when
dealing with Monarch.

If it all goes smooth, great, but if you got a problem expect to spend a few
months dealing with them in trying to resolve the issue. I ordered a bunch
of stuff from them back in August and I'm STILL waiting to get the order
completed. When you call them they will tell you anything just to get you
off the phone and then do whatever they feel like.

Avoid Monarch at all costs.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Paul wrote:

Thanks, Paul, and thanks to all the others who commented. Based on the
responses, I've decided NOT to "do this." Like an idiot I hadn't even
noticed that with the new mbo I'd even need a new video card. I'd been
planning to use my AGP card from ATI which lets me output to either or
both my monitor and my plasma screen TV which has monitor input (AIW
9600). If I were to buy the new mbo it would almost be like starting
all over with all new components. No thanks. I'll just forego Windows
Media Edition. I don't need it after all.

However, Paul, I'll keep thinking about your suggestion for a more
modest setup. I just might go that direction. You spent a lot of time
writing your response. I really do appreciate it.

 

[Bill Anderson]

Conservative approach -
P4C800-E Deluxe $179
3.2C/FSB800/512KB ($249 with HSF)
2x512MB PC3200 DDR memory 3-3-3-8 or better 2x$96 (crucial.com)
Total = $620 for a 3.2Ghz system

OK, Paul, all this arrived today, exactly what you recommended, from
Newegg and Crucial. I shopped and checked and compared and
double-checked and I frankly I couldn't come up with a better plan.

So...if you hear back from me tonight, it worked! If you dont't hear
back from me, well ...

 

[Bill Anderson]

OK, Paul, all this arrived today, exactly what you recommended, from
Newegg and Crucial. I shopped and checked and compared and
double-checked and I frankly I couldn't come up with a better plan.

So...if you hear back from me tonight, it worked! If you dont't hear
back from me, well ...

Wow. That took quite a bit longer than I'd anticipated. The hardware is
fine as it turns out, though I didn't think so at first. But I've spent
about 12 hours just getting to the point that I can install WinXP and get on
the Internet.

I use a single physical drive with three partitions for my triple-boot
system. Win98 on C:, WinXP on E: and I use D: for experimenting with other
OS's like Linux and as it happens WinXP Media Edition recently. All my data
files are on two other physical drives -- all Ultra DMA IDE, no SATA drives.

Before I began putting the new system together I'd formatted C: and left it
empty, and I'd left WinXP Media Edition and WinXP SP2 in their respective
partitions untouched.

Well when I'd installed all my hardware and turned on the system, Win98
wouldn't even begin to load on C:. Win98 told me that there were no setup
files. And WinXP would begin to load, but then I'd get an error message
telling me that it had found "multiple disks that appeared as one disk, or a
raw disk." What did that mean?

Well, finally, after many hours of frustration playing with the BIOS and
rearranging cables and making this a master and that a slave and over and
over again, I booted with a trusty old WinME boot disk and ran FDISK (which
would not run from the Win98 or WinXP installation disks) and saw that my
drive and partitions were just fine -- just as I'd left them. And with the
WinME boot, I could see the setup program on the Win98 disk. So I just ran
it, and as Win98 began installing I got an error message about Drive D.
Win98 didn't like the partition that had WinXP Media Edition installed in
it. Something about LBA not being right.

So I just formatted the partition that had WinXP Media Edition in it and
voila -- the problems *seem* to have gone away. I still have two more
drives to install on the secondary IDE channel. We'll see how that goes.

But right now, with my system stripped of all unnecessary hardware, I've
successfully installed Win98 and WinXP.

Why am I typing all this? I'm so relieved I just had to tell somebody, I
guess.

Now back to work.

Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Frustrated Favog

 

[Bill Anderson]

Wow. That took quite a bit longer than I'd anticipated. The hardware is
fine as it turns out, though I didn't think so at first. But I've spent
about 12 hours just getting to the point that I can install WinXP and get on
the Internet.

I use a single physical drive with three partitions for my triple-boot
system. Win98 on C:, WinXP on E: and I use D: for experimenting with other
OS's like Linux and as it happens WinXP Media Edition recently. All my data
files are on two other physical drives -- all Ultra DMA IDE, no SATA drives.

Before I began putting the new system together I'd formatted C: and left it
empty, and I'd left WinXP Media Edition and WinXP SP2 in their respective
partitions untouched.

Well when I'd installed all my hardware and turned on the system, Win98
wouldn't even begin to load on C:. Win98 told me that there were no setup
files. And WinXP would begin to load, but then I'd get an error message
telling me that it had found "multiple disks that appeared as one disk, or a
raw disk." What did that mean?

Well, finally, after many hours of frustration playing with the BIOS and
rearranging cables and making this a master and that a slave and over and
over again, I booted with a trusty old WinME boot disk and ran FDISK (which
would not run from the Win98 or WinXP installation disks) and saw that my
drive and partitions were just fine -- just as I'd left them. And with the
WinME boot, I could see the setup program on the Win98 disk. So I just ran
it, and as Win98 began installing I got an error message about Drive D.
Win98 didn't like the partition that had WinXP Media Edition installed in
it. Something about LBA not being right.

So I just formatted the partition that had WinXP Media Edition in it and
voila -- the problems *seem* to have gone away. I still have two more
drives to install on the secondary IDE channel. We'll see how that goes.

But right now, with my system stripped of all unnecessary hardware, I've
successfully installed Win98 and WinXP.

Why am I typing all this? I'm so relieved I just had to tell somebody, I
guess.

Now back to work.

Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Frustrated Favog

Still frustrated. I thought I had the problem licked, so I re-Fdisked and
re-formatted the three partitions on my OS hard drive and tried to
reinstall. Suddenly nothing would work anymore.

I was running a triple-boot system on my P4T-E, and I want to duplicate it
on my new P4C800 E Deluxe (described by Paul above). I had it working fine
like this on the P4T-E:

Three FAT32 partitions on the 40 gig Maxtor ATA 133 physical boot drive:

A: 3.5" floppy
C: Partition 0 - FAT32 Win98 (If you have Win98 on a multi-boot system, it
must be C:.)
D: A separate EIDE ATA100 WD 120 gig physical drive formatted NTFS and
currently loaded with lots of data very very important to me. I have a
reasonably recent backup.
E: Partition 1 - FAT32 Win2K sometimes, WinXP Media Edition sometimes. Even
Linux sometimes, though it wasn't FAT32 then. I used this partition just for
experimenting.
F: Partition 2 - FAT32 WinXP (default boot)
G: External SCSI Zip Drive
H: Internal SCSI CD-ROM drive
I: Internal SCSI CD-RW drive
J: Internal IDE DVD-RW drive. I can boot from this drive.
K: A third separate EIDE physical drive WD ATA100 formatted NTFS (250 gig)
and currently loaded with data -- mostly replacable video files.

Remember -- all this mixing of FAT32 and NTFS and various operating systems
worked great on the P4T-E. It was a robust system. Very very robust. My
old system worked great. My new system .... argh. So far, anyway.

Now ...

When I try to install Win98, the DOS setup screen announces that it can't
find the setup program on the disk and installation quits.

When I try to install WinXP the blue setup screen appears and lots of files
load and then the blue setup screen announces, "Setup has either detected
multiple disks in your machine that are indistinguishable or detected raw
disk(s). Setup has corrected the problem, but a reboot is required. Setup
cannot continue. Press any key to exit. (Of course, when I reboot I get
the same error).

So how did I install an operating system to type this message? I cheated
with Win98. I booted with an old WinME boot disk and from there I could see
the Win98 setup program if I put the Win98 disk in the first CD-ROM drive
(H. So I ran Setup from H: and even though I got some complaints from
Win98 including a few hang-ups during installation, I actually got Win98
working on C: with ethernet and video drivers installed. So here I am,
posting to Usenet with Outlook Express. Not my favorite news client, but it
works in a pinch.

I have set BIOS as follows:

Onboard IDE Operate Mode: Compatible Mode P-ATA only. This is supposed to
give me a master and slave on Primary IDE, and a master and slave on
Secondary IDE. And in fact, all four of these devices show up in bios and
they look like they're working fine. I've played around a good bit more
with BIOS, but I've finally begun focusing only on this area as a possible
cause of my problem. I can't find anything else that seems suspicious to
me.

On my old system I could boot from the first SCSI disk -- maybe even the
other one, though I'm not sure about that. The new system recognizes that
there is a bootable CD in the SCSI CD-ROM, -- it announces this at bootup --
but it skips right over the disk. Won't boot.

Everything I've described worked beautifully on the P4T-E. But not on the
P4C800-E. What is different now? Do I need to flash bios, maybe? Any
other ideas?

Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Depressed Favog

 

[Paul]

Migrating OSes is painful. Many people would suggest installing
from scratch. There are apparently some rules for install
order of the Microsoft OSes, and even some combinations that
don't mix. So, your experience is not surprising.

One thing that worked for me (migrating just Win2K to my new system)
was to replace the chipset IDE driver with the default Microsoft
one. Once the OS is set up that way, install the new motherboard.
As long as the default Microsoft driver will also work with the
new motherboard, the system just might boot. It did for me.
Before doing that, I would get a blue screen when Windows attempted
to start using the driver that the old motherboard was using.
So, the trick is to find an IDE driver that works with both
the old and new system, and the default Microsoft IDE driver
does that for many combinations of boards. (The only problem
I couldn't seem to fix, is getting AGP texture acceleration to
work. I had a new video card, but I don't think that contributed
to whatever the problem was. I even tried using driver cleaners.
A clean install on another disk fixed that.)

Part of the boot process is done with INT 0x13 calls to the
BIOS. Once the OS is ready to go, it switches over to using its
own driver, and that is when you find out whether the IDE driver
on the old install will work on the new one or not.

The "compatible" setting is the most convenient setting to use
for installing multiple OSes, at the expense of only being able
to connect 4 disk drives to the Southbridge (of the 6 possible
max). Switching the BIOS back and forth between "compatible"
and "enhanced" would be painful and not worth it.

I would say you've still got a long way to go, before you
get your environment back the way it was. Installing the
hardware is the easy part.

Paul

 

[Bill Anderson]

Migrating OSes is painful. Many people would suggest installing
from scratch.

Thanks for the respose, Paul. But installing from scratch is exactly what
I'm doing. I'm trying to install on freshly Fdisked and formatted
partitions.

After sleeping on it I've begun to wonder if I shouldn't focus on why I
can't boot from my SCSI CD-ROM. Any ideas why that would have changed from
the P4T-E to the P4C800-E? The SCSI card reports there's a bootable disk in
the drive, but it doesn't boot from it.

Bill Anderson

There are apparently some rules for install

 

[WoofWoof]

Migrating OSes is painful. Many people would suggest installing
from scratch. There are apparently some rules for install
order of the Microsoft OSes, and even some combinations that
don't mix. So, your experience is not surprising.

One thing that worked for me (migrating just Win2K to my new system)
was to replace the chipset IDE driver with the default Microsoft
one. Once the OS is set up that way, install the new motherboard.
As long as the default Microsoft driver will also work with the
new motherboard, the system just might boot. It did for me.
Before doing that, I would get a blue screen when Windows attempted
to start using the driver that the old motherboard was using.
So, the trick is to find an IDE driver that works with both
the old and new system, and the default Microsoft IDE driver
does that for many combinations of boards. (The only problem
I couldn't seem to fix, is getting AGP texture acceleration to
work. I had a new video card, but I don't think that contributed
to whatever the problem was. I even tried using driver cleaners.
A clean install on another disk fixed that.)

Microsoft's stance is that you *must* re-install the OS from scratch
when installing a new MB. The normally recommended way of ignoring MS
and doing it without a re-install is to delete the enum (under
hkey_local_machine) section of the registry (which deletes all
hardware information) before the MB swap which forces Windows to
redetect the hardware. (This way it would start off with the native
windows ide driver).

I used to prefer a variation of this method, by setting up a second
hardware profile (it can be a copy of the first). Now when you install
the MB and re-boot, the boot routine asks what profile to use and
gives a third option (none of the above). If you choose the latter,
Windows is again forced redetect the hardware. I also used to prefer
to uninstall the video driver before the MB install (even if not
changing the video setup) ... video drivers are too touchy by half.

If you simply swap the MB without making any changes, you really are
asking for trouble. Some people claim to have got it to work, but
generally after chasing drivers around for a week. The chances are you
will have problems and some of them may not be immediately apparent.

These days, I look at a MB swap as an housekeeping opportunity and
re-install the OS from scratch anyway. I go through and list all the
apps and utilities to se what I can get rid of (always more than 50%).
Dig up all the latest drivers etc. and start of with a nice clean,
light system.

 

[Bill Anderson]

These days, I look at a MB swap as an housekeeping opportunity and
re-install the OS from scratch anyway. I go through and list all the
apps and utilities to se what I can get rid of (always more than 50%).
Dig up all the latest drivers etc. and start of with a nice clean,
light system.

Thanks for the response Woofwoof. The frustrating part is that I agree with
everything you've said and I'm really and truly not trying to migrate an OS
from one mbo to another. I'm trying to install on a freshly Fdisked and
formatted hard drive.

In the BIOS I'm given the option of using only three boot devices, and I can
put them in any order. Floppy drive, Pioneer IDE DVD-RW, and C: partition
on the Maxtor. That's the order they're in now.

I can boot a Win98 or WinXP installation disk from the Pioneer, but I get
the funky errors from the installation programs that I mentioned earlier. I
was able to install Win98 only by putting it in a SCSI CD-ROM drive (where
it would NOT boot), booting with a WinME boot floppy, switching to the
CD-ROM from there, and finally running setup.exe.

Overnight I have dreamed up a couple of other things to try. Both involve
experimenting with boot order in BIOS. And I really want to figure out why
I can't boot from my internal SCSI CD-ROM now, when I could with the other
mbo.

Thanks again. If you have any further ideas, I'm all ears.

Bill Anderson

 

[Wim Zefat]

Op Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:13:23 -0500 schreef Bill Anderson:

Thanks for the response Woofwoof. The frustrating part is that I agree with
everything you've said and I'm really and truly not trying to migrate an OS
from one mbo to another. I'm trying to install on a freshly Fdisked and
formatted hard drive.

In the BIOS I'm given the option of using only three boot devices, and I can
put them in any order. Floppy drive, Pioneer IDE DVD-RW, and C: partition
on the Maxtor. That's the order they're in now.

I can boot a Win98 or WinXP installation disk from the Pioneer, but I get
the funky errors from the installation programs that I mentioned earlier. I
was able to install Win98 only by putting it in a SCSI CD-ROM drive (where
it would NOT boot), booting with a WinME boot floppy, switching to the
CD-ROM from there, and finally running setup.exe.

Overnight I have dreamed up a couple of other things to try. Both involve
experimenting with boot order in BIOS. And I really want to figure out why
I can't boot from my internal SCSI CD-ROM now, when I could with the other
mbo.

Thanks again. If you have any further ideas, I'm all ears.

Bill Anderson

If your P4C800 is like my P4P800, then there are two menu options/screens
in the BIOS involved in setting the boot devices. One allows you to pick
which devices you want to use in the boot sequence - but you can't set the
order here. The second one allows you to set the order, but you can use
only the devices selected in the other screen. If you haven't changed the
standard device settings, you only get your first hard drive, your first
cd-drive and the floppy to choose from when setting the boot sequence.

Some of the error messages you're seeing might be caused by the presence of
your largest hard drive - most operating systems won't recognise hard
drives that large (I don't remember the exact maximum size, but somewehere
around 132 Gb). Even XP needs at least SP1 before it will recognize discs
larger that that.

Wim

 

[Bill Anderson]

Op Fri, 12 Nov 2004 10:13:23 -0500 schreef Bill Anderson:


If your P4C800 is like my P4P800, then there are two menu options/screens
in the BIOS involved in setting the boot devices. One allows you to pick
which devices you want to use in the boot sequence - but you can't set the
order here. The second one allows you to set the order, but you can use
only the devices selected in the other screen.

I think I know what you mean. Is the other menu screen titled "Hard
Drives?" This one is strange. It lists all my hard drives (with the Maxtor
boot drive as #1) plus my SCSI flatbed scanner and my SCSI slide scanner.
At first it also listed my SCSI CD-ROM drive but not my SCSI CD-RW drive.
Aha! I said, and I moved the CDROM to the top of the hard drive list. Then
it appeared as one of the three boot devices I could choose, and I moved it
to the top of that list. Trouble is, the other two boot devices were the
floppy and the IDE DVD-RW. No hard drives to put on the list. I saved that
configuration and tried to boot with nothing in any removable media drive --
just boot from the hard drive -- and sure enough, since the Maxtor wasn't in
the list of three, the computer could find no hard drive and thus no
bootable media. Well, a computer that won't boot from its hard drive is no
good, so I went back to the bios and found the SCSI CDROM had disappeared as
an option and the menu of three was now showing a scanner as a boot device.
Argh. So I put things back the way they had been before.

As I said, very strange. Also -- if you're talking about *another* menu
screen, not the "hard drives" screen, then please tell me more. I haven't
found another.

By the way, I have flashed the bios to Rev. 1019, which is the latest
version on the Asus site.

Bill Anderson

If you haven't changed the

 

[Paul]

Thanks for the respose, Paul. But installing from scratch is exactly what
I'm doing. I'm trying to install on freshly Fdisked and formatted
partitions.

After sleeping on it I've begun to wonder if I shouldn't focus on why I
can't boot from my SCSI CD-ROM. Any ideas why that would have changed from
the P4T-E to the P4C800-E? The SCSI card reports there's a bootable disk in
the drive, but it doesn't boot from it.

Bill Anderson

Sorry, I thought you were trying to get an existing install to boot.

Does your SCSI card's BIOS show up on the boot screen ?

I think the BIOS option:

"Add ON ROM Display Mode" [Force BIOS] (in Boot Settings)

is supposed to allow devices with boot ROMs to load, like your SCSI
card should have if it supports booting. Asus level of support for
third party hardware isn't what it used to be (seemed to be better
in the era when they had SCSI chips built into some of the boards).

The BIOS has the above setting as the default, and that should
cause the BIOS code for the Promise controller and your SCSI
card, to show their interfaces during the boot. If you aren't using
the Promise 20378 controller, try disabling it, and see if that
makes a difference to what happens to SCSI.

Primary IDE Master 40GB Maxtor drive (3 boot partitions)
Slave 120GB WD drive (data)
Secondary IDE Master 250GB WD drive (video)
Slave IDE DVD-RW
SCSI Zip Drive
SCSI CDROM
SCSI CDRW

If that is what you've got, then you should be able to
disable the Promise controller. Apparently, when multiple
controllers have ROMs to load, there can be a clash in the
use of low memory (640K) for the RAM that those ROMs need
for data buffering. Disabling the Boot ROM on all but one
controller can sometimes fix that problem, but on desktop
motherboards there frequently isn't the degree of control
desired in the BIOS to do that. My suggestion to disable
the Promise controller not only stops its boot ROM from
loading, but I think it also stops the OS from using the
chip later. There are a few server boards, where there is
a BIOS option that optimizes low memory usage, so more
memory is available for the Boot ROMs RAM requirements.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Bill Anderson]

Sorry, I thought you were trying to get an existing install to boot.

Does your SCSI card's BIOS show up on the boot screen ?

As usual, Paul, you've identified the real problem No, I believe I am no
longer seeing the "SCSI BIOS not loaded" message I used to see when there
was not a bootable CD in the SCSI CD-ROM drive. And when a bootable disk is
in the CD-ROM drive, I do see "Bootable media in drive" or something like
that, but the system doesn't boot from the drive.

Now here's something interesting (to me anyway). Today in an effort to
simplify, simplify, I removed the SCSI controller from the PCI slot, and
voila! The crazy problems I'd been having went away. With no SCSI devices
attached, the Win98 installation disk could see setup.exe with no problem at
all, so I reformatted C: and reinstalled Win98 and here I am typing this in
Outlook Express, as pretty as you please. I have only one device on Primary
IDE (the Maxtor with three partitions) and one device on Secondary IDE (the
IDE DVD-RW). Installing Win98 went about as smoothly as installing Win98
usually goes -- only a few oddities. Anyway, it's working fine. It's like
the SCSI DVD drives and maybe even the scanners were confusing the system.
(I believe I mentioned the BIOS were recognizing the scanners as hard
drives.)

So what's the deal with SCSI? My controller card's bios chip indicates it's
Adaptec from 1997. Should I invest in some sort of new SCSI controller?

I think the BIOS option:

"Add ON ROM Display Mode" [Force BIOS] (in Boot Settings)

I have it set to "force BIOS." For a while I tried "Keep Current" but that
seemed to make no difference.

is supposed to allow devices with boot ROMs to load, like your SCSI
card should have if it supports booting.

It did support booting on the P4T-E. But it seems not to support booting
now.

Asus level of support for

third party hardware isn't what it used to be (seemed to be better
in the era when they had SCSI chips built into some of the boards).

The BIOS has the above setting as the default, and that should
cause the BIOS code for the Promise controller and your SCSI
card, to show their interfaces during the boot. If you aren't using
the Promise 20378 controller, try disabling it, and see if that
makes a difference to what happens to SCSI.

I disabled the Promise controller long ago. Got tired of watching it look
for drives it couldn't find.

Primary IDE Master 40GB Maxtor drive (3 boot partitions)
Slave 120GB WD drive (data)
Secondary IDE Master 250GB WD drive (video)
Slave IDE DVD-RW
SCSI Zip Drive
SCSI CDROM
SCSI CDRW

If that is what you've got, then you should be able to
disable the Promise controller. Apparently, when multiple
controllers have ROMs to load, there can be a clash in the
use of low memory (640K) for the RAM that those ROMs need
for data buffering.

A couple of times when installing Win98 I got a "not enough memory" message,
so I just rebooted and the problem didn't show up the next time through.

Disabling the Boot ROM on all but one

controller can sometimes fix that problem, but on desktop
motherboards there frequently isn't the degree of control
desired in the BIOS to do that.

Hmmm...disable the boot ROM? I think I haven't seen that option.

My suggestion to disable

the Promise controller not only stops its boot ROM from
loading, but I think it also stops the OS from using the
chip later. There are a few server boards, where there is
a BIOS option that optimizes low memory usage, so more
memory is available for the Boot ROMs RAM requirements.

Hmmm...I'll try to digest that and see if I can find something that
corresponds in BIOS.

Once again, many thanks for the feedback.

Bill Anderson

 

[Wim Zefat]

Op Fri, 12 Nov 2004 12:16:53 -0500 schreef Bill Anderson:

I think I know what you mean. Is the other menu screen titled "Hard
Drives?" This one is strange. It lists all my hard drives (with the Maxtor
boot drive as #1) plus my SCSI flatbed scanner and my SCSI slide scanner.
At first it also listed my SCSI CD-ROM drive but not my SCSI CD-RW drive.
Aha! I said, and I moved the CDROM to the top of the hard drive list. Then
it appeared as one of the three boot devices I could choose, and I moved it
to the top of that list. Trouble is, the other two boot devices were the
floppy and the IDE DVD-RW. No hard drives to put on the list. I saved that
configuration and tried to boot with nothing in any removable media drive --
just boot from the hard drive -- and sure enough, since the Maxtor wasn't in
the list of three, the computer could find no hard drive and thus no
bootable media. Well, a computer that won't boot from its hard drive is no
good, so I went back to the bios and found the SCSI CDROM had disappeared as
an option and the menu of three was now showing a scanner as a boot device.
Argh. So I put things back the way they had been before.

As I said, very strange. Also -- if you're talking about *another* menu
screen, not the "hard drives" screen, then please tell me more. I haven't
found another.

By the way, I have flashed the bios to Rev. 1019, which is the latest
version on the Asus site.

Bill Anderson

I just looked in the BIOS and noticed there are even more options then I
remembered.. On my system (P4P800-E Deluxe) there are three options:
Boot Device Priority - sets the boot sequence
Hard Drives - lists both my hard drives and lets me select which one(s) to
show under Boot Device Priority.
CD-ROM Drives - lists my dvd-drive and my dvd-burner and lets me select
which ones to show under Boot Device Priority.
Normally, it shows the first hard drive under Hard Drives and the first
cd-rom-drive under CD-ROM-drives, plus the floppy, under Boot Device
Priority, but I can switch to any other device enabled in the other menu's
by selecting one of the devices in the boot sequence and pressing Return.

I don't have any SCSI-devices, so I can't say where these should show up.
Beats me why it should show a SCSI-scanner as a boot-device though.

Something else you might try is under Boot Settings Configuration. This
lists the option 'Interrupt 19 capture', which is disabled on my system.
According to the comments next to this, this is neeeded for add-on cards
which have ROM-based setup-utilities. Most SCSI-cards show an option to
start from SCSI if a bootable SCSI-device is found. (That's what the
Adaptec-card in my precious computer used to do when I put a bootable cd in
the SCSI cd-rom-drive. That option would show up after the BIOS finished
booting.) Maybe you have to enable this option for the system to start the
boot-rom on the scsi-card in order to get that option? (In which case,
you'll probably also have to disable the full-screen logo at start-up, in
order to see that option..).

Wim