hey all....

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by skuntbehavior, Mar 7, 2003.

  1. skuntbehavior

    skuntbehavior Geek Trainee

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    just wanted to say a little something before i make my first post.
    i have been browsing the site for the last hour. found some interesting things here. attitude is much less 'stuffy' than the 2 other forums that i can't seem to get any help from. hope someone can help me cause i plan on returning here. here is the issue i have.
    i had to disconnect my hard drive from my promise ata 133 controller card just to get windows xp installed on the drive. plugged into ide 1 on ecs k7s5a. install went off without a hitch. connected drive back to controller card and when i try to boot i am getting stop errors and the good 'ol NTLDR is missing message when trying to boot. tried setting floppy to detect first in an effort to load tx2 drivers. the things is the card posts. my main drive is set to ide 1 on the TX2 controller card. that's the way it was set when i had windows 2000 on it. any and all feedback is appreciated.

    system specs:
    winxp
    512mb ddr
    ecs k7s5a
    maxtor 40gb ata133 with promise tx2/Wd 20gb
    LG 32x
    toshiba 16x dvd
    herc gtxp
     
  2. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    Thanks for the complements.

    Anyways, on to your problem...You did hit F6 at the beginning of the XP install so you could load the Promise ATA133 drivers right? If you did that, try to fix the boot loader like this:

    Boot off the XP disc like you're going to install it (including hitting F6 to install the Promise drivers), but hold it when you get to the install screen. At this point, you'll want to use the recovery option, and not install XP. Following that, you'll get a command prompt screen where you'll need to put in the administrator password (if you put one in originally) after it detects your installation(s). Next you'll need to type "fixboot" (no quotes) and hit enter. After that completes type "exit" (again, no quotes) and your machine should reboot. This should fix it, and if not, we'll take it from there.
     
  3. skuntbehavior

    skuntbehavior Geek Trainee

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    messed up...

    ok. i realized that i messed up. i did not have the tx2 connected when installing the os. that is the reason why i could not see my drives etc. etc. i connected the card during the install and it was detected. installed the drivers and that went fine. i got xp to load and that went fine. got as far as loading up my progs then i rebooted and another stop error. i loaded up adobe reader, drivers for my herc gtxp, office 2000, kazaa, norton systemworks, nero, music match, zone alarm, winzip and crap like that. all installed fine till i required a reboot. same ntldr crap and stop errors. i am going back to win2k. i knew this was a s--t idea.
     
  4. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    I've heard of the latest game theater drivers causing havok on people, so you might wanna go back a driver version first and see if that helps any.

    Of course, XP is basically Win2k Home edition IMO (regardless of Pro or Home variations), so you're not gonna miss anything that big---unless you consider the eye candy a big thing.
     
  5. skuntbehavior

    skuntbehavior Geek Trainee

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    gtxp drivers...

    yeah, i had driver issues when i first got the card and tried to do an xp install. the key to my card's happiness has been to stick with the 4.10 drivers. they play nice with win2k. i am trying one more time and if it does not work, well....hello again to windows 2000.
    thank you for your feedback.
     
  6. skuntbehavior

    skuntbehavior Geek Trainee

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    i get it...

    the os sees my LG burner and dvd rom on mobo ide channels and does not see them as hard drives. when it looks for the ntldr it comes up empty. both my drives are on the controller card.
     
  7. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    I believe you're able to use non-HDD devices on the Promise ATA cards. IF it's a RAID controller, then you can't.
     
  8. skuntbehavior

    skuntbehavior Geek Trainee

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    ok...

    and that means? i just tried disabling my onboard ide channels and booting from the driver floppy for the tx2. no go.
     
  9. skuntbehavior

    skuntbehavior Geek Trainee

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    lol...

    got things up and running. every few reboots i get a stop error. i tried the version of drivers i was having no issues with when i was running win2k (gtxp drivers). will get rid of those to try the new ones and see what happens. if that doesn't work i have a turtle beach santa cruz waiting in the wings i am dying to try out.
     
  10. Big B

    Big B HWF Godfather

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    More explanation on my last post.

    Plain ATA/IDE controller cards typically support not only hard drives, but CD-ROM's, DVD's LS-120's, Zip drives and Tape drives. If they have a RAID feature---which only works with hard drives (it's a big explanation I don't want to get into here), they may not, depending on how many features the card has---some can run any non-HDD drive just fine, but others are programmed with a RAID-only BIOS.

    I'm gathering that it's probably not what you have, so you should be able to use both your motherboard IDE ports and the controller cards. Without problems, hopefully. The reason I put that in is because ECS boards haven't been that great in compatiblity with some devices. I'm not sure if that's coming into play here or not.

    Of course, since you've got another solid sound card (at least that's what everyone tells me) that you can swap out, that beats going for a OS reinstall.
     
  11. skuntbehavior

    skuntbehavior Geek Trainee

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    just un-installed then re-installed and tried out the new drivers. xp starts right up no problems. even faster than the last 24 hours that i had xp running with the gtxp in the machine with the older version drivers. we'll see how this goes.
    thanks for your help thus far!
     

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