[dtamonis]

I've got an Asrock 775Dual-880Pro motherboard, been using IDE hard disks until now, a few days ago I switched from a 320 GB IDE drive to a 500 GB SATA. All the info was copied over to the new drive and everything is OK (Windows boots up, everything works), except one thing: the reading and writing is very slow, about 2MB/s, and when the data is copied/written, it's nearly impossible to do anything else. Hard disk does not appear in the Device Manager, all the software that shows information about hard disks and displays SMART data (like Speedfan or WD's own Data Lifeguard) do not see the disk at all. As I understand, I need to install SATA drivers, so I downloaded them from Asrock (SATA_XP64_XP_2K_ME_98(430g).zip) and tried to install them. I was asked to reboot, and then Windows did not load. After rebooting once more, Windows loaded, but data transfer is still slow, and now I have this in the Device Manager: click here to see. So, for some reason Windows hangs while trying to start SATA controller, and I don't know how to solve this. Any ideas? I vaguely remember reading here that others set SATA mode to RAID in BIOS, but when I attempted this, Windows refused to boot at all.

This machine has dual boot Win98SE/XP and in XP everything's fine: drive works at its full speed. I wonder, if I have to reinstall Win98, will the Setup see the hard drive? And if I fail to install SATA drivers properly, maybe I could connect the drive via SATA>IDE adapter and have it as an IDE drive?

[dtamonis]

wsxedcrfv, on 13 March 2010 - 07:38 PM, said:

You have to go into the BIOS and change the drive controller mode from IDE to SATA. Might have to set it to SATA / RAID.

I looked up the BIOS again, and couldn't find anything similar to "Controller mode IDE/SATA". The only setting is Sata operation mode, and it can be toggled from RAID to non-RAID. As I mentioned, when it is set to RAID, Win98 doesn't boot.

Quote

Once you do that, win-98 should detect the SATA controller at boot-up. Most likely when you do that, windows will be forced to use DOS-compatibility mode to access the hard drive until the SATA drivers are installed and the system is rebooted.

That is what is happening: compatibility mode is on, and under System Properties Performance tab there is a warning about that. As I understand, the problem is that Windows fails to accept SATA drivers. When I installed them, Windows did not boot the next time, then it booted and I got the exclamation mark, as shown in the screenshot above.

A few more observations. Whenever I try to remove the SATA Raid Controller from the Device Manager, system freezes, I can only do that in Safe Mode, then when I reboot, Windows says Found new hardware -> PCI IDE controller, then asks for drivers, again suggests VIA SATA RAID controller, I install them, and it again doesn't boot the next time... and it all repeats. When installing the drivers, Windows also lists some Dual PCI IDE controller as compatible driver, but if I try to install it, the system freezes instantaneously.

What is happening here? Why would Windows stop responding when trying to start the controller? These are the drivers downloaded from Asrock, specifically for this motherboard and officially supporting Win98. I remember that quite a few members here use Asrock boards for their compatibility with Win98, and certainly some of them must have SATA drives. How did you make it work?

[dencorso]

Remove the installed driver in Safe Mode. Reboot. Don't let Windows reinstall the same driver, but instead use "have a disk" and point to a folder where you unzipped this driver: Via's SerialATA_V220E.zip (direct download). Reboot and set the BIOS to RAID mode. It should just work.

[dtamonis]

Thank you for the tip - but still no luck...

I tried this over and over and over, and it's all the same. Here's how it goes. I go to Safe Mode, remove the device from the Device Manager, reboot. Windows detects new hardware. If I press Cancel at this dialog, I get a blank Desktop and must reboot. So I have to go through it - I choose Have Disk, navigate to the driver (tried both the one from Asrock website and from your link), install. Reboot when asked, go into the BIOS, set SATA Operation Mode to RAID, reboot. And then Windows doesn't load (occasionally displaying protection error, associated with the device CONFIGMG, sometimes device IOS). Since I can't boot neither in normal mode, nor in safe mode, I revert to the non-RAID setting in the BIOS, reboot again. Windows then load for some time and then stops (just prior to displaying the GUI). If I wait for a long time, after a few minutes blue screen pops out, saying "Unable to write to drive C:". When I reboot once more, Windows loads succesfully, again in compatibility mode. End of story. No matter which driver I tried, every time it was the same - I was not able to boot with the RAID setting no matter what, and with non-RAID setting Windows fails to boot just after installing the driver, and later it shows the exclamation mark and works in compatibility mode. The only visible difference was that once the "Sata Raid Controller" somehow appeared under Disk Drives, not the SCSI Controllers. Though it still had the exclamation mark.

I am lost. If I don't solve this problem (and I'm pretty sure I don't have any more ideas), will connecting the drive via SATA>IDE adapter make it be detected and work exactly like an IDE drive? Or maybe a better option would be a PCI card with SATA and IDE connectors? Though I'm afraid to have the same problem.

One more crazy idea. I've been told that my 300W PSU is too weak, and that it barely gives enough power. I am going to change it in the near future. Could this be the culprit, at least theoretically?

[LoneCrusader]

I have yet to use any SATA devices in any of my systems, and I don't have experience with them, but if you cannot get the manufacturer drivers to work, you may want to consider RLoew's SATA drivers. They are not free, but it may fix your problem. RLoew is a member here and will probably see your post, maybe he will have some further insight. For now, here is a link to his website:
R. Loew Electronics Consulting

[jaclaz]

dtamonis, on 17 March 2010 - 02:59 PM, said:

One more crazy idea. I've been told that my 300W PSU is too weak, and that it barely gives enough power. I am going to change it in the near future. Could this be the culprit, at least theoretically?

IF your Power Supply is actually "barely giving enough power", INDEPENDENTLY from the problems you are having, you should change it NOW!


An underpowered power supply can easily create weird things, including UNrepairable ones , like HD head crashes, overheating of vital parts and what not.

And yes, IF it is really underpowered it may create exactly that kind of behaviour.

Do use a PS calculator, see here:
http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=120535

But, more than that, use some common sense, i.e. don't take as "gold" the result of a calculator without thinking about it a bit and reading more on the topic, and also, an "aging" PSU is nothing like a "new" one in terms of actual power, how old is yours?

At least testing it might be a good idea, but to have anywhere near an accurate enough result you will need either a dedicated PSU testing device or a multimeter AND have an above than average familiarity/knowledge with electricity/electronics and measurements.

In other words, if you need to ask about it, you won't be able to test it manually.


jaclaz

[jaclaz]

wsxedcrfv, on 17 March 2010 - 08:22 PM, said:

I'm under the impression that there has never been a win-98 driver for any SATA-II controller chip.

Just for the record:
UNIATA Windows 9x version:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=2384
http://www.msfn.org/...howtopic=114217

Whether it will work or not, is another thing.

jaclaz

This post has been edited by jaclaz: 21 March 2010 - 08:46 AM

[dtamonis]

jaclaz, on 17 March 2010 - 05:11 PM, said:

IF your Power Supply is actually "barely giving enough power", INDEPENDENTLY from the problems you are having, you should change it NOW!

PSU now changed. The problem persists, I didn't expect any magic, though Windows now seems to be more stable, it used to crash after 12-20 hours of uptime and had problems with shutdown. Now it does restart itself, without the need to press the Reset button.

wsxedcrfv said:

I probably set the Sata controller to Sata/Raid mode in the bios *before* I started the installation. Initially, I booted from a floppy that had some version of Disk Manager from Western Digital. This was used to format the drive. I would then have sys'd the drive (put DOS on it) so that it could boot into DOS, with an appropriate config.sys and autoexec.bat (himem.sys, smartdrv, etc) and with CD-rom support. I would then have taken a win-98 CD and copied the CD to some install directory on the drive, and started the install process from that directory. After basic installation, I would have installed the chipset driver which would have enabled full SATA mode (goodbye DOS compatible mode) upon next re-boot. The Sata controller would then show up in device manager under "SCSI controller".

I was considering the idea to do a reinstall, but it would take probably months to reconfigure everything and make all the software work again, so I only do this when I cannot use Windows anymore. Current installation is about 5 years old, and there aren't any serious issues with it, so I'd rather connect the HDD via SATA>IDE adapter than go into the hassle. Is it worth trying to reinstall on top of the current installation? Many files then would revert to old/non-patched versions, how can I easily compile a list of system files that are modified since new installation?

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Is your motherboard the same as this one? Is it a SATA-I or SATA-II controller?

As I mentioned in the first post, it's Asrock 775Dual-880Pro, I believe it has SATA-I controller, at least the description doesn't tell anything about SATA-II.

jaclaz said:

UNIATA Windows 9x version:
http://www.boot-land...?showtopic=2384

I wonder, is it safe to try it out? I do have a full disk backup that is 3 weeks old, shouldn't take long to synchronize before installing UNIATA, but, even if it's working, is there a way to make sure it won't cause any data loss in the future?

I will have a possibility to try out a PCI SATA controller (I believe it's called RAID controller, it's a PCI card with two SATA and one IDE slot), anyone tried this thing? Though I'm afraid that I may have the same problem - if Windows doesn't boot with BIOS set to RAID mode, it will probably do so again.

[jaclaz]

dtamonis, on 23 March 2010 - 02:37 PM, said:

I wonder, is it safe to try it out? I do have a full disk backup that is 3 weeks old, shouldn't take long to synchronize before installing UNIATA, but, even if it's working, is there a way to make sure it won't cause any data loss in the future?

Good question , unfortunately no answer for it , but :

Ray Bradbury said:

Life is "trying things to see if they work"

jaclaz