Can not use controller card to boot

[Nuthouse]

I have a promise Ultra 100 TX2 controller card, but I can not get my primary partition and working OS to boot off of it. I don't know why. Here are my specs.

Case IW-Q500N Full Tower
Power Supply Powerman 300W
Motherboard ASUS A7M266
CPU AMD Athlon 1.4GHz
Ram 2X 256MB Crucial PC2100 DDR
Hard Drives 2X 60GB IBM deskstars 60XP
DVD-ROM Pioneer 16X DVD-106S
CD-RW Plextor Plexwriter 16/10/40A

I am using bios version 1004a on my mobo. I actually used to boot off of the controller card, but now I can't use it to boot off of. I am very confused. Some help would be great, thanks

-Nuthouse

 

[David]

First of all check all connections - make sure the card is in correctly and the drivesa re all set as master/slave correctly. Look in the BIOS. Look for an option like 'boot offboard chipsets first' and enable it. If you do that and it still wont boot, or if you can't find that option try this:

In the boot options it should let you choose the order to boot ie in mine:
1st Boot Device: Floppy
2nd Boot Device: CDROM
3rd Boot Device: HDD-0

Set your first boot device to floppy/fd/fdd/floppy disk and the second one to 'off board controller' or, if that isn't there, 'SCSI'.

Reboot and see if that works.

 

[JimmyG]

You could also look in System Information to see if you have an interrupt conflict.

 

[David]

You could also look in System Information to see if you have an interrupt conflict.

How can he do that if his computer will not even boot into windows

 

[Nuthouse]

I want to have each of my devices on a Master IDE. I'll make a list to make it more clear.

****What I am trying to do:****
Motherboard IDE:
1)Master & Slave HD
2)DVD-ROM

IDE Controller Card:
1)CD-RW

****OR****
Motherboard IDE:
1)CR-RW
2)DVD-ROM

IDE Controller Card:
1)Master & Slave HD

****Current Settings****
Motherboard IDE:
1)Master HD ONLY
2)DVD-ROM *Code 19 error, registry may be corrupted*

Controller Card:
1)CD-RW *not being detected by my CDRW software.*

It's my fault I didn't explain my situation better but I can use windows when I plug my HD into my motherboard IDE1
I see no other errors with my hardware besides that wierd error 19, and I think that is from the CD-RW software that I just installed that couldn't see my CDRW. But I know that the CDRW hardware, and software are both good because I have used they before with this machine. I am running windows 2000 sp2. Thanks for your help in advance

-Nuthouse

 

[JimmyG]

You can boot off of the normal IDE controller with the promise card plugged in. Then look in System Information for interrupt conflicts.

 

[Xaotic]

You've got a 100TX2, use it for the hard drives, one as primary master and one as secondary master. IDE and RAID controllers are not recommended for optical drives. Question, have you set the drive to boot from in the TX2's BIOS as well as the motherboard BIOS from SCSI? If you have, your problem may be that you'll need to reload the working OS since it doesn't have the drivers it needs for the IDE card to load itself. You could try booting from the Primary IDE, deleting devices and rebooting with Plug and Pray, but a reload would be safer for the long term.

 

[Shadow ÒÓ]

That's not a TX2 RAID card it is?

 

[Xaotic]

The Ultra 100 is IDE, FastTrack 100TX2 is RAID. Both should still support IDE boot.

 

[Nuthouse]

I think my motherboard is messed up, I am going to go to the asus AMD moher board section to try to figure out what is going on. THanks for posting.

-Nuthouse

 

[zoopa_man]

I vividly remember seeing something about your problem in the FAQ's section or in the drivers section of the promise website. Try looking on their web page for something that relates to your problem. For some reason it sounds fimilar to me and i think i've seen it on the promise website somewhere. Look around and see what you dig up.

 

[Shadow ÒÓ]

The Ultra 100 is IDE, FastTrack 100TX2 is RAID. Both should still support IDE boot.

not if configured as a RAID setup. If he thinks he can run a single drive to boot from........that's his problem. You MUST have a RAID setup to installl the os from.

If it's a RAID card, you'll have to use 2 drives (at least) to get the RAID setup to boot.

 

[Xaotic]

I hadn't run into that one yet, thanks for the data. It does show that in the manual for that card, but spread out over several pages. Most of the RAIDs I deal with are 5s or 0+1s off of SCSI backplanes and have completely different option on configuration. It did mention loading their software in an existing OS installation while attached to the planar IDE controller and then moving it to the controller. Do you know of anyone who has tried this method?

I also saw mention of post problems with certain Video cards and boot problems regarding needing the 1.30 beta driver and BIOS 1.20 or better.

 

[SteenkyBastage]

i have a tx4 (same as yours, but with 4 channels), this is what I have noted about using it:

1. Cant use CD/DVD/Single HDD

2. If you are going to use raid0 (striping), you must either convert from another card's raid0 stripe, or install win2k fresh and use the f6 key when asked for scsi devices.

3. If you have a working solo HD, and you want to mirror it... plug it and the identical (or larger) HD into the promise card and boot into the promise bios and from there you can setup a mirror of the one working drive w/o damaging your data on the already working drive.

4. If you want to boot from the RAID card, you must go into your bios and select as first boot device "scsi" or something along those lines. You should move the device up the list until it is the first thing (or after the floppy if you prefer).

5. The card WONT recognize a single hard drive... you must plug that into your mobo. In order for the card to work, you MUST enter the promise controller's bios and define an array (be it raid 0, 1, 0+1, or jbod.

hopefully this helps you figure out the problems...

The first step I would take is to hook up the HD's to the controller and enter the raid bios (not asus bios) and see if you can locate/create a raid array...

good luck!

 

[Nuthouse]

All Fixed!

yeah I just set my motherboard to boot from SCSI device, duh! Well My system is working and I can use all my optical and hard drives. Thanks

-Nuthouse

 

[CrystalMethod]

not if configured as a RAID setup. If he thinks he can run a single drive to boot from........that's his problem. You MUST have a RAID setup to installl the os from.

If it's a RAID card, you'll have to use 2 drives (at least) to get the RAID setup to boot.

Not entirely true. I had to set up a system for a client who wanted 3 HDD's, a DVD, and a burner, all stuffed into a mid tower. Fitting all the components into the mid-tower the client had chosen was the first problem. The second was to find a way to connect 5 IDE devices on an Asus A7M266. When I looked at the order sheet I had to laugh. Because of the size of the board in the case, getting the third HDD in was impossible without the use of duct-tape. Instead of having the sales rep order in an IDE controller card, she sold him a MB with RAID onboard (and full tower case to accomodate the components). Very nice and all, but the client insisted that he have the drives seperate, and not a partitioned array. After screwing with the system for a good day and a half, my "friend", who had been snickering at me the whole time showed me how to do it. Every once in a while he'd ask, "Got it working yet? No? Jeez! I have the same motherboard and all 6 of my harddrives are separate, and I got it to work...". To make a long story even longer, to get them to be seen as separate drives you have to boot up with only one of them plugged in, set it as your first array (effectively setting it as your first drive). Power off and unplug it (IDE and power). Plug in your second drive, and power up. Set it as your second array, so on so forth, till you run out of drives. Fdisk & format drives, install on whichever floats your boat, and you're good to go. This is one of those... "I don't know why it works this way, but it works!" kind of things.