HighPoint kt7a woes with win2k (help)

[machina1 0]

Argh this is just totally screwed I recently bought an abit kt7-a mobo, the one with the hot point raid. Being as ive got an ibm 46gig telesto udma 100 i wacked it in the orange port, belonging to the hotpoint. In Windows 98 everythings mint, get a score in Sandra of 25,000 and HD Tach rekons my random read speed is 80mb (the highest it goes). However a quick boot up to win2k and everything goes to pot. Sandra score down to 13,000 (halved) random read time down to 26ish. Clearly Ultra DMA is not enabled properly somewhere along the line. Ive tried loads of stuff, a reg entry from tweak3d, some windows 'hotfix' which didnt do anything. I've tried downloading the latest hotpoint drivers (not very latest at all october 2000) and the scores stay the same. Anyone got any ideas? Help and i'll love ya forever

[Rulle 0]

Well, this doesn't help you much, but I have exactly the same problem or even worse =(

 

I did the same thing, bought a brand new Abit kt7a and a IBM 75GXP ATA-100 46 gig HDD, but I am even more screwed. I have a 800 Duron which gives me 10000 points in SiSoft Sandra 2001. That's even less than my seagate 20.4 gig/udma33, bh6 and celeron 566 combo in w2k.

 

I have also tried that w2k hot fix, installed SP1 and that reg file from tweak3d. I have the latest VIA 4-in-1 drivers (4.28). My Toshiba M1212 DVD won't run in UDMA mode (actually it does but gives me blue screens every time I try to access the drive, pio mode works fine but slow)

 

So does anyone have a solution for the slow drive and the damn blue screens ?

[machina1 0]

Thats an identical hard drive to mine btw. And i was getting a LOT more on my old BH6 as well. As for the blue screens, I find my dvd doesnt like DMA mode either but it seems to work fine in PIO mode?? It is a 14x Pioneer though.

Come on some one must be able to help us with our drives man, this sux

[Rulle 0]

I've been hearing lots of complaints with the kt7a lately.

What's really bugging me is that you by a brand new system only find out your previous setup kicks the hell out of it =(

 

I wonder if it has something to do with IBM drives and W2k... I'd better get my good old 20.4 gig Seagate back and try if it works better.

[Rulle 0]

Still haven't been able to fix the problem. I uninstalled the VIA busmaster drivers (Ran the 4-in-1 setup.exe and choose uninstall) and got the DVD-ROM working with UDMA enabled.

 

I can't however say if the HDD works now with normal speed as Sandra stops responding in drive benchmark. W2k says that it's pio mode, but I think it works as fast as previously. (meaning half the speed it should)

 

If someone has better results please let me know.

[Rulle 0]

Jiiiihaaa !!!

 

Just upgraded my bios to new wz version and all my problems with HDD and DVD-ROM

disappeared.

 

Sisoft Sandra 2001 Drive benchmark gives me now roughly 17000 points, which isn't a top score but certainly better than the previous below 10000. And no bluescreens with DVD =)

 

My system Specs:

 

Abit KT7A with Duron 700 Mhz CPU

256 MB Generic CAS 3 PC-133 RAM

SB Live Player 5.1

H+ MPEG2 decoder card

Realtek 10 Mb NIC

Matrox G400 DH video card

IBM 75GXP 46 GB HDD

Toshiba M1212 DVD-ROM

[machina1 0]

is WZ the beta bios, thats the one Im already using

[machina1 0]

m8 u need to download a program called hd tach to tell you if your drives in what, you can tell by the performance data. look for a url later tell me if you cant find it.

[Rulle 0]

I got the HD Tach 2.52 and here are the results:

 

Read speed - maximum 39362.0kps

minimum 9090kps

average 28675kps

 

random access time 13 ms

 

I don't have any comparison whether those results are good or bad.

 

And btw, my wz bios is final.

[DosFreak 2]

Min & Avg look right....Your max score tho...Are you use any DMA/33 devices on that chain or a 33 cable?

[ThC 129 0]

the thing is that unless your using the UDMA100 fix for win2k your not gonna get ATA-100 working. It might say it is but it will only run at ATA66

[machina1 0]

my scores

read sped 28000

min 5000

max 33000

avg seek time 13ms

windows 98

readspeed

78000

min much higher

max much higher

avg seek time also 3-4ms lower

[Brian Frank 0]

So you guys get blue screens too? Well, my problem was kinda like that, Toshiba 12x DVD

but it was something with this UdfReadr.SYS that didnt like it when i would put in another disk after playing a DVD, so blue screens come. I ended up finding out that file was touchy about stuff and just needed to be updated.

 

------------------

Whaazzzupppppppppp!

Asus A7V

Duron 600@680

384 MB SDRAM PC133@113MHz

Samsung 48x CD-ROM

Toshiba 12x DVD-ROM

Zip CD650 USB 4/4/6

Zip 100 USB

Maxtor 20.4 GB ATA100

Voodoo 4 4500 AGP

Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo

SIIG 3 port 1394 PCI Adapter

D-Link DFE-530 10/100 NIC

Creative Cambridge Soundworks FPS1000

MS Intellimouse Optical

Kleer 17-inch @ 85Hz 1152x864x32 desktop

[machina1 0]

no probs with blue screens or my pionner dvd rom, just with the drive performance. id go back to win98 but good hdd transfers dont make a good operating system

[Rulle 0]

ThC 129: What do you mean by that ATA-100 fix ? Isn't that the w2k hot fix I am using right now ?

 

And DosFreak: I do have a udma66/100 cable and the only drive connected to it is the IBM. And the cable is even set so that blue ending is connected to mobo. (Read somewhere that it mattered but don't know for sure)

 

What do you guys think about the VIA Bus Master drivers ? I've heard people saying to stay away from those... Didn't notice any performance increase over standard w2k drivers though...

 

And I got one blue screen after installing those VIA drivers... However, I haven't had any problems since.

[machina1 0]

I tried uninstalling them but didnt notice any difference at all. The reason for that would be because there only the IDE busmaster drivers not the ones for the highpoint raid. I tried getting specific highpoint drivers but there like 50k (wow thats going to do a lot) and sure enough identical performance. Lame

[Qun Mang 0]

Is anyone having this problem with the non-RAID model? I was thinking about getting the KT7A without RAID.

[machina1 0]

to be honest i dont think its got a lot to do with RAID, more the fact that the Highpoint IDE slots dont have ultra dma 100 support in win2k. The Non Raid model would be exactly the same

[Qun Mang 0]

Can anyone post some info on Athlon mobos that don't have this problem? Or does this happen with all of them that have Via's chipset?

[machina1 0]

Ive certainly not seen anyone advertising having a High Point motherboard in ultra dma 100. Part of the problem is you actually have to benchmark it to find out, I'd be really interested if someone came forward, but somehow - I doubt it.

[machina1 0]

To further demonstrate the dispairty ive uploaded this. God i need help.

<html>http://home.clara.net/edger/compare.jpg</html>

http://home.clara.net/edger/compare.jpg

[machina1 0]

ive given up the ghost now, gone back to win98. There were a few other probs hassling me as well. General instability (couldnt do 3 x 3dmark benchmarks on the trot where as win98 did it for 24 hours in a row before i stopped it) took me 29 hours to complete a SETI unit (takes 6 in win98) and this hard drive access. Ah well sad day when I got to use this junk OS, oh well

[pimpin_228 0]

I don't know

[Brian Frank 0]

Ive had no problems with the Asus A7V. And the only good Athlon boards have a Via chipset in them, AMD only puts out a chipset to push things that it would like to see chipset makers (mainly Via, cause Intel wont help out a competitor, and we all know SiS and ALi put out worthless power chipsets). If you need RAID, the A7V133 has it.

Also, if you install both the Via Busmaster drivers and the Highpoint drivers, that could cause a problem. I read something about that in an Abit BE6 mobo manual that my dad has with an ATA66 pair of extra controllers (8 IDE devices).

Win2k will not really use ATA100, even though theres a patch for it. So, in otherwords, you cant do jack squat about it.