Deskpro 4000+Maxtor 40GB drive+ATA/133 controller card cannot boot W2k

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

I first added a Maxtor 40 GB ATA/133 drive to my Deskpro 4000 (PII 266 Mhz.) Win2K and I could get it to boot after copying all files from old drive using Maxblast SW. During bootup, BIOS would give an error code "1791" for disk error (BIOS shows 8GB capacity instead of 40 and no. of Heads=0) and you scan still continue to boot W2k w/o problems and OS storage manager shows all 40 GB correctly. As per Maxtor and Compaq knowledge bases, an ATA/133 controller card was suggested and I installed one (Promise Technology Ultra133)w/o problems. Now my BIOS doesn't allow me to boot the system from the controller card since the only logical drives that are seen are A: and C: (which is my old drive on the mother board). The Compaq BIOS (latest downloaded from HP) seems to give very limited options to modify drives to "Auto Detect" and change number of Heads, cylinders, etc. Any suggestions will be appreciated ???

[skiser]

Try disabling the onboard IDE controller and let the Promise controller handle the drive configuration.

HTH

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

The Compaq BIOS doesn't allow you to disable the primary IDE controller because there are no drives attached to it (I disconnected the old boot drive). The secondary controller shows up because CD-RW drive is connected to it.

The system now boots from the Ultra 133 card after a delay of nearly one minute or so and I need to find out how this works since the BIOS boot order is Floppy/Cd-ROM and C: drive. Also the drive is shown as SCSI type in Device Manager. I also removed Dynamic Disk Overlay program from the 40 GB drive and the full size is shown correctly during bootup.

[Scott Dugan]

My suggestion is Flash the Bios with this link

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/deskpro/us/download/9251.html

The Bios updates larger HDD's

Listed is the following enhancements

Enhancements
- Enhances reporting of hard drive greater than 64 GB.


All the Best

[CHnuschti]

Hello Vijayasekar Rajsekar

I have an almost identical problem like yours: Compaq Deskpro 4000 and a new Promise Ultra133TX2 IDE Controller card.
I also just cant get that card to work. I installed it correctly with driver, when I boot the card and the harddisks are recognized (i have 2 harddisk 120GB on IDE1, Master&Slave switched). OS is Win2000. As soon the OS finally should start, I get an alert "error loading OS". I tried a lot, switching around in the BIOS, changing plug between IDE1 and IDE2, selecting jumpers as "cable select" on the harddisk, changing slot for the controller card, none of it helped.

Did you find any solution in the meanwhile? Does it work for you?

rgds CHnuschti

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

My PC works fine now. The things to do are:

1. All your drives should be set to Cable Select - the new drive and your old boot drive
2. The new boot drive should not have any Buffer Limitation software installed. Use Maxblast III to remove this. This is very important.
3. The IDE controller card should be on the slot closest to the motherboard
4. Check if you have the latest BIOS flashed from HP website
5.In the BIOS the order of boot can be a:,c: and network:
6. When the BIOS loads, it should recognise the IDE controller card
7. The first time when you boot, it takes nearly a minute for the system to recognise that the boot drive (C:) is sitting on a controller card.
8. Try this by powering off the PC until the boot drive is recognised (Step 2 is very critical here)
9. You can disconnect all drives on your primary IDE controller and instead use the ports in the Promise controller card.

I hope this helps, else email me and I can give you more specific pointers.

[CHnuschti · Accepted solution]

Hello Vijayasekar Rajsekar.
Thanks a lot for your recommendations. Its working now finally. As you said in analogue way, there is need to have a proper image of the OS-disk, this seems to be the key point. This was confirmed to me also by another source, that claimed it has to do with some LBA/CHS stuff, whatever this might be ;-). As maxblast3 works only with maxtor-hd's for copying/cloning, i used Norton Ghost with the feature "clone" for my IBM HDs.

The procedure was:
a) Installed the "BIOS" on the compaq (it wasn't there before because i set up the OS on a completely new HD). There is to say that i'm still not sure if this step is really necessary
b) Attach your "new" HD (*not* containig any OS) to the promise controller. This HD can be recognized/read (for me atleast, only the HD with the OS couldnt be read) by the promise controller. Better previously clean the "new" HD completely with e.g. IBM Diskmanager and fill it with 0's, so that all MBRs, startsectors or whatever are erased.
c) Now with Ghost clone the "old" HD attached on the old controller to the new HD. After that you'll have to restart 3x until everything is recognized. Also for any new attached HD i had to restart 2x to have it recognized.

As said above, i also confirm that both HDs plugged to the promise controller have to be switched as "cable connect" and there is no need to have anything plugged to the old controller of the motherboard after everything works.

Compaq: always an adventure LOL.

rgds persko

[CHnuschti]

Hello. There is a detail worth to be mentioned. My definitive configuration has now 2 120GB HD's attached at one/same cable to the Promise Controller, both HD's jumpered as "cable select". That configuration works only if the HD with the OS is attached at the end of the cable. If the plug order is reversed, the system cant boot ("Unable to load OS").

rgds

[Abdullah Abulhasan]

I am trying something similar in my DP4000 6266MMX with a Comp USA ATA-133 card (FMI chipset) supporting Maxtor 30GB and 6GB HDDs at UDMA 6 and UDMA 4, respectively. Windows XP is fine with the new configuration, but there is a "boot barrier", where the BIOS doesn't recognize boot devices on the new controller, forcing me to boot using an XP boot diskette.

Today, I followed Vijayasekar's guidelines by moving the CDRW to the new controller, then disabling the embedded controller, and verifying the PCI slot and jumper recommendations posted.

I am enjoying improved XP performance, but would like to get the (8/99) BIOS to support the boot hard disk on the new card. Vijayasekar, are you still listening? Anyone?

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

I don't have much experience with Win XP. Did you try Microsoft/ Maxtor knowledge base for any similar problems ?

[Abdullah Abulhasan]

Thank you for continuing the thread. XP is not at issue here, because, once booted, it runs better than ever with my upgrades. The ATA-133 controller and drives are completely visible to XP.

I see nothing at Microsoft describing the "boot barrier" problem with UDMA controllers on this generation of hardware.

Maxtor's utilities support the Promise controller, but they say they are still in development for allowing HDD configuration using MaxBlast when the Maxtor drives are on other third party controllers.

FMI (Fujitsu Microdevices Int'l) reps only referred me back to HP for BIOS support, so I am still at a loss.

The ATA-133 PCI card appears and is configurable in the "PCI Devices" section of the F10 Setup program, but now that the CDRW is on Port 2 of the new card, it is absent in the "Boot Order" section (A:, Network, C:, currently).

Although "C:" is present, it only boots when control is passed to it by a bootable diskette, or an El Torito CD ROM disc.
Currently, the latter method requires brokering by a third party Boot Manager program. My Deskpro's BIOS won't directly boot El Torito CDs from either controller.

[Vijayasekar Rajsekar]

Let's try the following changes:

1. Put back your CDRW drive onto your original motherboard connector. Your existing CDROM drive can be temporarily disabled or disconnected. Check if CDRW is able to read a CDROM.
2. Move your Maxtor 30 GB and 6 GB drives to first and second slots respectively on your IDE controller card. Hence your ATA card should have only 2 drives.
3. Your DP4000 6266MMX should have the latest BIOS posted in HP's website
4. In the BIOS the order of boot can be a:,c: and network
5. When the BIOS loads, it should recognise the IDE controller card. This is very important, else your 30 GB drive cannot be recognised by BIOS. This will be the C: boot drive for the BIOS.
6. The first time when you boot, it takes nearly a minute for the system to recognise that the boot drive (C:) is sitting on a controller card.
7. If these steps works correctly, try moving the CDRW drive to the controller card and test again. If it fails you can leave the CDRW drive on the primary controller card itself. The CDRW drive on my PC is still connected to the original motherboard controller slot. The ATA controller card throughput is more efficient for the 30 GB drive, rather than CDRW drive.

Let's hope you will see some success after these changes.

[Abdullah Abulhasan]

Well, right you were on this, and your previous counts!

1. The (NTFS OS) Win XP did play a part in the boot problem.

2. Although I got better support from the store personnel than from the card vendor's website, revisiting both CompUSA's and Maxtor's support led to a couple more valuable pointers, and validated most of what this forum shows. Resetting the BIOS (clearing ESCD) was a useful new troubleshooting step.

3. Your previous suggested were an exact rollback to my prior config, which I followed accordingly.

4. I also included CHnuschti's procedure of attempting this with a blanked "new" HDD.

I realized I had been looking at success all along, when again, the BIOS chose my 30GB ATA-133 drive, on the new controller, to host F10 Setup.

Reinstalling the OS (Win 2K this time, no more XP!) was a seamless transition to the best performance I have seen yet with my recent upgrades:

-300 Mhz Intel Pentium II
-Nvidia GeForce 440SE VGA
-ITE IT8212 GigaRaidRaid Express HDD Controller
-PC 100 RAM up to 224MB

all of which I recommend for anyone who wants to extend the usable life of a DP4000 6266MMX, and who won't be phased by the 'Compaq adventure' of it. Thanks again to all!