A7V / drivers / win98se vxd failure

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Guest

Guest
I hope you folks can help me out here. I have an A7V with BIOS 1004D, an Athlon 850, 256MB PC133, WD 20GB ATA100, VOODOO 5 550/64MB. I was running the WD disk on the ATA100 but needed to blow away Windows, so I moved the disk to the ATA66, formatted, and reinstalled Windows. I installed the VIA 4 IN 1 drivers from the ASUS CD (using default options since I don't know what they are talking about - the ASUS manual shows pictures with different options selected, but they don't discuss them). I did not install the Promise ATA100 drivers and left the WD disk on the ATA66 controller. My BIOS is still configured to look for ATA100 first, but posts a message that it isn't loaded because no drives are found (which is correct). While I was loading my remaining drivers and restarting numerous times, the PC started to flake out. It was complaining about not being able to load certain VXD files. While I was installed MSN software, the PC just rebooted out of the blue.

On restart, the PC goes to the Safe Mode menu, but when Safe Mode is selected, HIMEM.SYS complains about unreliable XMS memory at an address like 00814329, and refuses to load.

The final straw was failure to load the VMM.VXD which tanked the whole thing.

My questions are:
1) Do you think this is related to VIA 4 In 1 being loaded with the default options rather than those shown on the tiny pictures in the ASUS manual?

2) Do I really need the VIA drivers installed (I don't remember installing them before - I might have)?

2) When attempting to start in Safe Mode, is the HIMEM.SYS message about unreliable memory a device conflict or truly bad memory? I ran Norton memory checker and it didn't detect any problems.

3) Could enabling the ATA100 in the BIOS without a drive attached to that controller cause a problem? BIOS doesn't load the driver because no devices are attached. I didn't load the Windows Promise driver because the WD drive is on the ATA66.

4) I am on about my 10th install of Windows here and it seems to flake out every time. I figure I must be misconfiguring something - but what?!!??!!

Thanks for any help you can provide.

Scott
 

eburies

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Dec 31, 2007
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Strangely enough, I have the same problem except that I am using an ATA 66 HD and I have the ATA 100 disabled in my BIOS. I just got the same message you got regarding missing vmm.vxd file; now my cpu won't boot to windows. I purchased a new ATA 100 HD drive (which really improves performance) but I would like to find a way to boot up my old ATA 66 drive so I can export my GATOR settings and passwords to my new HD. Anyone now how I can get my old HD to boot?
 
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Guest

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I should have known the XMS error reported by HIMEM.SYS and the inability to load Windows Safe Mode were smoking guns. I took all the cards out and reinstalled Windows - same error. Then, I took one of my 128MB SDRAMs out and rebooted - same error. Then I took the took the remaining one out and swapped it with the other and rebooted. No XMS error and Windows was able to load in Safe Mode. Just to be safe, I reformatted, and reinstalled again. I took the opportuntity to update with the latest 4 in 1 and Promise drivers. Then I reinstalled each remaining card and driver one at a time. Other than noticing my sound card (SB compatible) and modem (3com/US Robotics) were both on IRQ 9, I haven't seen any stability problems.