a7n266 software woes

dmcmahon

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After dithering for a while, I finally decided to go with the a7n266 and try the new chipset, rather than go with the tried-and-true VIA KT266A or its successor, the KT333A. The system will be used for normal 2D applications and for audio applications, so I decided to at least try the on-board video and sound.

Except for the CD/RW drive, which I ripped from an older system, all the parts are new: AMD 1900 XP, 2 sticks of 512M DDR SDRAM, 80G IBM hard drive. Everything went together easily and the system booted right up.

My first problem occurred when trying to format the hard drive. I want to install Win98 (because I have a license for it, I was going to save $99 by not buying XP). However, the FDISK and FORMAT commands on my Win98 boot floppy seem to think the IBM drive is only 13G (the BIOS correctly shows it as 80). A boot floppy from ME lets FDISK see the whole disk, but FORMAT still can't see beyond 13G. How do I get past this problem without partitioning the drive?

OK so just to get around the problem temporarily, I partitioned the drive and installed the OS into an 8G partition. It came up no problem. However, I can't seem to find any way (under ME) to create an additional partition for the rest of the drive. How the heck are you supposed to do that?

OK ignoring that problem, I put in the CD that comes with the mobo, and it's got all the drivers starting with the nForce drivers. I installed those, and now my system will not boot, I get thrown into the screen where you can choose
"safe mode" and the only way I can get the system to come up is in safe mode now. Aaack! Help!
 

delpart

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The first question I have is, do you have a full or upgrade of win98? If you have a full version you can boot from CD, fdisk, format and install it from the CD. I had the same problem on my a7n266c, 512Gb, 80mb maxtor system until I realized I was being too old fashioned by using the win98 setup disk. That should take care of it. Make sure you get rid of all active partitions both primary and extended and you should be good to go.

en Xristos
 

dmcmahon

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Thanks for the reply. I have a full version but I tried to boot from it and it wouldn't. That is, I changed the BIOS setting to make the CD the first in the boot order, and I just got the error message "press any key to reboot" when the boot-up process got past the POST. Possibly this is because my full version, which came from being a member of the MSDN, is not bootable.
 

delpart

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Very odd, I have my boot order as A:\ , CD, and C:\ and get an option to boot from hdd or cd. You said your hdd is bootable but I would make sure the io.sys, msdos.sys and command.com are on c:\. When you insert the win98 cd, you should have the option screen come up asking you which you want to boot from, no matter who made the cd, especially MSDN.

en Xristos
 

dmcmahon

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I can't actually put IO.SYS, etc. on the C: drive unless I first create a partition and format it. So, it's a catch-22; the whole reason for booting from the CD is to try to get the disk formatted in 1 partition. Looks like I'll have to rip the disk out, put it in another system and format it there, then put it back. A pain in the @ss but it should work...
 

delpart

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If that's the way you want to do it OK. But, the win98 CD already has fdisk and format on them. When, and if, the CD boots, you should get a message asking if you want to create a partition. If you do it your way, make sure you use win98 fdisk, format and bootfiles. Again, the boot files are on the cd. The reason for booting for the cd is so you can partition and formt the hdd and then place the boot files on it so that it is bootable. Then when you reboot you will get the option screen I described earlier. After every process, you must boot the hdd and then go to the appropriate program (fdisk, format) to finish the process. Let me know when you get it done. I would like to know how you did it. Good luck.

en Xristos
 

dmcmahon

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Well, I tried it my way, and it didn't work. I dropped the disk into my dual-OS PC and, under Win2K, I attempted to format the full 80G partition as FAT32. It went all the way through the formatting process and then gave me an error message right at the end. It was unrecoverable and very strange. I booted into ME, and here I was finally able to format the entire partition as a FAT32. Or at least, it seemed that I was able to. However, when I transplanted the disk back into the new box, DOS was unable to make heads or tails of it, considering it to be a partition without a valid file system.

There seemed no hope for it but to partition the disk. I noticed that the 78.5 G total size of the disk (that's the size when measured by FDISK using 1024-based Ks) was suspiciously about 65.5G offset from the 13G that FORMAT was reporting as the maximum partition size. Suspecting a bit-wrapping problem of some sort, I created a 65.5G primary partition using FDISK, and like magic FORMAT was happy with it and everything went OK from there. I now have a lame 13G spare partition, though.

I still have the bigger problem that if I now install the mobo drives I know I'll be in boot-hell again. Any thoughts on that?
 

delpart

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I only get 74.5Gb when partitioned and formatted. Try these steps even though I may sound like repeat city.

Try this first by attempting to boot with the CD.

Delete all partitions and reboot.

Create a primary active partition 74.5Gb, you may have to create an extended partition.

Reboot.

Format c: /s

Reboot.

If you don't have a bootable hdd with 74.5Gb, I'll scream, just kidding.

The cd, hdd boot sequence should do it but those steps should work using a floppy, cd, or whatever. A real pain, to be sure, but that should work. Maybe 'no joy in mudville' will turn into 'joy in merryville.'



en Xristos
 

phsstpok

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I'd forgotten all about this but the FDISK that shipped with Windows 98 was limited to drives of 64GB or less (not that there were any 64GB drives in 1998). Microsoft has a replacement FDISK. If you want it you will find it <A HREF="http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q263044" target="_new">here</A>.

As for your boot problem, I suggest copying both your nForce driver disk and the CAB files from your Windows 98 installer disk onto your hard drive. Having the Windows files available just makes changing things easier, especially until Windows recognizes you CDROM drive. Try to load the nForce drivers from within Safe Mode which are now available because you just put them on your hard drive.

Good luck!

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b><P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by phsstpok on 05/13/02 09:40 PM.</EM></FONT></P>
 

dmcmahon

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Thanks for your note. Yeah, I finally stumbled over the FDISK problem by posting to the Microsoft site. But I'd already suspected it was at fault and that's why I switched to ME. FDISK now works fine, it's FORMAT that reports 13G as the drive size. Also according to the Microsoft site, this is just a cosmetic problem, and the FORMAT will actually work fine. I'll try it tonight and see. I'm still worried that the SETUP.EXE program won't recognize the file system, though. After all, if you read my previous post, you'll see that I bypassed the FDISK/FORMAT problem by putting the drive in another system and formatting it there. After transplanting it back, DOS kept giving me the abort/retry/fail error, and the ME setup facility gave me the "Windows requires xzillion bytes of disk space" message (which is it's way of telling you that it can't find a usable hard drive).
 

dmcmahon

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Um, another subtlety of the nForce driver problem that may have been missed in my previous post is that I get the "safe mode" problem *after* I've successfully installed them. Or at least, that's what happened with Windows 98.

With ME, I was able to get the nForce drivers installed, and the system froze during the reboot (just as it had with 98), but after some reset-switch action it came up in normal mode. Note that I downloaded them from the nVidia web site rather than using the ones that came from Asus, so perhaps this accounts for the difference (with 98, I had used the drivers that came from Asus).

But I'm still not out of the woods. The system came up all right, but I still don't have access to any video modes beyond 640x480x16. What exactly is (or is not) included in the nForce drivers? Are these just the chipset drivers, or is audio/video supposed to be included? I noticed that after installing them a bunch of "?" devices are gone and a bunch of sound/media devices have appeared. Thinking that I needed to install another layer of drivers for video and sound, I started out by trying to instal the video drivers. Big mistake. Part-way through the installation procedure I get some weird error message saying it can't find something or other. It aborts, but still insists I need to reboot my PC to get the changes. Now I get errors during the boot-up and I'm back to safe mode again. Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh!
 

phsstpok

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It's not a good idea to FDISK a drive on a system other than the one where the drive will be used. (I'm not sure why this is so. I seem to recall that different controllers will partition a hard drive differently). This might explain why you are having trouble. I'd try again from scratch with the new FDISK and use the new motherboard. It should now work. Don't forget to check the installation notes at the nVidia site. I saw something mentioned about a "hot fix" for Windows sound drivers.

As for your other problems mentioned in one of your other posts, the only one I have any clue about is the 640x480x16 problem. This I've seen on different boards with mostly Geforce cards but also Ati cards. The easy fix for this is to load the Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) then boot to Safe Mode. Delete any installed video drivers except the one just mentioned then reboot. After Windows boots normally then loading the correct video driver usually works fine.

I have no idea if this method will work with an nForce board with integrated video.

<b>I have so many cookies I now have a FAT problem!</b>
 

Raist999

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I use Partitiion Magic 7.0 and Bootmagic to create/delete/resize partitions. Partition magic can make all of your partition problems go away. You will need toget an OS on the HD first though. If you look around on the net I've seen it as low as $60. (maybe lower) It is great being able to create/move partitions on the fly.
 

dmcmahon

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I broke down and bought XP. All problems magically went away. The disk is bootable for a start. But even without that the formatting problem turned out to be bogus, apparently FORMAT reports the wrong size for the drive but the formatting operation works properly anyway. The nForce drivers for XP worked correctly, possibly because XP comes up in a full-color mode out of the box (no more cheesy 640x480x16 default). The system is running happily now. Thanks once again to all posters.