Problem with onboard ATA 100 controller

I've been having trouble with the ATA 100 controller on my motherboard and can't pinpoint the problem. I'm hoping someone more tech savvy than I can help me troubleshoot this. I need to give a little background info, so please bear with me.

Here are the relevant specs:

ASUS CUBX-E motherboard with an onboard Promise ATA 100 IDE controller (latest BIOS and Promise drivers installed).

Quantum Fireball AS ATA 100 HDD with ATA 100 cable.

Windows 98

When I first built the system, I didn't understand that only the third and fourth IDE connectors were ATA 100, so I connected my HDD to one of the ATA 33 connectors - no big deal, and everything of course ran fine. I later found out that I was using an ATA 33 connector, so I connected my HDD to one of the ATA 100 connectors just for the sake of increased speed. Once again, everything seemed fine. Then I reinstalled Serious Sam 2, but quick loads of my saved game wouldn't work and even caused my system to crash. I was able to reinstall the game, play it normally, and even quick save and quick load within the initial gaming session. But if I exited the game and restarted it, I couldn't quick load any of my quick saves. Also, the game would no longer be listed in the Add/Remove Programs app; when I put the game CD in, it couldn't detect that the game was installed. I at first thought my virus scanner was interfering with the games, then I thought my Windows installation had become buggy. I reformatted my HDD and reinstalled Windows, and turned off my virus scanner, but quick loads still wouldn't work. Then it occurred to me that I had connected the HDD to the ATA 100 controller before all of this started, so I moved the HDD back to an ATA 33 controller. Now everything is back to normal and the games play fine.

The only other problem I've noticed with the ATA 100 controller is that my Windows 98 boot disk won't recognize my ATA 66 DVD or any other optical drive if it's plugged into the ATA 100 controller (the drive is, however, properly detected by the BIOS). Other than this and the problem with the games, my system seems to run normally with the HDD connecting to the ATA 100 connector.

There's obviously something wrong with my ATA 100 controller. I searched the Internet but couldn't find any info on this. Do you have any suggestions on troobleshooting this?

Thanks for your time.

Thanks for your reply, bgates2b. The Promise drivers are installed, and Device Manager properly recognizes them and says that they're working properly. I've read elsewhere that optical drives don't get along with faster controllers and now have my DVD and CD-RW connected to an ATA-33 connector.

I can't imagine why everything else on my system seemed to work okay, but game quickloads malfunctioned. I'm going to back up my important files, connect the HDD to the ATA-100 connectors again, and fiddle with it for a while. If I can't get it working, it'll just be an excuse to upgrade my mobo. I really like the BX chipset though.



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