[Jim]

I am building the following system:
Asus P4C800E-Deluxe with P4 2.6 w/ hyperthreading
2x 256MB OCZ P3200 DDR
Radeon 9600 PRO
Seagate 120Gb SATA Barracuda
DVD Drive

Problem:

On power up I get "no device conected to Fast Track controller, BIOS not installed" and overclocking error". After making changes in the BIOS I save and exit and then get "Bad BIOS checksum" and its starts auto recovery.

I have reset BIOS to defaults and have formatted hardrive and loaded WIN98 (I have XP Pro upgrade to go on) but when operating from WIN98 it does not see my DVD drive so I can't load XP.

I have called ASUS and the techs are always busy and will call back (I'm still waiting). Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[clintfan]

On power up I get "no device conected to Fast Track controller, BIOS not installed"

This is normal unless you have Hard Disks attached to the Promise ports, in which case it would indicate a problem. You cannot run a CD or DVD drive from the Promise, and there enough other ports that you don't need to.

...and overclocking error

Sorry, I don't know what this is. Sounds like your BIOS thinks some of the settings are not Auto. That could be a result of your checksum error.

After making changes in the BIOS I save and exit and then get "Bad BIOS checksum" and its starts auto recovery.

This is not good, you should not be getting BIOS checksum errors. Auto-recovery would be the appropriate thing for it to do here. It can reportly read from the Asus mobo CD, or from a floppy you have prepared as described here.

I have reset BIOS to defaults and have formatted hardrive and loaded WIN98 (I have XP Pro upgrade to go on) but when operating from WIN98 it does not see my DVD drive so I can't load XP.

What port do you have the DVD attached to? It has to be attached to a port on the Southbridge, preferably as PRI IDE master, otherwise as SEC IDE master, since your HDD is SATA. You cannot run the DVD off the Promise PRI RAID port, as Promise does not support Atapi.

Strap your DVD as Master then attach it to the chosen IDE port. Be sure the cable is not backwards end-for-end. You can use an old-style IDE cable for this, don't need the 80-conductor cables, though they might work too.

Can you get into your BIOS setup screens? You said you loaded defaults, so I assume you can. Go into your BIOS Setup. Make sure the DVD appears as the expected Primary (or Secondary) IDE Master on the Main screen. Then arrow-right to the Boot screen and open up Boot Device Priority. Use +/- to adjust it to DVD-Floppy-Hard disk, then Enter. Hit F10 to save, and reboot.

For me, this boot order was the key to loading XP. It's not what you would expect, but nothing else worked with this mobo.

Hope this helps, let me know how it goes...

-clintfan

 

[Jim]

Clintfan,

Thanks for your assistance. My DVD drive in bios is listed as primary IDE Master and my HDD is listed as Third IDE Master (the SATA cable originates from SATA 1. I'm still having a problem with changes I make to the bios with the checksum error.

I changed the boot order like you suggested and dropped in XP to boot up on. I got:

Line 20203 of the INF file \i386\txtsetup.sif is invalid. Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.

Any thoughts?

 

[clintfan]

Primary Master and Third Master are correct. Fourth Master would appear if you plugged something into the "SATA2" port. Sounds like you got further than before.

I changed the boot order like you suggested and dropped in XP to boot up on. I got:
Line 20203 of the INF file \i386\txtsetup.sif is invalid. Setup cannot continue. Press any key to exit.
Any thoughts?

First, make sure you are using the correct method to launch the update. I don't know if you're supposed to boot from that CD, or boot 98 and then launch the CD. It could make a big difference.

I went and looked this filename up in the Microsoft KB and found 314088-How Windows XP Determines ACPI Compatibility which seems to discuss the purpose of the file. That's all I've got so far. Read it, maybe it'll ring a bell.

BIOS defaults includes enabling 2 out of 3 of the ACPI settings in the BIOS. My guess is that since you're updating from 98, there's something about the level of ACPI in the BIOS vs. the level in your 98, vs. the level XP is trying to apply, that XP is not happy with.

How did the 98 get onto the SATA drive? Did you boot the P4C800-E and install 98 on top of that, and now are applying the XP update?

If not, then do you know what the ACPI support capabilities were of the machine that your 98 came from?

I need to claim ignorance about what would happen in your particular situation, because I don't know the ACPI capabilites of 98. But my first guess would be that 98's ACPI is 5 years behind what your XP has, giving you some compatability trouble. I've read that updating from 9x to XP doesn't work very well, and is discouraged.

I'll wait to hear your reaction before I give you any more wild guesses.

-clintfan

 

[Jim]

I reformatted the drive, reloaded 98 ( I have my old new installation CD) and this time the sytem recognized the CD Drive (thanks for you info). I eventually started ignoring all the bios overclocking errors and the checksum errors and would just power the system down and back on again. Eventually it started running better (voodoo ritual at work?). I still get the occassional overclock error on power on. I am starting to wonder if I might have a RAM problem.

I am currrently in the process of installing XP Pro. My hopes are high that it will work out.

 

[clintfan]

I reformatted the drive, reloaded 98 ( I have my old new installation CD)

OK, that's what I had figured you did. Let us know how it goes.

Try a forum search on "OCZ"; I think there was something yesterday about that RAM. Maybe a voltage tweak?

-clintfan

 

[Javora]

On power up I get "no device conected to Fast Track controller, BIOS not installed" and overclocking error". After making changes in the BIOS I save and exit and then get "Bad BIOS checksum" and its starts auto recovery.

I have reset BIOS to defaults and have formatted hardrive and loaded WIN98 (I have XP Pro upgrade to go on) but when operating from WIN98 it does not see my DVD drive so I can't load XP. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

First what Bios version are you using? If you are using anything less then version 1010 then I would suggest flashing the Bios. Turning off the promise controller in Bios should get rid of the Fast Trac/no Bios error.

Second when you are loading WinXP upgrade try not installing Win98 first. Put the WinXP upgrade disk in first and let it run. At some point the WinXP upgrade installer should ask you to put in the Win98. When it does put the Win98 disk and let the installer check and see that you actually have a previous version of Windows. From there the XP installer should continue normally. This information is second-hand but I have heard the information from my in-law who used to work at Microsoft and I do trust what he says.

 

[Jim]

I flashed in 1011 for the BIOS.

I finally got XP Pro loaded and it appears to be working. I had to load 98 and then 98SE. I tried :

booting from the XP install disk - it would never work, sometimes it would start but would eventually bomb out

loaded 98 and then XP but some file would always get corrupted and make matters horrible

I ended up loading 98 then 98SE and let 98SE sort out some driver issues (I don't think the ASUS board is to accomodating of 98 first edition). After making sure 98SE was viable on the system I loaded XP and it went without a single hickup.

Memory issue: I have two sticks of OCZ PC3200 Rev2 256M but currently seem to only be able to run with one. The system gets a bit unstable with 2. OCZ's website says this board is ok with this memory.

Any suggestions for voltage settings or manual timing adjustments? My FSB setting in BIOS is 200. Everything else is currently at auto for the DDR.

Thanks again for the info and questions.