[clintfan]

I remember the first time I saw this, it came from my Promise Ultra-66 add-on IDE card in my 98SE PC. These messages are emitted by the P4C800-E's Promise controller at the end of POST when it scans for devices to drive.

If you truly have drives attached to the ports I described, then yours is not any kind of Windows driver problem, it's a power/data cabling problem, BIOS setup problem, or possibly a dead-drive problem.

So....... do you have any hard drives hooked up to your Promise ports? If not, this message is normal: if no hard drive is found, Promise will not "install" (turn on) its BIOS, otherwise it will/should. If all your HD's are hooked to the mobo's upper IDE port(s) that come off the Southbridge, you can ignore this message: it's normal! For my old Ultra-66, it's also normal if you only have optical or tape drives hooked to your Promise ports but no hard drives-- Promise being Promise, this mobo is probably the same way. And we're not talking about the mobo's BIOS in this message, only the Promise's.

Otherwise, next I have to ask, do you have power plugged into the drive that's hooked to your Promise? Note that SATA drives still need power, they don't get it over their little USB-like data cable. They may use a regular power connector or they may require a special edge-connector-style power adapter-- my Maxtor's have both types of connectors, and based on what my power supply had to offer, I'm actually using a mix of both connectors.

Your Promise data port choices are these three ports, they are the only ports the Promise will scan and report back about...

(a)1 or 2 SATA drives connected to the "SATA RAID1" and/or "SATA RAID2" ports, the lowermost two SATA ports on the mobo/ SATA drives require no strappings that I know of.

and/or

(b)an IDE cable going to a master and optional slave ATA drive, can be up to ATA-133 speed, this is the lowermost (blue) IDE connector that hangs off the bottom right edge of the mobo. Make sure that cable's not backwards, and is 18 inches long max., use an 80-conductor cable for best HD speed, and make sure your drives are master/slave strapped to match your cabling.

Fyi, setting your Promise to "IDE" is fine, it just means any drives you do attach to it will be independent drives, not a RAID set. It's the correct setting if you don't want RAID.

If you are indeed using drives on your Promise, then you will ultimately need to load a driver for that into Windows. Until you do, your drives won't work under Windows. Get it from the Asus "downloads" website. For non-RAID, choose the "Promise FastTrak 378 ATA Driver" --not the RAID driver that has almost the same name-- that's appropriate to your OS.

Hope this helps,

-clintfan

 

[clintfan]

Exactly what "program" are you talking about? If you tell me, maybe I can help you get it loaded.

Which mobo connector is your HDD attached to (each one has a small label printed next to it)?

-clintfan

 

[clintfan]

Thanks. Now I know you have an IDE drive, and it is connected in the best place it can be.

The "program" you loaded is drivers which are designed to go into Windows. Maybe you thought they somehow go into the BIOS, or DOS, but they don't. They're not needed --and can't be used anyway-- until Windows has been installed.

Since you told me your HDD "has nothing on it", the next step is to load Windows onto your HDD. Are you able to boot from CD and install Windows? Be sure to pop the floppy disk out before you try to boot the CD.

If you have trouble booting from the CD, check your Boot- "Hard Disk Drives" and "CDROM Drives" section in your BIOS Setup, make sure the HDD and CD drive are both listed as "1st Drive" in their respective sections, and make sure your "Boot Device Priority" is set to CD-Flop-HDD, and then you should be able to boot from your XP installation CD.

Since your HDD is on the Southbridge instead of the Promise, you won't need these drivers anyway, but after Windows installs, it will be good practice to take care of unknown devices, especially if you decide to hook something to the Promise later (I described your port options in my first reply). Windows will show 4 or 5 devices as unknown, and there are separate drivers downloadable from Asus to take care of each (still not sure about the SMBus one, though).

Since you asked how to load these, I'll now outline it for you. Sorry if you already know this stuff, others reading this thread might still get some help from this.

I am going to give you some best-practices stuff now. You don't have to do it this way unless you want to. After you have installed Windows, as a place to keep your extra drivers create a "Pc" folder in your My Documents area, and a "PromiseATA" folder under that. Under that, create one final folder "V_30" for the version. Later, as you download more drivers, name new folders under your "Pc" folder and stick the newer drivers there. Continue to build your storehouse of downloads here as you acquire them. You can also make a "Doc" folder for manuals, unlock codes, etc.. Periodically, cut a backup CD of your "Pc" folder and keep it handy in case you need to reinstall.

Now mount the floppy you made. Copy the 378ATA100130.zip file from A: to the deepest folder (V_30). Since all the drivers from Asus are in a .zip format, double-click the .zip file you put in V_30, and Windows will give you the option to expand/unzip all files; choose that. It will create a "378ATA" folder, and under that will be a "WinXP" folder along with others for other OS's. You can delete the original 378ATA100130.zip file now, if you want to.

Next, visit the Control Panel- System- Device Manager. Find the unknown devices. The Promise will have a yellow (!) indicator on it, meaning it's unknown. At that point, Right-click on that device and choose "Update Driver", or maybe it is Properties- Driver- Update Driver. Navigate the dialog and tell it to search for the driver specifically from the V_30\378ATA\ (or deeper if necess.) folder which you have made. It will easily find and load the drivers, then your Promise should then be functional under Windows. You might need to reboot too.

Let me know how it goes.

-clintfan