Hard Drive Light Staying On

Frodo301

I'm having an intermediate problem with my system that's been bothering me for the last three days solid. I rebooted from XP to Win98se to play some old dos games I have. After finishing in 98 I restarted once again, selected Win Xp and waited about five minutes to boot into Xp. Usually it only takes around 25-35 seconds to boot so I was a bit surprised and a little worried that something was wrong. Then in XP the system was very slow, clicking on the start button would take 30 seconds to get the start menu up. I decided to restart the system and the system hung at the Win xp title screen and rebooted. This happened three times, the fourth time I did a repair using the XP CD. System still seemed a bit sluggish, so I rechecked all hard drives using Norton's disk docter. All checked out fine but the longer I stayed in XP the slower the system got. After this I scanned for viruses using Norton antivirus and Trendmicro's online scanner with no dice. Restarted again and used Maxtor's harddrive diagnostic utility and did a quick and complete test of both harddrives, each checked out fine. Tested ram, cpu all ok. Then on another reboot I get two short beeps and a message that read that my ide 1 channel slave was not compatible. I'm using a cd-rw on that ide channel so for testing purposes I unplugged it and restarted, this time the OS took a little less time to start up but the system still seems less responsive then it was. Tried another cd-rw with the exact same results as with the first, and the hard drive light come on and now stays on constant. Changed IDE cables with not results so I went ahead and unplugged the newer cd-rw as well. I'm leaning towards a problem in the ide controller but I welcome anyone with suggestions as to what they think may be causing the problem as well. Thanks

system

WinXP SP1 + Win 98se dual boot, K7S5A Rev 7, v. 3.1, 512 DDR 2700, Visiontek ti4600 128 meg with Thermaltake GF4 copper cooler & heatsinks, Maxtor 60 gig hd 7200, Maxtor 80 gig hd 7200, USR V.Everything Modem, TDK 40x cdrw, LG 16x DVD rom, Real Magic Hollywood Plus, Philips Acoustic Edge sound, Logitech Z-560 speakers, Microsoft Optical Mouse, Logitech Internet keyboard, NEC Multisync FE700 monitor, and Athlon XP 1900 with Thermoengine +Delta fan

Crash Override

it definitely sounds like a bad ide controller to me as well

have you tried doing a HD bench at all to test your thoroughput speeds?

UberLord

Is your WIN98 partition also showing this slowness?

Frodo301

Yes, Win 98 is also showing this problem as well. Werid thing is when I tried Sandra's file system benchmark I got scores that compare to what I should be getting for that drive . Tried the benchmark with the two cd-rw and each bottomed out and locked the system hard. Somehow I think this is related to the ide 1 channel's slave. I'm going to try out a spare dvd-rom and see if it still acts up. I'm pretty sure it will.

Vampyromaniac

Double-check the jumpers on the back of all your drives to see that they're set correctly to master/slave/cableselect (however you need it)

Second, what is the master on IDE-1 ? Your DVD-ROM ? Try switching them around (CD-RW:master, DVD-ROM:slave) to see what happens . . . .

Frodo301

My motherboard is setup as ide 0 as the primary ide controller and ide 1 as the secondary. I have them setup as follows,
Primary ide 0 master: Maxtor 80gig HD
Primary ide 0 slave:dvd-rom

Secondary ide 1 master: Maxtor 60gig HD
Secondary ide 1 slave: cd-rw

I've checked all the jumpers and they are all ok. I've noticed something though. After switching from Win 98 to Win xp it is always hosing the xp partition where I am forced to reboot to the repair and recovery console with the xp cd and run a repair. I seem to remeber that Win 98 and xp can get mucked up sometimes when on a dual boot but cannot remeber the reasons as to why. I've done dual boots in various flavors of OSes for several years so if this is it I'm not exactly sure as to how it happened. Still cannot figure out why the secondary slave ide 1 cd-rw seems to still be causing problems. Tried it out with a dvd-rom as well with the same results . By the way both are xp and win 98se are formated as Fat 32. One good thing to come of this, out of frustration and the fact that the income tax return was a bit on the hefty side this year the little wife let me order an Asus A7N8X Deluxe and an Athlon xp 2100 tbred rev b week 0306. It's been running stable at 2.30 ghz at 1.80v for three weeks in the same motherboard that my buddy owns. But that does not deny the fact that I want to fix whatever is craping this system out, I would like to pass it down the the kids as theirs is an older 'puter.

Vampyromaniac

Aha!
There sometimes are problems that arise from setting optical drives as slave to hard drives.
If you can, try setting it up as follows:

Primary ide 0 master: Maxtor 80gig HD
Primary ide 0 slave: Maxtor 60gig HD

Secondary ide 1 master: dvd-rom
Secondary ide 1 slave: cd-rw

I am 95% sure this will cure your ailment

Frodo301

I'll try that but I've found something else of interest while troubleshooting. My primary ide HD will *only* remain in PIO mode even with the transfer mode as DMA if available is selected. I have tried several SIS chipset tricks to see if I could get it back on dma mode, one of which is selecting all controllers as PIO mode, restarting and then selecting DMA if available and restarting again. Usually in XP all the drives goto DMA mode 5, but even after attempting this several times I'm still stuck in PIO mode. The kicker is the dvd-rom is currently setting at DMA on the same controller as a slave. I've disabled the dvd-rom and restarted to see if that would allow me to use DMA on the master but it won't . Currently I'm in the process of downloading the newest Sis chipset drivers, I'm hoping that will fix whatever the problem is. If not I'm going to give this post a day or two to see if it will jog anyone's memory as to something they had happen to them. I'm still leaning towards a bad ide controller but time will tell.

Crash Override

when you setup a system that way your slowest drive will set the pace for all drives connected to that cable (i.e. an ultra dma drive will only run in pio mode if thats what the optical drive supports)

even if you disable the device its still transmitting its max mode to the motherboard

if you put your hard drives on one channel and your optical drives on the other channel your performance will go up

Vampyromaniac

I think that my suggestion would clear that up, as well.
Seriously, I think you should try it first, dude.

merry

When I tried connecting on the same 80 wire cable a 7200 rpm HDD and a cd-rw, I had an error message during POST saying "80 wire cable not found"! But of course, possibly not all mobos will do the same. Use Vampy's setup.

However, if I get it right, your problems appeared all of a sudden and not as a consequence of re-cabling the rig... So, I don't know, 5 mins to boot XP... more like a bad ide controller. Or maybe you o-clock (fsb wise), this also oces the ide and possibly the rig is getting old.

Frodo301

I've used the same system setup for over 15 months without a hiccup with all drives performing in their max dma modes and have gotten comparable file system benchmarks with Sandra's reference drives. Last night it got too late for me to continue troubleshooting so I will recable the system later today. Thinking about clearing the cmos as well as I have now lost the ability to boot from a cd in the bios. This happened when I changed to the newer Sis chipset drivers. May roll back to the older ones just to see what happens first. I guess in the long run if it is indeed something related to the motherboard's hardware the K7S5A has given me good service for the time I've used it. Considering I paid only $52.00 shipped brand new, used two different cpus, mildly oced and had an extremely stable config until recently, I think I got my $52.00 worth. We all know that ECS stands for Extremely Cheap S**t. Hopefully the recabling will fix the problem, might pick up some more cables today while I'm out just to make sure. Still, I'm looking very forward to the Asus Deluxe NF2 board and t-bred 2100 rev b that I ordered. The thoughts of 2700 and 2800 speeds are easing the pain of the aggravation with my current setup. Thanks to all who replied.

Frodo301

Recabled the system with new cables and cleared the cmos this afternoon with the same results as I've been having for the past four days. Pulled a hd out of a machine that I no longer use that is ultra dma 33, formated & installed xp and it is now stuck in PIO mode as well. As a result of this I'm now sure that it is a fubar ide controller. It works as long as I don't go into Win 98, if I do that as soon as I reboot into xp it corrupts data to the point that I have to do a repair. So until I receive my MB I'll just be slowly backing up whatever is important to my second hard drive.

The_Neon_Cowboy

well you could allways just get a cheapo pci IDE contorler off www.pricewatch.com if it's just the ide controle and your don't wanna buy a new motherboard yet

Vampyromaniac

sorry, man

-={420}=-

Yeah, I was gonna say I agree with Vampy here because even if you don't have problems it's not a good idea to connect HDD's and CD-ROM's to the same IDE cable. The most important reason being speed. Your CD/DVD-ROM definitely slows your hard drive waaaay down if connected to the same IDE cable as the HDD. Trust me dude, not a good idea. I wouldn't have it set up like that ever.

Frodo301

Just a quick follow up and the reasons why I have my cd-rw and dvd-rom on the same channels as my hard drive. I think I said they were set up this way:

Primary ide 0 master: Maxtor 80gig HD
Primary ide 0 slave:dvd-rom

Secondary ide 1 master: Maxtor 60gig HD
Secondary ide 1 slave: cd-rw

I do alot of movie backups (of movies I own) on this system where I place the dvd in and it burns onto the cd writer in more or less real time taking into effect compression of the video and sound signals. When I had the cd-writer and dvd rom on the same channel it took a l o n g time to copy this way. After some research and experimenting I have found that this is a very effective way to make movie or cd backups. Furthermore I always place install disks into the secondary ide 1 slave drive which has zero effect on the speed of my primary ide 0 master hd. I burn cds from the ide 0 master hd to the secondary ide 1 slave with zero problems either. The 60 giger is more a back up disk only, so it rarely sees real use unless I need to place something on it. The dvd-rom only sees use with dvds or other forms of video compression that you can place on a cd.
One thing I noticed that I had not before is that I now have a constant scratching/popping sound coming from mp3s and cds. There is almost a rhythm to the way the popping and scratching sounds make. I did not notice it until I placed on my headphones last night to listen to some music while I was backing up the HD. I don't have a via chipset or SBlive, but I pulled the AE cleared the cmos and restarted to the same results as before. Does not matter though, the Asus mb will be here Friday

Vampyromaniac

Frodo, I think it is not a good idea to encode directly from the DVD; I think it causes much wear and tear on the DVD drive . . . .

Frodo301

Yeah, you are more then likely right. I've only replaced the dvd drive once though, the original was a no region Matshita 5x that's still kicking in another 'puter. Now the Cd writer is a another story as described CD-writer sick, recommendations for new one??
On a hunch I tried the old cd-writer in another computer and it works fine. I think this problem with my current setup has been going on a while and that explains all of the coasters that the cd writer produced along with all the other problems I've had of late.