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Griz's Holy Grail
*(Sub-Titled)
Problems in Windows95 with Intel's 430TX PCI Chipset, and the Intel 82371AB PCI Bus Master Driver, and how to troubleshoot them.


Page Last Updated: 01/03/2001
(Verified & fixed all page links)

This page is provided as a helping hand to anyone who is having problems with the previously  mentioned driver. By choosing to use the following instructions you agree that neither I (Shane "Griz" Grissom), nor John Rainer shall be held responsible for any damages, as a result of your carrying out these same instructions.



 
Great New Edition to the Holy Grail Page
Click below to enter the NEW Holy Grail forum, where you can post Q&A type info, or just leave messages for me or other Holy Grail visitors. I will make an effort to monitor this page on a daily basis.




INTEL'S BM-IDE 3.02 DRIVER RELEASED 08-17-98
CLICK HERE FOR IMPORTANT INFO & DOWNLOADING LINKS

Here is my story...see if this sounds familiar.

I installed a new AOpen AP5T motherboard, with a 233 Mhz MMX Pentium processor, Intel's 430TX PCI chipset and an Intel 82371AB PCI Bus Master IDE controller. My system uses two Maxtor UDMA hardrives, a ATAPI Internal IDE Iomega Zip Drive, and a LiteOn 40X CD-ROM drive. At that time I was using Windows 95 OSR2 and I determined that I had to have new drivers for the PCI Bus Master, because this is such a new controller that even Windows 95b did not have drivers for it. So I installed Intel's Bus Master driver which they designed for this new chipset. I've since found out that if you have an ATAPI CD-ROM installed it doesn't want to show up in Windows 95 after you install the Intel driver, and this is documented in the Readme files accompanying the new driver. I could get it to work after, (for instance), setting up drive C as the master on the first IDE channel, and setting up drive D as the secondary master, and then setting the jumper on the CD-ROM as the secondary slave on the secondary IDE channel, but after getting this to initially work, it did NOT show up after I shut down and restarted the machine. I must have swapped jumpers, and IDE channel configurations for over three hours trying to get this to work. Well after installing the Intel Bus Master Driver, my hardrives showed up under Device Manager's "Performance" Tab, as using "MS-DOS Compatibility Mode". And my CD-ROM drive did not show up in Device Manager at all. So I set out on a quest into a frontier known as the "INTERNET", to find my "Holy Grail" solution...


Hi, I have great news. With the help of  John Rainer,(If this works for you, please send John an email expressing your appreciation!!!) I have managed to solve my problem by removing this limited mini port system driver, and opting for Microsoft's full port driver. This has worked for me, and if you are having the exact same problem, or perhaps even a similar problem then this should, or could work for you also.

1a. First off uninstall the old Intel 3.01 driver by downloading and installing the NEW Intel BM-IDE 3.02 driver, and follow  the instructions you will be prompted with by the new driver Setup.exe installer. Any problems exhibited on your system may easily be solved by installing the NEW 3.02 driver. Especially if these problems center around LS120 drives, CD-R, CD-RW, or CD-Rom drives. Click Here to proceed to info and download links for the 3.02 driver.However, Intel Support personnel HIGHLY recommend that ONLY Win95 OSR1 users use the new driver, or even the old one for that matter. If you are using Windows95 OSR2.x, or Windows98 then your best recourse is to switch to the native MS driver which accompanies both of these flavors of the Windows OS. Windows 98 users Click Herefor further instructions and implications concerning Windows98. Windows95 OSR2.x users should continue with these instructions to uninstall the driver and replace it with the MS driver. At least until I get feedback (from OSR2.x users using the new Intel driver) on it's performance.

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1b. There is also the Intel® INF Installation Utility. This utility installs the Windows* INF files. The INF files inform the operating system on how to properly configure the chipset for specific functionality, such as AGP, USB, Core PCI, and ISAPNP services. It basically updates the MSHDC.INF file. Download and install this file ONLY IF your motherboard has one of the following Intel PCI set devices: 82371SB (PIIX3), 82371AB (PIIX4), 82371EB (PIIX4E) in conjunction with the following Intel PCI sets: 430HX, 430VX, 430TX, 440FX, 440LX, and all future AGPsets.
http://developer.intel.com/design/software/drivers/platform/inf.htm
 

2. After uninstalling the driver, download the following file.
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/remideup.exe
 

3. After downloading REMIDEUP.EXE, double click it to install the patch. This is a Removable Media & IDE update for Windows95. I have info that  it works on OSR1 & OSR2, via this MS Support Online document. http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q154/4/35.asp
 

4a. Then steer your browser to the following URL, and read the document you will find there.(in it's entirety!)
It will instruct you to use Registry Editor to remove an entry called "NOIDE".
http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q151/9/11.asp

If the protected-mode driver is not initialized properly, an error message will be displayed and the NOIDE registry entry will be
re-created. And Windows will use the MS-DOS compatibility mode file system the next time you start the computer.

(If you don't find the "NOIDE" entry in the Windows Registry, go to step 5)

!!!CAUTION!!!

4b. Make a backup of your registry before you attempt to modify it. If you don't feel comfortable doing this, perhaps I can send you VERY detailed instructions on how to accomplish this. For those of you who are too squeamish to manually edit your registry, (Don't feel bad, your not alone) here is a utility that will automatically remove this entry from the registry for you. NOIDE.INF, is a file included with Windows 98. Click the text file name, and you will be prompted to save it on your computer. (I suggest saving it to the Desktop, to ensure you don't misplace it on your hardrive.) All you have to do is right click the file, then select "Install" from the menu. After you update the registry, restart Windows. Windows will then attempt to initialize the protected-mode driver for the controller. If no problems are encountered, the file system and virtual memory will operate in 32-bit mode, and Device Manager will not display an exclamation point in a yellow circle for the IDE channels.  Email me if you want help. Shane "Griz" Grissom
 

5. After you remove the "NOIDE" key in the registry, reboot the system. Now after I rebooted I noticed a lag in the disk response time, I suspected the real-mode driver for my CD-ROM drive that was loaded in my config.sys file. So I removed it, along with a  "MSCDEX.EXE" statement in my autoexec.bat. After that everything was great. (You won't need either of these two entries in these files unless you are still playing some old MS-DOS games that require the CD-ROM drive)

Good luck, and please forward this page's URL to anyone you know who is having the same problems with the Intel Driver.



IF the above steps do not result in your having a functioning system, then see the links below for alternative problems and solutions.


Intel 430TX Chipset conflicts with Seagate Hardrives
 If you have a SEAGATE hardrive, then follow this LINK to obtain information concerning incompatibility issues between certain models of Seagate drives and Intel's 430TX chipset.



. PIIX4 Conflict with Creative Sound Blaster AWE64 Card
For people using  the above sound card along with the Intel 82371AB PCI Bus Master Driver. Some users are experiencing a windows protection error that requires the system to be rebooted in safe mode. If you receive a Windows Protection Error on bootup, you should first try changing the MIDI port address to 640 and I/O address to 220. You can do this from Device Manager, which is accessed by opening the System applet from Control Panel and clicking on the Device Manager tab. Your Creative Sound Blaster card should be listed under Sound, video, & game controllers. This should solve that problem. Also, it's a good idea,  if you are using a Creative Labs product with an IDE controller on the card, to disable it. Which is done by setting a jumper on the card itself. Refer to your Creative documentation instructions on which jumper. For more info go to Creative's Online Help.


Virus Implications & the Intel 82371AB PCI IDE Controller
For people who have tried all the work-arounds on this page, and/or any others found elsewhere. If you are still getting these (!) next to your Controller listing in Device Manager, or CD-Roms that refuse to show up in Windows 95 no matter what you try, then here may be the last resort problem fix. A guy named Ashley McConnell was at his ropes end with his system exhibiting these same symptoms. He tried all of my site's suggestions, but still could not get his system working properly. Finally out of desperation, and a suggestion from Intel, he ran a virus detect on his system. WHAM! That was it...cleaned the virus, and now everything works great for him. So in a nutshell...never discount the obvious, always cover every possibility. Don't believe me? Then click here for a true life occurrence!

Here is some more advise concerning Viruses from John Rainer, this is especially helpful if you know nothing about computer viruses. Here are John's suggestions.  Thanks John for your invaluable assistance with this entire page, Shane.
 

Are you sure there's no problem? Are you really, really sure? If you've just run your scanner in Windows and its come back with nothing, don't assume everything's ok without knowing a few basic facts. Apart from some new viruses needing the very latest software updates to detect them, boot sector viruses can be very awkward to detect for a number of reasons and virus scanners vary in their ability to spot them. It is always a good idea to bear in mind that a system with a boot sector virus that is booted with the virus in place may end up with the virus either invisible to the scanner or not repairable by it.

To help prevent this problem, boot the system with a bootable floppy that YOU KNOW to be clean and that is write protected (the little tab moved away from the hole to the back of the disk. Write Protection helps to prevent the PC from transferring a virus to the floppy). Run the scanner after booting in this way and see if you get the same result. A word of caution - you may have picked up the virus ages ago (not all viruses have obvious effects) and your supposedly clean floppy may be infected as well. The best way to prevent this from happening is to make the boot disk before your PC comes into contact with any downloaded files or you have accessed, or used other peoples floppies. Check the PC boots ok with it and check you can access the C drive. You may want to add your CD-ROM DOS drivers to the floppy as well. Write protect it and keep it safe. If you have doubts about your boot disk, make sure it is write protected and have it scanned in someone else's PC. Any decent Information Technology division of business will have anti-virus measures set up. So if you work for someone where there is IT support, a friendly word can be helpful.

Some anti-virus software prompts you to install a rescue set of boot floppies immediately after installation - DO IT! Leaving it until later may be too late. Other anti-virus programs include a special boot floppy which will boot and scan most machines without the need to create a boot floppy at all.

Finally, if you're desperate, you may have heard that the command fdisk /mbr will rewrite the boot sector of the disk it is run from. This can be a very useful way of getting rid of these types of viruses but if you have an unusual boot configuration, or software that writes info to this part of the drive, you may be making trouble for yourself. In addition, either the source of the virus may still be present, and will rewrite it to the boot sector later, or the hard disk needs the virus present to boot at all and may become unbootable or unreadable if it is removed.

If you find a virus and it is not a false alarm, then you need to both find its source and check all your floppies to see if it has spread. Have you used infected disks on other machines? Hopefully not for your sake. (That's why they use the analogy, because of the way it spreads)

Cheers,    John

The author makes no claims of expertise in virus detection and suggestions on improvements or corrections are welcomed.
(keep it simple please, for the benefit of all Holy Grail users!)


MS-DOS Compatibility Mode Alternative Solutions

IF, after completion of all of the steps above, your drives are still using MS-DOS Compatibility Mode/16 bit Real Mode Drivers, then see the following Microsoft Support Document concerning other solutions to this problem.
(Thanks to Robert Parlet)

http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q130/1/79.asp



ATTENTION Windows 98 Users!!!
(click here)
For Important Information about un-installing Intel's Bus Master driver while running Windows 98 beta, or the finished release.


Other Info Sources

Motherboard HomeWorld (The definitive motherboard information resource)
Wim's BIOS page (A site dedicated to BIOS information)
Benchtest.Com(Extremely detailed Performance Ratings of BM Drivers) A must see for everyone using BusMastering
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/linecard.htm (Info on Intel PCI Chipsets)
http://www.compuclinic.com/osr2faq (Info on the differences between Windows95 OSR1 & OSR2)
http://www.bmdrivers.com (Info Site about Bus Mastering)
Email Response from Intel Tech Support (Very good explanation of Intel Driver Problem)
http://developer.intel.com/design/pcisets/applnots/292208.htm (Win95 Support For PIIX4 .PDF file)
http://developer.intel.com/design/pcisets/datashts/290562.htm (82371AB PIIX4 .PDF file)(Data File)
 

Email Responses (This is the whole reason I've created & continue to maintain this help page. Consequently, I'd like to share some of the email responses I have received concerning this page and it's usefulness.)



This webpage designed by Shane "Griz" Grissom ,
Copyright 1998
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Email Response from Intel Tech Support

Hi there Shane,
Good advice on your site, bravo for you. Let me give you the inside scoop which a lot of people are not aware of.

The issues you see with the 82371AB and Windows 95 is that NO version, even OSR2, will recognize the 82371AB.  This is because Windows did not incorporate the device id lines in MSHCD.INF and MACHINE.INF as the 430TX chipset was put out after the release of the OS.

That is why we supply SETUPEX.EXE which puts those lines in the INF files so that Windows  95 can properly detect the chipset e.g. 82371AB.  Keep in mind that this still uses the Windows 95 default IDE driver, there is nothing special aboutSETUPEX.EXE and it does NOT load a new driver.

The issues you may see with the hard disk controllers at this point could be for many reasons and for a lot of them Microsoft has a fix and an update for their IDE default driver which you've put on your web site.

Now on to Bus Master Drivers.  Our chipsets supported bus mastering since the 430FX chipset but at that time there was no OS bus master support.  So in order to let Intel customers take advantage of the chipset we put out BMIDE_95.exe.

With OSR2 there is native OS bus mastering support now and it is a full port driver.  Our bus mastering driver is a mini port driver so does not have the full capabilities of a full port driver.  That is why we recommend using the Windows 95 OSR2 drivers when possible, now that we have OS bus mastering support.

Alex
Intel Customer Support
Date: 02-18-1998

http://www.intel.com
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/index.htm
 
 













Email Responses
("Your Welcome" to everyone who sent a thank you)


Thank you very much for the timely information.  Holy Grail is  very appropriate for answers on the intel bus mastering chip set.  I have spent 8 hours researching the intel news group & microsoft support info & was coming to the same conclusion.  Before I decide to install driver support on my upgraded MB for 32 bit accessing of my UDMA IDE drives I needed more information as to what might result.  The horror stories of other users was appalling.

Thanks, Thanks, Thanks

Riley


Hi,
YES!!! That will save some time explaining... Thank you.
--
Best Regards,
Edwin


Hey Griz,
I got my new motherboard, put it in, and was pissed!!!! Went first to MB vendor, no luck, then to MB manufacturer, no luck, finally to Intel, no luck until I happened into their newsgroup area, you hooked me up...I had the exact same scene as you had.  Followed your instructions and Wala!  And amazingly, I just installed a MB at work with the same chipset...it worked but win95 kept finding a mystery PCI card, although it didn't force MS-DOS compatibility mode it still pissed me off, ran your fix and it's now happy!

Thanks again for sharing your findings!  Have a good one!

Rod Morgan


Many, many thanks! Can I provide a link (only link with description) to you from my home page located at tripod? There is a serious problem with triones technologies bus master drivers bundled with giga-byte 440LX mother board. I hope you can notify users on this. This problem is a very serious problem for a beginner user which is using windows osr2.1 and the problem causes disk corruption! Also by the way, If I haven't seen your page I was still using Intel mini drivers with my new OSR2.1. It's a crazy misunderstanding. Please contact me for the giga-byte motherboard w/triones problem. It's the most serious problem I have seen on Windows 95.
Have a nice day.

Ilgaz Ocal


Thanks very much for putting up this very informative web page ...

Willy Verheulpen


John and Shane,
Let me tell you, after 4 days of total frustration to the point of insanity, you two are the best things since sliced bread.

I have a PII 233 system with Tekram motherboard using the 440LX chipset.  When I first got the system about a month ago I only had in it a fujitsu hard drive and a mitsumi 24X cd-rom.  Then four days ago was when it all started.  My new mitsumi CDR 2600TE rewritable cd drive arrived.  I thought to myself 30 minutes tops, two drives, same manufacturer, same ide port daisy chained......
PIECE OF CAKE....NOT!!!!

It started with the windows protection errors and just went downhill from there.  I spent hours on the net trying to find info on this problem, then I would spend hours working on the system, and then would spend more hours on the net.  Then it happened, I stumbled across a link to the web den, and if my memory serves me correctly, which at this point I wouldn't trust, I stumbled onto the link some where on intel's site.

I read through the site and thought to myself there is no way that it can be this easy.  I ran through it all and low and behold it worked the first time.  I was so happy, relived, excited, overjoyed (you get the point) that I was almost in tears.  MY NIGHTMARE WAS OVER!!!!!!

I cant thank you guys enough.  And believe me I will pass this site on to everybody I know.  You have done a great service for mankind.

Thank you again, Russ Arnold


THANKS a millions times over, I would have never gotten this computer up without your help!!! CD worked the first time! Again thanks for the life saving web page!

Peter O'Connell


I used your Bus Master workaround to help me get rid of Intel BM drivers version 2.85 from my system which is using Win 95a. I want to thank you for posting at the Intel site or I would have been still stuck with this major processor resource hog. Thank you so much and I plan to email John Rainer to say thanks also. You are doing a good thing , thank you.

John Gavar


Hey Griz how's it going....just to let you know I had the Intel drivers on my system for a few weeks and they seemed to go ok.   BUT it seemed that when I tried to remove them, the MS drivers would exhibit the characteristic "!" on the secondary IDE. I played for a few weeks and was told by INTEL that the only real way to get rid of the intel drivers was a format and reinstall of win95. I did this and stayed with the MS drivers.... Holy S**t what a difference, my system NOW acts as a P11-266 with out the bogging down that I had before. It runs great now!!

Thanks for (the) info on your page it was helpful.

Regards, Dave


Thanks for maintaining the page... believe me, this is a frequently discussed topic in the newsgroups.

...if it hadn't been for your site, the Motherboard Homeworld, and the Tyan newsgroup, I wouldn't have had a clue what to do. I can't thank you enough, especially when I read about other people going through weeks of frustration not figuring out how to configure their systems.

Thanks again,

Mike Lawson


Shane,
Thanks for the tips on installing the bus drivers.  They worked like a champ.  Clear concise instructions...so hard to find sometimes.

Again, I think you did a magnificent job of making it simple enough for even us semi-tech/non-tech guys can understand.  Besides, its probably somewhat satisfying if your efforts result in someone else getting setup correctly the first time. I know it is for me on other activities.

Thanks again... feel free to use this email as testament to how you helped out someone who was ready to shoot his computer.

Mike Willoughby


Hi Shane

Thanx for the link to your site, I hope you don't mind but I just posted it to a few newsgroups ( especially the Abit newsgroup ), seems the Abit users are having the most problems, I know I'm one of them :

Again thanx for the info and your site should be getting really popular in the next week, I've attached my news post in case you would like to comment on anything. I didn't actually solve any problems by myself, I just take the fixes I find and any links and post them for others. Wish someone would of
done that when I first upgraded, It would of helped bigtime.Take care.

Dan Diederichs


Glad I found your page and all the information about solving my problem of my CD-Rom not working.  Went through your information very carefully and in about 45 minutes had it working after pulling my hair out for 2 days. Thanks,

Richard Lazar


Great info, and long overdue.  Thanks for this outstanding resource! Keep up the good work. Sincerely,

Robert Moser


John: I just read the instructions you helped write on "Griz's Holy Grail". Let me tell you... I spent literally 10 HOURS on and off today trying to figure out how to get my Microsoft BM drivers back.

Long story short: I got a new DVD-ROM drive. Because of a Master/Slave mistake I made, it wasn't recognized. I downloaded the wrong drivers off of Creative's site, and these drivers installed an old  wimpy non-dma miniport driver for my IDE devices.

4 hours later, I narrowed down the problem to their miniport, and I modified the important INF files to point to ESDI_506 instead of mkeatapi.inf. I then removed the devices and reinstalled them, only to see the two exclimation points and ms-dos compatibility mode!

I installed the INtel drivers, then uninstalled them a few times to try and rebuild the MS IDE drivers. Nada. Kept getting the errors. Over the time I learned about SETUPEX and REMIDEUP, etc. and applied them all but to no avail.

ONLY when I hit the "holy grail" after about 10 hours today at work and home of researching (and I support Win95 for a living, so you can imagine how this made me feel) did I get a step-by-step answer how to bring the MS BM drivers back.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Paul A. Antico


Thanks a lot Griz... I am able to get the cd-rom working now.....Just followed the instructions and it going great.. by the way.. I didn't have to fool with the registry.. it worked without doing so... :-)

Asim


Thanks for your helpful page concerning the 430TX.  I have been tearing my hair out for weeks now trying to get it to work.  You are indeed the MAN!! :)

All the best,
                 Ashley (N.Ireland)


Shane:

  Thanks a million for your "Holy Grail" page. It took me some surfing to find it, but your instructions did the trick for me. You deserve a medal, IMHI.

  ...Three consecutive nights of tinkering and surfing until 2 AM, to no avail. Discovered "The Holy Grail",  Followed the instructions on your page. Ta-da! The IDE error went away. I reinstalled the Viper, and Win95 installed the new video drivers and ran perfectly thenceforth.

  Thanks again,  Dr. Doug Robello


Griz,

You are the man!  My adventure in Registry edit was highly successful no more hard disk controller conflicts, CDROM appears in Device Manager, and DOS compatibility mode is a memory.  I can't believe I have been trying to figure this out for months, and it took about 30 seconds to fix once I got the right advice.

Thanks very much,  Ed


 You the MAN Griz!!  Your solution worked GREAT!

 (Now why didn't ABIT, Intel, or Microsoft have enough brain cells to rub together to come up with a simple, straight forward and precise solution like this?  God knows enough of their customers are having problems like mine...)

 Thanks, Chad Weetman


THANKS!
Your help fixes were the only ones to work and restore my system - pity I didn't find your page 10 hours sooner! So impressed I''ve added a link to your page from mine to help "spread the word."

Best Wishes, Stuart Parham


Hi Shane:
Thanks for the great tips about the conflicts between ATAPI devices and the Busmaster drivers.  I emailed Intel and they were no help at all.  Great work!

Todd Goldsmith


The Holy Grail Rules!

After upgrading my mainboard & cpu, I proceeded to spend hours #%^%$$ing around with it, as well as making several trips to Intel and the boards maker on the net.  I have the new 440bx set with the 82371EB (PIIX4E) bus master devices.  Turns out the AB and EB have the same problem with the SB AWE64 card.  Once I found your page, it took 60 seconds to fix
the problem.  Many thanks!  Next time, I'll go to the "Griz" first.....

Todd Lindquist


Griz, your webpage was a life saver.  Even though I did not follow your procedures exactly as you listed them, the information from all the links and how you fixed your system got mine up and running. Your advice about remming out the CDROM
lines in autoexec.bat and config.sys fixed my CDROM problem . . . Keep up the good work; it keeps the rest of us from
going crazy.

Bob Parlet


Just like the others you've saved. I spent days trying to get rid of those bloody exclamation marks. Why can't Microsoft and Intel provide such simple and straigh-forward support. Well done and thanks. You will be getting a link on my site

Cheers mate.  Glynn Griffin


Thank you very much for the Holy Grail. I spent many hours and weeks on these problems. I had bought a new Giga-byte motherboard and loaded the BM drivers (sounded like a good idea) then my system slowed to a crawl, 2 min or so to do anything like open something. Found your page and was afraid to edit the Registry but tried it anyway. I left the CD-ROM drivers alone.

THANK YOU VERY MUCH
Steve P


I don't know who you are (He does now! <g>) or how old this page is, but your fix started me on the way to fixing a monster.

Lynn Grader
Lockheed Martin - contractor to the E.P.A.


Thanks for the advice displayed at the Holy Grail page. I was pulling my hair out for several hours as to why a new CD-ROM drive would not work when added to an existing CDRW drive. One thing was different and that is I had to remove the existing Busmaster driver manually as it was the Triones version and not the Intel version.  This meant removing the OEM??.INF files and the index file that referred to Triones.  This version of the IDE controller driver was supplied by the motherboard manufacturer (Gigabyte) from their homepage. Now all is well.

Thanks to both John Rainer and Shane Grissom.

Ketan Shah



True (Virus) Story...
Griz,
Thanks for your helpful web-page.  I must admit, since I am a computer tech by trade, responsible for my company's 30+ NT servers and specifically our company virus scanning guru, I was a little embarrassed by what happened to me.  But to help others, please go ahead and post this message to your website.

I followed all of your instructions, step-by-step.  But still, I had yellow bangs next to my IDE controllers.  I went through it again, just to make sure.  Even when I first saw your message and the big warning about checking for viruses, I said, "naaah.  Couldn't happen to me.  I have Norton Antivirus, with auto protect."  Well, I had just reformatted the machine a few days earlier in an attempt to fix the problem with a clean load of Win95 and hadn't put NAV back on yet.  When I did, Bingo!
Stealth.B boot sector virus found.  Norton couldn't clean it, so I rebooted off a clean floppy and ran FDISK /MBR.  That cleared the master boot record, and then I was OK.  However, I thought I had just done that the day before.  When I checked my floppies, I found the offending diskette.  It was my Norton Utilities Boot disk that I put Disk Doctor and Speed Disk on
and also used to use for booting, formatting, etc.

When I rebooted again, everything was configured fine (no more yellow bangs!).  The machine was running a lot faster too, which is most important, because I just bought Might and Magic VI, and, well, you know how it goes....

Thanks again!

John Gasstrom


Hey Griz,

I would like to thank you for your fix.  I was trying to install a new internal Zip drive and thought it would be no problem until the infamous yellow !'s appeared on my primary and secondary IDE controllers, and I thought they would never go away.  Leaving my CD-ROM not working, and dampening my spirits more and more as the days went on.  I was searching web sites for the answer, when Intel pointed me right here.  I only had to use the one fix, (removing NOIDE from the registry), since I had stumbled upon all the other steps through my search.  But the vital link was still missing, until I found you.  I was so happy to reboot and not see the yellow !'s, and my CDROM and Zip work great.

Thank you,

Tara J. Henrikson


Hi again Griz,

I hope you remember me: I'm the one who contacted you last week with a bunch of questions concerning the Holy Grail procedure. I've told you I was going to try your solution procedure last weekend as I believed it was my last chance to solve my problems with the primary IDE controller and MS-DOS Compatibility Mode before turning to a clean re-install of Windows 95.

Well, I just wish I found your Holy Grail page about a month ago. That would have saved me from a lot of headaches, sleepless nights and a long quest along the Microsoft Knowledge Base, Intel's technical assistance pages and MS and Intel newsgroups. I started to execute the Holy Grail procedure last Friday at about 5 PM and about 30 minutes later it was completed successfully: the yellow exclamation mark on the primary IDE controller has disappeared, so did the MS-DOS compatibility mode on my harddisks. Now my system is running smoothly in 32-bit mode !!!  Thanks for putting up this page, for me it absolutely was the HOLY GRAIL !!!

I take it upon myself to pass the word (and the URL of your Holy Grail page of course) to the numerous people I've been in touch with during the last weeks, all struggling with the same problem and looking for a solution.

Thanks again,  Danny Luyten


Just wanted to say thanx a lot for the page!

I had the problem that I couldn't get rid of using all the standard tricks (removing NOIDE from registry, etc.). But then I found your page and the part about master boot record was it! Win98 kept complaining that my MBR was modified by "possibly a virus" - though I had a brand new installation and I used MS supplied floppy... Though the floppy was for Win95, so that's why Win98 might've not liked the boot record. I ignored the mesage until I saw the stuff about MBR on your page. After that I tried "fdisk /mbr" - awesome command! - and all my problems went away!!!!

Way cool. Thanks a lot. Alexander Gavrilov


After posting questions in different forums, I was guided to your outstanding HOLY GRAIL page. Meanwhile I knew almost any detail, but the comprehensive collection of information on your page gave me the crucial ideas to success and encouraged me to work on.

Finally, I succeeded ...

It took me about ten (!!!) days of work (trial and error) to get this result. Now my Windows OSR2 is installed and working fine. It came like a miracle when all was functioning again.

Thanks, Wolfgang


Hi Griz,

thank God I found your holy grail (I think it was from DejaNews or a news group, I just don't remember exactly since I spent hours surfing for help). You're a real life saver, Griz!

I wonder why the manufacturers didn't manage to give such an exact advice. In my case it was a little bit extra tricky since I just bought a used computer and first had to figure out what hardware I am exactly on.  I just cant express how thankful I am. Thanks for saving a lot of peoples nerves (and maybe lifes)!

Uli from Germany


I'd just like to thank you for the very informative page on IDE channels.  I have had this problem twice now and I wish I would have had your solution before.  Again, thanks a lot.

Nate Rickard


Thank goodness for your website. It looks like I finally found someone who knows what they are talking about! Your web site is the only one I found that seemed friendly enough to ask questions. What do I do and how do I do it.
Thank you.........very, very much.

Gary



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Windows 98 Users
UPDATE!
For users finding themselves in the position described below, there is now an easy fix to your problem. Intel has released their New BM-IDE 3.02 driver. The setup program used to install the driver in the Windows95 OS environment, will also automatically uninstall the Intel 3.01 driver and replace it with the native Microsoft BM driver in the Windows98 OS environment. This is a great new feature considering that before the new driver one would have to uninstall Win98, and then remove the old 3.01 driver.
Click here, to find links to the new 3.02 driver and it's accompanying info sources at Intel's site.


Hello,
 You are correct. Intel Bus Master Drivers were not intended to be used with  Windows 98. My guess as to what happened here is that the user  probably had BMIDE installed in Windows 95 and upgraded his system to Windows 98. During this transition, the BMIDE got transferred to Windows 98. When trying to uninstall, the driver will not let him do so because he is running in in Windows 98. My only suggestion to correct this issue would be to uninstall Windows 98 and then uninstall BMIDE drivers in Windows 95. Then the user may choose to upgrade to Windows 98 without Intel Bus Master drivers. The Bus mastering support can still be enabled by checking the DMA checkbox in Disk Drive properties.

 Best Regards,
 Sandeep
 ICS - ASC - 10450009
 http://developer.intel.com/design/pcisets/



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INTEL has released their NEW BM-IDE 3.02 Driver
I have included all the links to the driver, and it's download page. Below you will also find lists of some of the new features built into the driver.

http://developer.intel.com/design/software/drivers/platform/ (Main page for driver download links at Intel)
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/drivers/busmastr/index.htm (Main page for NEW BM driver)
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/drivers/busmastr/license.htm (Intel BM User License page)
http://developer.intel.com/design/chipsets/drivers/busmastr/dwnlod.htm(Main BM download page)
ftp://download.intel.com/design/chipsets/drivers/busmastr/bmide_95.exe (Here is the actual download)
                                                                                                                                             Lose the red tape
 
 

The new release, v3.02, is an enhancement of the previous v3.01 driver.  The driver is still a miniport.  New or expanded features are as follows:
  • support for >8.4GB hdds
  • support for CD-R/RW devices
  • enhanced support for tape drives (all tapes PIO'd, however)
  • support for UDMA CD-ROM
  • support for LS-120 (SuperDisk) devices
  • support for multi-block ATAPI CD-ROM transfers
  • support for hdd write cache flush (flushes hdd write cache as per MS WinNT4 KB article)
  • command parser for commands from ASPI, to determine data flow direction
  • enhanced installer (no more pointing to <WINDIR>\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS!)
  •  installer allows users to DE-INSTALL Intel BM-IDE driver on Win98 systems
  • support for DMA-capable BIOS Int13 routines
  • driver still PIOs all ATAPI writes
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