Promise PCI IDE Controller & Bus Mastering

Question

Hello All   I just -very- recently purchased a Dimension 8400 and was in the process of transferring my old (none smaller than 160gb) IDE drives over to it.  Since the 8400 only comes equipped with 1 IDE channel and it was being using by the DVD & DVD RW I ordered with the system I had to also transfer my Promise 100 controller card over to the new system.  Since I am on DSL I took out the modem and inserted the controller in its slot.    Now, here's where we come to the portion that ALMOST made me break my new $1500,- piece of ahem...  When the system booted up the first time after me transferring everything I received the old 'F1 to continue or F2 to enter setup' message and it said that bus mastering was enabled.  I dutifully went into the BIOS and saw that there is no option for this in the BIOS.  As usual DELL's BIOS does seem to leave little option for those who like to actually configure things their own way (I knew this before I purchased but Geez).  I exited it and let the system boot into XP SP2.  I got the message saying that one of my HDs was 'dirty' and then it proceeded to clean everythng up.  It rebuilt approx. 74,000 (yes that's thousand) indexes and files.  I pressed, clicked, cursed and cajoled but it would not stop.  As soon as it went into XP I looked and sure enough things were hosed.  Not being the smartest camper on the block I restarted the system.  Guess what happened on next boot up.  Yup, that's right, same F1 & F2 deal and it hosed another drive and about another 50,000 files.  So here I am, livid and with my better half actually shutting off the monitor so that I dont see all the files getting 'worked on'.  Eventually the file processing stopped and XP declared that all is well, but it isn't.  I am ticked to say the least.   Now I haven't shut the system down since.  Some of the files I accessed are ok, but others (and why is it ALWAYS the important ones) are hosed.   So after my long and drawn out explanation, here's my questions:   1.  Has anyone else experienced a similar problem? 2.  Although I looked around I didn't see any postings regarding issues with a promise controller.  Does anyone know of any? 3.  What do I do to get rid of the F1 & F2 message.  Is there anyway to enable/disable the bus mastering on either the motherboard/bios or on the promise controller itself? (2 questions for the price of one) 4.  Does anyone know of ANY possible utility (under $200 would be nice) which could either      A.  Return my drives to their original state.      B.  Somehow repair the data. 5.  Is this something that will probably keep happening and therefor I should just pull out all the IDE drives or is this something that will happen once to each and then my data is secure from that point forward?    I am trying to maintain a grin on my face but some of that info WAS important. I have older backups of most of it, but I'd like to try and recover the current files if I can.  Most of what was left behind after the reindexing and fixing was garbled junk.   I Bless any and all who have some kind of input. Even if it is to say 'You're not alone Brother!' :)   Thanks Vicc

Vicc_Torree · Answer

:smileyhappy: I had originally intended to use this posting as a BUMP for my message but it isn't necessary. Instead I will share my solution in case anyone else ever has Bus Mastering problems. I decided to go on a hunch (goes to WAY back when only one slot was for Bus Master and it was either the 1st or last) and I swapped the Promise Controller to the 1st slot after the video card and BINGO "F1 or F2" message disappeared and 4 reboots later I have had no more problems with my data. Just wish this would have been documented somewhere BEFORE I lost my data. I hope this saves some of you some headaches in the future.

Vicc

Storage, Drives & Media

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