BadFlash,
The following was clipped from the "VIA 4in1 Drivers" thread. I was hoping you'd read it there and give your opinion, but since you never posted an opinion on it I thought I'd post it as a seperate thread as a question to you. My apologies to others who've read the thread elsewhere.....
Both before and after I installed the new 4-in-1 drivers I can see the VIA Bus Master PCI IDE controller and both the primary and the secondary IDE controllers in Device Mangler. The VIA Bus Master and the secondary both say they are working OK, only the Primary says its not present or doesn't have all of its drivers installed. Naturally, the performance tab shows drive C: using MSDOS compatability mode before AND after the new drivers installation.
I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling it, both with and without a reboot in between, and I've tried doing it both ways in safe mode and in standard mode. I tried disabling the Secondary, disabling the Primary, disabling both, and enabling both - always the same result - the Primary has the SPLAT and says its not present or doesn't have all its drivers installed. I tried using regedit to hunt down and delete all references to PCI IDE controllers (dual FIFO) in the registry. I tried wiping the drive and installing Windows 98SE from scratch. At that point the situation was the same as its always been - a mysterious problem with the Primary PCI IDE controller (dual FIFO).
After all this I saw the post about switching the PNP/PCI from auto to manual and setting IRQs 14 & 15 to Legacy ISA mode, so I tried that too - even though it doesn't make sense to me how setting the IRQ for a PCI device to Legacy ISA mode could work. After rebooting the problem still wasn't corrected so I tried reinstalling the drivers with IRQs 14 & 15 in Legacy ISA mode anyway, and once again, after rebooting the problem is still there.
At this point I am totally at a loss - I've tried everything I know - including redetecting the drive, changing every IDE/PCI/hard drive setting in the BIOS, and installing/uninstalling the drivers in every sequence and mode I can think of. Everything seems to work fine, just the drive read/write operations are noticably slower than they should be - just like you would expect if its operating in compatability mode. I've even downloaded the pictures of ckbone's BIOS setup screens and tried setting mine up just like his. When that didn't make any difference I tried un-installing and re-installing the drivers with his BIOS settings intact - still no change.
Have you got any other ideas? I bought this I/O "pre-hacked" (a 6.4 Gb Toshiba hard drive had been added) because it didn't cost any more to buy this one than it would have to buy an un-hacked I/O. a 6.4 gig drive, drive installation cable and adapter, hacked BIOS, etc. At this point I'm beginning to wonder; Could the BIOS itself be the problem? I don't know where the guy got it, whether he bought one, or hacked it himself or what. Have you ever seen/heard of an improperly hacked BIOS causing this kind of problem? Badflash, as our resident BIOS guru, what do you think? I'm fresh out of ideas about what's wrong and what the heck to do about it..........
