Hard Drive access light on constantly 2

[adale]

The hard drive light is on constantly, except when occasionaly the pc is crashing whilst trying to run Battlefield 1942.

Does the hard drive light stay on when the Pc goes through the initial BIOS test/boot up stage with other people as I'm starting to think it has something to do with a conflict?

The PC specs are:-
MOTHERBOARD - ABit 8363 KT7[A] Version v1.0 ~ v1.2
BIOS Award - Version VT8371 - 42302e31 6.00PG 11/07/02
Processor - AMD Athlon(tm) 1.2Ghz Socket A
Memory - RAM 256 MB [Pagefile 384 MB]
Graphics - NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4200 64 MB [Driver 6.13.10.4072]
SOUNDCARD -Creative Audigy
MONITOR - Dell D1226H
OS - Microsoft Windows XP Ver 5.1.2600 SP1
File system - NTFS [System Restore=Off]
HARD DISK - Maxtor IDE 32049H2 19.08 GB
DVD - LG DVD-ROM DRD8160B
CD/RW - Creative CD-RW RW2024E

 

[roamer1]

ADALE,

from your mobo's FAQs

My sound card has a crackling noise while playing music or my computer hangs while copying files. (For VIA chipsets motherboards)

http://fae.abit.com.tw/eng/faq/qa/2002/2002090101.htm

VIA's side of the story:
I am having trouble with a system using a VIA chipset including a 686b southbridge and a Creative Sound Blaster Live card.

Answer:
When the 686b southbridge was first released, motherboard manufacturers and VIA discovered a problem when trying to transfer files between the primary and the secondary IDE channels on motherboards using ultra-DMA, when a Sound Blaster Live was plugged in and drivers activated. This issue was caused because too much noise is transferred across the PCI bus by the Sound Blaster Live driver set. In an attempt to fix this issue, some motherboard manufacturers modified their BIOS. In some instances, these modifications to the BIOS caused a data corruption error even when not using a Sound Blaster Live. VIA released a patch which resolves this issue, which is incoroporated in the 4in1 drivers from the 4.31 version onwards. Motherboard manufacturers were advised to change the modifications made to thier BIOS to elimate the data corruption issue. If you are experiencing data corruption or lock up when transferring files between two IDE drives: 1) Make sure you have the latest BIOS from your motherboard manufacturer. 2) Make sure you have the latest 4in1 drivers 3) Make sure when you set up your system that you install the 4in1 drivers both before and after you install the SBL to make sure that the drivers see your SBL and install the correct patch. The patch will only install if the SBL is installed.[COLOR=/]

Wondered about this one.

Here's another fix:

Why does my machine crash with a disk on IDE2 and a Soundblaster card?

It has been reported that on machines with the KT133A chipset (the KT7A and KT7A-RAID), a Soundblaster card, and a disk connected to the VIA IDE Secondary controller, the machine will hang when large amounts of data are transferred to or from the disk. The solution to this problem appears to be either to replace your sound card (!) or to install the VIA bus mastering driver separately (from VIA Arena) and choose the miniport option (this is not available when installed from the 4in1 package). Another user found that disabling "Enhance chip performance" in SoftMenu III solved the problem More recently a user found that upgrading to BIOS 3R caused Windows to redetect the IDE devices and in the process resolved this problem.

 

[adale]

Okay some answers and results
1/PNP in bios is off but I don't know what ASCPI is.
2/Booted with floppy into DOS mode and light stayed on. So it can't be the OS right ?
3/Memory is 256Mb
4/Processor averages 2% usage
5/I've had no hanging or crahsing issues encountered so far.
6/Both Powermax and Western Digitals utitlies say everything is working great.
7/Re benchmarked with new drive was...is now
Sequential Write=7.7mb/sec....19mb/sec
Sequential Read=11.4mb/sec....19.8mb/sec
Random Seek & RW = 1.2mb/sec..2.3mb/sec
8/Also bought a new PC case as the last one was cramped, so the HDD light connectors are definatley in the right place now and they were before.
9/Both HD drives are in DMA mode and showing Mode 5 now.
10/I'm reluctant to change from DMA to PIO as thebios has always been on automatic and was not the issue before. Maybe a reflash is called for or an email to Abit/Award.

And still the light shone on......

 

[adale]

Well, I had installed the Via4in1 drivers but they weren't showing in the IDE Primary controller area. So I tried the IDETool in the miniport utility, and now the light's working normally.
The only problem is that the OS thinks I have SCSI drives now and the Primary IDE has changed to a SCSI/RAID controller. If only I did then maybe this wouldn't have happened. The benchmark test has improved by a few percent on the random test but I will try some other benchmarking utilities before I get worked up about this.
At least I've got my light.

Thankyou all for all the sugestions, I may be back though with..'My PC thinks I have a SCSI but I don't so I hit it with a hammer and the light on the front stopped working' thread.

 

[edfair]

Well, you at least know now why these beasts are so much fun.
Some rocks you just don't want to turn over. Ed Fair
unixstuff@juno.com
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[roamer1]

First, Your board IS ASCPI compliant, it IS active by default, and there is no menu option in CMOS to disable it.

No, the OS would be less likely, but might still be driver level stuff (Vid drivers etc). Seems like a CMOS, Controller, or CMOS/Controller interface. YES, You might want to inquire at ABIT, there may be a particular patch.

The only thing ELSE you could prove by effect, is to

uninstall the VIA controllers or use the mini port controller

Flash the bios back to previous- stay on a boot disk or you'll crap out your XP install, or scrub and load whichever drive you dont need back to 98 for the moment.

The sound card patch / IDE thing looks very interesting to me, as that is an IDE issue and patches BIOS. Sounds like the sound card thing is blowing feedback/static from PCI into IDE. I know you are AUDIGY, but still creative/sb. I woud assume that disabling them in CMOS would affect the problem and perhaps prove the issue. ??
If not, the latency issue in the link in that same post or, again, VIA's miniport driver

Did you pull all ATAPI/IDE to eliminate feedback issues?

PS- A buddy of mine said that he had this problem too, but his had something to do with a promise card (even though HDD was on IDE0). Removed the promise and reinstalled. Leads me to believe that that cards/drivers that function at INT/redirect level (Promise,RAID,Overlay, etc)may have affect- ??

 

[danielrnz]

This might sound stupid but how (physically) is the drive plugged in? Which plug is it on? Also are the jumpers on the drive set correctly(master/slave/cs)? Since ata66 came about some mb's/chipsets are rather fussy as to how the hdds are plugged in. Ideally the drive should be set as master and should be plugged into the first connector (usually the grey one).

Hope this helps

Cheers
Daniel