uh. huh huh huh huh huh...

helpful. Give me a break here.

Hey, Beavis.....uh....did he say..... :D But I just had to! :roll:

43* is fine, but you'll want to look at that temperature after your comp has been working. Once the volts start flying, the temp starts rising!

In your system bios you should be able to change ide detection to cable select. On the motherboard you will have two slots for ide connects, and if you use a cable that has two splits, you should get three ide's and a cdr-w, without a problem. If it doesn't work I would try updating your bios.
I honestly don't know if switching to 2000 will help you out. I would ask my local computer retailer about this.

Also, I would set the jumpers back to auto and if you're suspicious of the ide cable then change it too.

I'm not a computer geek, but I hope this helps you out as I went through the same thing myself not too long ago.

Steve.

Oh yeah, I upgraded the BIOS first of all to ver. 1.005, Opus recommends 1.002 but that can't really matter, or can it? ;|

Thanks for the tip, maybe I should try cable select for every IDE device.

Keep on coming with the advice, has someone experienced the CD/RW issue? ASPI layer upgrade may be a good idea?

/Henrik

First, yes, BIOS versions do make a HUGE difference. It's the very core of your computer. If it's fouled-up, everything's fouled-up. Sorta like trying to build a house on a sand foundation. Just because a company calls a revision an "update" doesn't necessarily mean it's going to be better. Sometimes their solutions are worse than the problems they're supposed to fix. Motherboard companies OFTEN have BIOS updates that precisely illustrate this point. If OPUS said to use a particular BIOS version, USE IT. He would not say it if there were not VERY good reason for it.

Secondly, Windows 98. There were some major changes between 98 and 98 Second Edition, although not visible to the eye. You'll find that a lot of current hardware, software, and drivers are compatible with 98SE, but not 98 "Original Flavor". There are also claims of 98 and 98SE compatibility which are utter hogwash. They figure that once you've bought the hardware, and you can't get it to work with 98, you'll finally give-in and invest in XP ... and their little scheme works. If you're running the latest hardware with the latest drivers, there's a good chance that you will run into problems getting everything to run right under W98. Looking at this logically ... look at the system you just built ... VERY nice ... so why do you want to try to run a 5 year old operating system on it? "GIVE IN TO THE DARKSIDE, LUKE." ... XP Pro is about $135 online. Don't buy the home edition. You'll find that the learning curve is zilch, and you will quickly appreciate the benefits of XP Pro over W98. Also, switching-over to the NTFS file system with XP will probably alleviate all of your IDE problems.

Thirdly, in my opinion, your temp is high for an "un-overclocked" CPU. OPUS ALWAYS disagrees with this, but I don't think it's the greatest idea to use the stock cooler and heatsink. My latest favorite is this [="http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?description=35-118-106&refer=pricewatch"]Zalman[/]="http://www.newegg.c…"]Zalman[/]. It's quite pricey ($48), but it does an excellent job of cooling and looks AWESOME. If you don't want to spend that kinda money, the Glacialtech Diamond 4100 is an excellent performer, especially for only $15! They don't look like much, but they do a great job, they're very quiet, and they even have an adjustable fan. Go to this link and scroll down to it:
[[url=http://="http://www.newegg.c…"]Glacialtech @ Newegg[/]="http://www.newegg.c…"]Glacialtech @ Newegg[/]

I hope this info has been of some help to you. Cheers!

:c:

Sonofsmawg, thanks a million, that's the kind of advice/push I needed, a new OS is to be bought in a very near future, I'm still not sure about the WinXP Home/Pro/Win2000 issue but I'll search around here for the answer (which is pretty sure to be in this forum... :) ).

I'll probably take the BIOS update back a notch to ver 1.002 as well. just to be sure.

Regards,
/Henrik

First of all, having issues with the IDE configuration because of BIOS updates is EXTREMELY unlikely. That stuff is proven technology and right at the heart of a system. Messing that up is not happening with a company like ASUS.

Win98SE is a usable OS, Win98 (first attempt) is not. I personally would upgrade to WinXP Home as one of the key difference to XP Pro is the support for dual processors - which is not yet too well supported - but that's just me having better ideas to do with the $$$ difference rather than buy features I won't use. But WinXP Pro is certainly not a bad choice.

The reason that your primary IDE disk doesn't always come up right away has probably to do with the fact that your system boots quickly and the disk is not ready by the time the BIOS polls the disks. If your system ALWAYS boots after a "warm reset" that is likely the cause.
Also, if your CD-RW is recognized at all (in your case as a CD-R) the IDE boot up is fine - if there were any issues at that level if would not be recognized at all.

Finally, 43 degrees is about as low as it gets for a CPU. Additionally the BIOS temperature gauges have a very limited reliability. Depending on where the sensor is placed it could easily be a different number altogether.
I would second the recommendation for a Zalman fan - but more because it is very quiet, not because it is a fantastic cooler.

Hope this helps,

MisterBlue.

120GB is way too big a partition for fat32 in w98. XP with ntfs partitions is the way to go IMO, no practical size limit there. w2k is OK but XP has audio enhancements that beat w2k. We have had very few problems after switching from 98SE.

Ok, guess I'll keep the latest revision of the BIOS then. One last question before I leave you to go and make music: :)
Did I f**k up the 120 GB drive by trying to partition it (just showing appr. 49 GB) with fdisk? I did not format it.

Thanks Misterblue and Cavepainter, I wonder what people did when these kind of forums weren't around and they needed help with things that nobody in their circle of friends knew anything about. This forum is an invaluable asset and the good thing is that almost everyone here recognizes that.

Thanks again, /Henrik

Henrik,

fdisk should still show you the full size of the disk somewhere e.g. as unallocated space or something. You will in reality never see the full 120GB, but 49GB is indeed too low.

How much space do you have in primary and extended partitions? How many drive ( = letters) are being recognized? Just C: or are there more ? How big are they each ?

Have you tried other tools like Partition Magic?

In any case, I wouldn't hesitate and upgrade to WinXP. I believe it will solve your issues right away.

MisterBlue.

MisterBlue, I thought that fdisk would show the space (before the format) too, that's why I got a bit worried... Anyhow, I went out and got XP Pro and everything's ok, I've done most of the tweaks in Opus' document and I'm a very happy man. Thank you for the help,

Regards,
/Henrik

Hey Henrik, I see there's some verygood info related to your ANUS problems. I started out using WIN98 SE on my new P4 2.4Gig with a gigabyte MB. At that time, I was running Cubase VST 3.7 which worked 50% of the time. So I decided to upgrade to SX but could'nt use it because it would'nt run on 98. I then tried an upgrade to WIN2000 Pro OS, and really started to get some very weird stuff happening when I tried to use any of my programs (especially with my MOTU MTP A/V). I cured my problems when I upgraded to WIN XP Pro. I have 3 HD's (2 IDE & 1 SCSI on an adaptec U160 card), the SCSI is still partitioned w/ FAT32 but the IDE's are NTFS. The reason for this was that the original project files were on the SCSI and did'nt get partitioned when the other drives did. I can say now that my current setup runs flawlessly. NTFS is the best way to go.

I believe most of your problems will be resolved if you:

1. Update to XP, it has more drivers, better core. And/or

2. Start over w/98 and simply try to install only the new HDwithout the IBM drive or other devices. As I explained in a different thread, there can and is most likely an electrical conflict between the older IBM drive and the new devices on the newer 80c cable, specifically this can occur with WD drives.

I think the manual selection of the Master Slave is the right way to go. By doing number 2 before number 1, all you've lost is format time and one install to see if it works? It's probably hard to make the decision at this point, but XP is a substantially better OS. Home is fine unless you are on a network. This also allows you to see if it is related to the IBM disk. What MB said can happen about the disk not being up to speed. Some boards have a disk delay feature, I don't know if the P4E does or not, don't remember?

Once up and runing again, you may want to see if a firmware update is available for your Plextor drive as well. It can make a difference.

And then don't rule out just a bad board.