This may be too specific a question to be answered in an non-Intel forum,
but what the heck. Nothing ventured, as they say...


I have the following setup:

Dell Dimension 4100 with an Intel 815E Chipset, P3- 866, 256 M RAM, 40G
Western Digital 7200 rpm ATA-100 hard drive [on my primary IDE],  NEC DVD
Drive and Ricoh CD-RW Drive [master and slave respectively, both on my
Secondary IDE].

I am running Windows 2000 Pro (SP1) (on a dual boot with Win 98SE).

I have tried to install the latest release of the storage driver, 6.03 and
have had some very peculiar problems. For one, when trying to uninstall the
driver, I got a BSOD critical stop error when I rebooted saying
Boot_Device_Inaccessible. I had to revert to a previous configuration and
almost had to reinstall Win2k altogether. So, I am afraid to try and
uninstall again.

When I simply try and install the storage driver again, everything SEEMS to
be OK, in that the Win2K Device Manager shows all devices working, and no
conflicts etc, but I am not convinced that it *IS* working properly for the
following reasons:

1) When I try to run the Storage Driver Companion that comes also from Intel
and is part of the package, I get an error message that says "The Intel ATA
Storage Driver was not detected! Please verify driver is properly
installed".

2) When I run my TV tuner card, it tells me that DMA support on my WD Hard
Drive is not enabled and that I should enable it for better performance.

3) When I go into Device Manager, IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller, I get 3 entries,
namely
'Intel 82801BA Ultra Controller',
'Ultra ATA controller' and
'Ultra ATA controller'.

Device Manager says that all three are working properly, and there are no
conflicts and no yellow exclamation marks etc. However, if I select any of
the 3 and click properties, they show that my Current Transfer Mode is PIO,
even though wherever possible, the selection is set for using "DMA if
available".

Other points that may be relevant: If I select the Intel 82801BA Ultra
Controller in Device Manager (under IDE ATA/ATAPI Controller), and go to
Properties, Driver, Driver Details I see the following 3 entries:

IdeBd.sys
IntelATA.sys
IATA2000.dll

It also shows:
Provider - Intel
Driver Date - 5/30/2000
Driver Version - 6.1.8.0
Digital Signer - Microsoft Windows Hardware Compatibility Pub...  (I thought
this release was NOT digitally signed???)

File Version - 6.00.002  02/22/2000

All of this makes me think that the correct driver is NOT installed, but I
don't know how else to get it installed.

Also, I noted that when I ran the 'intelata603_enu.exe' file in the first
place, it did NOT ever unpack the 'intelata.inf' file. I had to go and run
'setup -A' to get the file to extract at all. I then placed that file in my
\WINNT\inf folder and tried to get Win2k to use that inf file for
installation. It never wanted to do so, and kept insisting that it had a
better match, namely an Intel 82801 Bus Master IDE controller. I had a LOT
of trouble to get Win2k to accept my choice of what driver to install.

So, bottom line is that my computer works, Device Manager says all is well,
but it also says everything in running in PIO mode. I can't tell what is
right and what is wrong, but somehow this does NOT sound right to me. Unless
of course Win2k is simply unable to REPORT the correct mode and it is using
DMA all along.

I have read that Win2K (SP1) does not support ATA-100. Is this true?? If so,
why doesn't it say that anywhere? And even if it doesn't have native
support, shouldn't the Intel driver provide this? And even if that is not
the case, surely I should not be in PIO mode by default???

Can anyone tell me if the driver *IS* working properly or not from what I
have described, and if not, how do I get it installed properly.

Many thanks.

Michael

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