At 03:57 PM 01/19/2000 , Gerry Coburn wrote:
>System: Abit BE6 r 2 m/b; Win98; 128mb.dram;celeron 486 (not overclocked); Maxtor h./d
>x2 (8Gb and 10Gb); Matrox G220 video card; 3com nic;adaptec scsi card; Hauppage wintv
>card;winmodem and soundblaster 64 sound card
>
>I swapped out my Abit BH6 motherboard and replaced it with an Abit BE6 r II earlier this
>week. I set the bios with its default settings but changed the setup to recognise two
>hard drives and two floppy drives. I attempted to boot up but everything stopped with
>the message "Write fault error writing device AUX. Abort, retry, ignore, fail" When I
>tried any of the options they simply repeated down the screen. I aborted and tried again
>but once more with the same result.
>
>I then decided to reinstall Win 98. This went well until the system attempted to load
>all plug and play devices. At this point everything froze up. After numerous retries
>with the same result I removed all cards except the vga card and retried but still
>without success. I then hooked up another hard drive that I had, formatted it and loaded
>Win 98. This went through without a hitch and I was able to boot up and run Windows. I
>concluded from this, rightly or wrongly, that I did not have a hard ware problem so I
>tried my original setup with my two hard drives but still without success.
>
>At this moment I am stuck and am trying to avoid the prospect of a reformat. I do have a
>full backup although it is about a month old so all is not lost but I am hoping to avoid
>losing all my settings and my most recent mail messages.
>
>Can anyone suggest the way forward? I think I have reached the end of my limited
>knowledge base and need to turn to the experts. Help!!



I read through this a couple of times looking for points I might have
missed.  I realized that although you did provide a great deal about your
PC, it lacks some important points.
   Is your video card PCI and if so, what slot are you using?
   Since the Abit BE6 board uses IDE 1&2 for the Udma33 controller
     and IDE 3&4 for Udma66, (the HPT366 controller), which are using?

You need to understand that this board is designed to share IRQs.
     AGP and PCI1 share an IRQ
     PCI3 and HPT366 controller share an IRQ
     PCI5 and ISA1 share an IRQ

You may need to upgrade your Bios with the latest version from
Abit to solve issues.   Also, I am concerned that you are using the
Udma66 controller for the drives, but you have not set the Bios
to Boot EXT and set the external as Udma66.

If you can provide more information about the hard drives, the controller
configuration and the exact slots your cards are occupying, I might
be able to give you more detailed advice.

    Bob Wright
The NOSPIN Group

         The PCBUILD web site always needs good submissions.  If
          you would like to contribute to the website, send any
               hardware tech tips or hardware reviews to:
                           [log in to unmask]