At 19:50 2/18/99 -0800, Chuck Finnigan wrote:
>In the Device Manager of System Properties, my Hard disk controller device
>lists 3 items:
>
>Intel 82371SB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller (working properly)
>Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) (device not present or working properly)
>Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo) (working properly)
>
>The first two are using IRQ 14.
>The first and third are coexisting peacefully on IRQ 15.
>
>When I try to remove the Primary controller, it always returns when I reboot
>the machine.  It appears that I have two IDE controllers conflicting with
>each other.  How do I disable the second one?  (AMIBIOS on an Intel board,
>Windows 98)  I have two hard drives connected via one cable to the
>motherboard with my TEAC CD drive using the other connection on the board.

Hi Chuck

You said the first two are using IRQ 14 and the first and third are using
IRQ 15. (Does the first line show *both* 14 and 15? Just curious!)

It would be normal to have these three entries. It is normal to have the
primary controller using IRQ 14 and the secondary controller using IRQ 15.
(Your hard drives are on the primary channel and the Teack CD is on the
secondary channel.)

The entry for Intel 82371SB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller refers to the
chip on the motherboard that controlls both the primary and secondary
channels. When you remove this, it is automatically detected next time
you reboot because it is Plug and Play and there's nothing you can do
about that. And you want it there if you are using any IDE devices on
either channel. Windows would probably detect it even if you disabled
it in your BIOS Setup.

What is not normal (as I'm sure you know) is that you see "device not
present or working properly" for the primary controller. Are your hard
drives working in MS-DOS Comparibility Mode? (Look in Control Panel,
System, Performance). Do these drives work, are they FAT 12, 16, or 32?
(They might surely work faster if that error message were not there.)
See "MS-DOS Compatibility Mode Problems with PCI-IDE Controllers" at
<http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/q151/9/11.asp> and
"Troubleshooting MS-DOS Compatibility Mode on Hard Disks" at
<http://support.microsoft.com/support/kb/articles/Q130/1/79.asp>.

There are several causes for this. One thing to try is to search the
registry for "NOIDE" (without quotes). If you ever had trouble with a
drive on the first channel, this entry may have been put in the registry
and it likely "stuck". You could *delete* the NOIDE comment. I do not
have the same chipset in my computers as do you, so I can't tell you
more. I do recall that using Bus Mastering drivers can lead to your
problem, particularly if the CDROM drive or one of the hard drives
is older and does not like these drivers. (You may have to try try
installing a generic IDE/ESDI controller driver.)

It looks like your hard drives are not using the correct device driver,
or it is failing to initialize when Win98 loads the protected mode
drivers. Check your autoexec.bat and config.sys files for strange device
drivers. Does your CDROM work? Maybe you could let us know what is in
your config.sys file (and autoexec.bat).

What is your processor, what chipset motherboard (if you don't know,
let us know what BIOS identifier string you see at boot), what brand
and *vintage* computer? (I had these problems two years ago...but have
forgotten the details.)

Regards,
Bill

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