I have just added a second Ultra DMA Hard drive to my system.  It is slaved
off the other on the primary controller, with the CD-ROM on the secondary
channel. The system is an Asus Tx-97e, 64k RAM, P166MMX, and the drives are
4.3GB and 6.4GB, both UltraDMA.  Windows95a and all current updates to same.
The bios is
up to date, and the Intel patches are installed. Partioning by Partition
Magic, current version (the logical drives are C thru I, most are around 1GB
in size except the primary, and one other).

Here is the problem and question:  the system hangs a lot, at least 5 to 10
times per day, sometimes it just seems like the RAM and the virtual memory
on the drives forget to check-in with each other.  It also requires
defragging at least twice a day, otherwise it quickly goes over 5% and gets
lost.  But the performance in all other areas is great!

After surfing around the MS support database
(http://support.Microsoft.com/support/kb/) for several hours, I found 4
relevant articles and downloads (Q171353 "Computer with Ultra DMA Controller
may Hang"  file name=remideup.exe, Q148821 "Possible Data Loss with LBA and
INT 13 Extensions"  file name=dsktsupd.exe , Q154435 "Windows 95 IDE Support
for SMART,DMA,and ATAPI Tape Drives" , file name=remideup.exe, Q126855 "W95
Support For Large IDE Hard disks", nofile) --but they all seem to do the
about the same thing:  install some or all of the following files:

1. esdi_506.pdr version 4.00.1116 dated 8/25/97 and later, and/or
2. voltrack.vxd version 4.00.954 3/6/96 or later
3. disktsd.vxd version 4.00.952 3/22/96 or later

Numbers 1 and 2 of these files live in Windows/system/iosubsys, I'm not sure
about 3.

Here is the issue (finally!)   In each of these documents Microsoft says it
"confirms this to be a problem in W95.  An update to address this problem is
now available (the ones above), but it has not been fully tested and should
be applied only to systems with this specific problem.   Unless you are
severely impacted, Microsoft does not recommend implementing this update at
this time"

So, I' m stuck, install the update or not?  Am I "severely impacted"?


If anyone has any experience at all with this I would appreciate your
feedback!

Sorry so long winded but it is a detailed problem.

TIA

Jeff Mayem
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Jeff Mayem
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(Note: use [log in to unmask] if any errors encountered)