Running Dual Boot with 98SE and XP Pro SP1

External Since: Nov 18, 2003 Posts: 43

I have a dual boot system on an Abit BD7II-R with 98SE on an old Seagate
ATA33 HDD on Primary IDE 1 Master and a Lite-On CD-RW Primary Slave.
Secondary IDE 2 Master is a LG GSA-4040B DVD-RAM with NO slave. My WinXP Pro
is on Primary IDE 3 & 4 as a RAID array. Now, this mobo has IDE 3 & 4 as
ATA133/RAID capable. But IDE 1 & 2 are spec'd as ATA100 capable. The problem
is that my GSA-4040B is spec'd as capable of running at UDMA66. However, IAA
always shows it running as UDMA33. I've tried all combinations or slave and
master with my DVDs and CD drives( I also have a Pioneer A05 running
currently as a USB device). One wierd thing is that my Advanced Settings tab
for my Primary and Secondary IDE channels tab is missing, so I can't fool
around with manually setting the UDMA or PIO modes within Windows. My BIOS
settings only allow Auto and Disabled for UDMA modes but allow PIO modes to
be set manually from 0 through 4 so I can't manually select UDMA 4 there
either. I'm thinking that the old Seagate ATA33 HDD on Primary IDE 1 is
lowering the UDMA mode for everything else to a maximum of UDMA 2. Does this
sound logical? If so, I also have a WD 80GB 8MB buffer 7200rpm HDD on a FW
port. I was thinking I could exchange that with the old seagate as I'm sure
the WD is ATA100 and this should allow my 4040B to run at its' spec'd
value(ATA66). I'd like to test this theory first by disabling the Seagate
with 98SE on it and boot into XP to see if the 4040B is running at ata66. My
question is, will I run into trouble with the Boot.ini, if I merely pull the
controller cable to the Seagate out of the mobo(with the power off, of
course). Will the system automatically boot into the remaining XP partition
by itself even though it expects to see a multi-disk partition? Or will I
have to reinstall the entire dual boot setup with installing 98SE first and
XP second, if I make this hard drive switch? Does any of this make sense?
TIA,

Ron

External Since: Nov 18, 2003 Posts: 1356

what I would try before you go moving cables around is to delete the IDE
controller from the device manager, reboot and then allow it to be
redetected and see if you don't get the tabs on the device dialog.

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"Ron" <rkrebs1 RemoveThis @rcn.com> wrote in message
news:bpe5pe$7tp$1@bob.news.rcn.net...
> I have a dual boot system on an Abit BD7II-R with 98SE on an old Seagate
> ATA33 HDD on Primary IDE 1 Master and a Lite-On CD-RW Primary Slave.
> Secondary IDE 2 Master is a LG GSA-4040B DVD-RAM with NO slave. My WinXP
Pro
> is on Primary IDE 3 & 4 as a RAID array. Now, this mobo has IDE 3 & 4 as
> ATA133/RAID capable. But IDE 1 & 2 are spec'd as ATA100 capable. The
problem
> is that my GSA-4040B is spec'd as capable of running at UDMA66. However,
IAA
> always shows it running as UDMA33. I've tried all combinations or slave
and
> master with my DVDs and CD drives( I also have a Pioneer A05 running
> currently as a USB device). One wierd thing is that my Advanced Settings
tab
> for my Primary and Secondary IDE channels tab is missing, so I can't fool
> around with manually setting the UDMA or PIO modes within Windows. My BIOS
> settings only allow Auto and Disabled for UDMA modes but allow PIO modes
to
> be set manually from 0 through 4 so I can't manually select UDMA 4 there
> either. I'm thinking that the old Seagate ATA33 HDD on Primary IDE 1 is
> lowering the UDMA mode for everything else to a maximum of UDMA 2. Does
this
> sound logical? If so, I also have a WD 80GB 8MB buffer 7200rpm HDD on a FW
> port. I was thinking I could exchange that with the old seagate as I'm
sure
> the WD is ATA100 and this should allow my 4040B to run at its' spec'd
> value(ATA66). I'd like to test this theory first by disabling the Seagate
> with 98SE on it and boot into XP to see if the 4040B is running at ata66.
My
> question is, will I run into trouble with the Boot.ini, if I merely pull
the
> controller cable to the Seagate out of the mobo(with the power off, of
> course). Will the system automatically boot into the remaining XP
partition
> by itself even though it expects to see a multi-disk partition? Or will I
> have to reinstall the entire dual boot setup with installing 98SE first
and
> XP second, if I make this hard drive switch? Does any of this make sense?
> TIA,
>
> Ron
>
>