hard drive controller card problems

i have the following controller card:
Promise ultra 133tx2 ultra ata/133 controller
i dont have the serial number
bios/driver number from the disk: v1.01 20031009

pc system
compaq presario 5000
66 MHz motherboard
OS
Windows xp pro sp2
intel celeron processor 598 MHz, 384MBs of RAM


i have a compaq presario 5000 series (6 year old pc) that had a hard drive with a capacity of 15gb. i wanted to upgrade the hard drive to a 250 gig seagate hard drive and replace the old drive (wester digital). i purchased the controller card so i would have full capacity of the seagate hard drive instead of the 130gig that the motherboard will recognize.

initially i installed the card incorrectly my first process:
installed card in motherboard, boot up on old hard drive, and install drivers from within windows
then install hard drive, run the diskwizard program to format and copy files over.
after copying the files over i would then disconnect the original drive and boot from the seagate.

this did not work because i didnt have the card setup as a boot option so i tried to repeat the process in the manual:
install card and hard drive in the pc, attach new harddrive to pci card, boot up windows with cd or disk and install the drivers from the windows.

when i tried the later process (after step 5 in the manual for setup on windows XP system) i received the error "\win2003/ultra.sys caused an unexpected error (1034 or 1036) at line 2108 in d: \xpclient\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c."

i also downloaded the drivers from the website and i received the same error message.

if there's another process i can follow to successfully get windows xp to accept the drivers for the controller card i would greatly appreciate the help. thanks.

 

could you please clarify some things?
1. Initially the card worked because you hooked a drive to it, formatted that drive and copied files to it?

2. Next, you disconnected your C: drive and wanted to boot from the "new" drive on the Promise controller?

3. How did you "copy" the files to the new drive?

I'm a bit lost but here's what I get:

1. Maybe you just copied the entire contents of the C: drive to a new drive and mistakenly think that will make the new drive into a bootable C: drive? You would need to image the original drive to the new drive to cause that to be true.

2. Drivers aren't an issue if they installed and worked on the original C drive?

3. If any of the above are true, have you tried connecting the old drive to the promise controller to see if it will boot from there?

Where am I going wrong for you?

 

1. yes, hooked new drive to card and copy files to the new drive

2. yes

3. i copy files from the old drive to the new one using seagates (new drive is a seagate hard drive) discwizard program.

1. that was what i was thinking, that i can copy files to the new drive and boot with the new drive.

2.i thought maybe that's how it worked, but i wasnt certain as to how the drivers where to make it to the new drive (initially)

3. tried connecting the old drive to the card, and if i recall it didn't recognize the drive was there (i'll have to do it again to be certain, but i know that it didn't boot up) i want to say i got a "disk controller failure" error message.

i think you have it, it's that now, after following the instructions correctly(installing card and drivers for the card during the windows xp setup) i'm getting the "\win2003/ultra.sys caused an unexpected error (1034 or 1036) at line 2108 in d: \xpclient\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c." error message.

 

OK, well the software you used should have worked OK. I've had a bunch of promise controllers in that era and for that purpose and they worked without a hitch. They didn't need drivers to at least start up. Say I had just one drive hooked up and I used a win98 floppy and formatted that drive. Now I don't have any drivers for sure, right? The card would still be recognized in the bios and I could install the OS and get it running.

If it were me I would:

Look in the manual for the below issues, and then -

With each drive separately,

Try the old drive on the new controller to see if it will boot.

Try different cable connections and jumper combinations.

Try a different cable.

Try the cables in different controllers on the card.

Try a different power lead.

Try moving to a different PCI slot.

If any of that makes the old drive work but not the new, then it's time for another approach.

Post back

 

tried booting up with the old drive and the new card, results - "no operating system found on any devices"

tried moving the pci card to another slot, changed the jumper to "cable select" put in the winxp setup disk and tried to install drivers for the card and received the same error message
\winxp(not win2003 as mentioned above)\ultra.sys caused an unexpected error (1034 or 1036) at line 2108 in d: \xpclient\base\boot\setup\oemdisk.c.

i've tried researching it and i keep reading about the txtsetup.oem file and windows xp not being able to follow the correct path to find.

 

OK, one more shot. You had it at one time where you had the old hdd connected to a mobo controller, and the new connected to the Promise controller. You were then able to format the new and move files to it while it was on the Promise controller.

I'd go back to that same setup, boot to the old hdd and see if you can still see the new hdd. If not, maybe the Promise controller died?

If I got an error when trying to boot that way, I'd unplug the new from the promise and try again. Having two primary, active partitions could confuse the bios, and as I recall you imaged the old to the new.

If I still got an error, I would physically remove the controller from the pci slot and try again, *making sure always, including above, that the old hdd was ribbon cable connected and jumpered as master on the #1 controller on the mobo.*

Once I got the box booting from the old, I'd start reattaching things one at a time; the card in the slot, then just a cable, and then the new drive, booting each time to see where it stopped.

If I could "prove" that the old hdd would boot from the mobo controller but not when the pci controller was installed, I'd toss the Promise. Same for a cable if that did it. You already tried different pci slots.

As a last resort, I'd carefully jumper and attach the new hdd to the promise, and remove the old hdd. Then I'd boot to my windows install CD (XP) boot disk and attempt to delete the partition, format and install to the new on the promise.

Reason is there's a small chance that you need to install from that promise controller to get the mbr and the boot.ini, ntldr or ntdetect files written slightly differently to be bootable from the promise. Just a hunch, but I've never tried using a promise without installing the os while hooked to it.

At some point here, I'd be blaming that promise because going back as far a 10 years to pentium II and amd K6 I've had promise controllers that just plugged and played.

Think about it - they have to start using a hdd before you load any promise drivers or you couldn't begin the partition/format/install sequence on them when that hdd is the only one in the box and is going to be your system (boot) disk.

I can't count how many times I've done that without issue. I still have an AMD 1000 thunderbird with an old promise controller in it and I put a new 40 GB hdd in it about a month ago and installed the OS unevenfully. I use that box in my lab and I've had it, with the promise in it, since it was new.

 

well i have the original setup now. old hdd plugged into mobo, new hdd plugged into controller card. both new and old hdd show in the device manager, and so does the controller card. however the new hd hasnt been made available for usage (when double clicking my computer, the new drive is not showing in the list of hd, floppy cd-rom, etc.) at this point i would run the seagate program to setup the hd and copy files over to it, thus making it available for use. i have not run that seagate discwizard program yet.

you lost me a little bit as far as what other way i should troubleshoot with having the drives in this arrangement. if all else fails i'll probly just keep this arrangement and use the new drive for storage. but if you can, please clarify a lil bit (needless to say i'm a lil discouraged and frustrated, so i may have misunderstood your directions.) thanks again.

 

well i've manage to overcome that problem. after partitioning the new drive, i connected it into the mobo and it's been working fine. until now, i have another issue.
http://forum.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?p=717367#post717367