A7V help needed

[Garyrom]

Just put together my first Athlon/Asus A7V system. Have some questions on setting up the via drivers and ATA 100.
Here is what happened so far: Fdisk,Format, Installed Win 98 2nd edition. All worked fine and windows seemed to be very stable. Installed Video, Sound, and Modem cards. No problems. Now is where i get into trouble: I decided to put in the cd disk from Asus and tried to install the VIA 4 in 1 drivers. Now windows just tries to load forever. So I formatted the drive again and I'm ready to reinstall windows.

What do I do to make sure i have the Via drivers and hard drive set up right for ATA 100 this time. Do I need to install the Via drivers and ATA 100 drivers at a different time? Also how should I set up the bios setting for ATA 100.
BTW: never got to the point of installing ATA support. Died after trying to install Via 4 in 1 drivers.
30 gig IBM HD
Athlon 1 ghz
Asus A7V
128 meg pc133

Any help would be appreciated,

Thanks

 

[AndyHui]

Install the VIA 4-in-1 drivers as soon as you have finished installing Win98, BEFORE you install anything else like drivers.

 

[Garyrom]

Thanks, will do. Suprised that Win98 doesn't load these.

 

[SilencerAZ]

Make sure you download the latest version of the 4in1 drivers rather than using the one off of the ASUS cd. You can download them off of http://www.viahardware.com. The latest version is 4.25a. Also download the latest Promise Ultra 100 drivers from ASUS's site.

 

[Edsel]

I wouldn't load the VIA busmastering drivers at all. Most people find that they don't work any better than the default Win98 BM drivers and many folks report problems with them. Even VIA doesn't recommend installing its bus mastering drivers for Windows 98. The following verbiage is from the VIA FAQ:

IDE Busmaster Driver FAQ
Q: Which VIA Chipsets support UDMA 66?
A: For UDMA 66 you must first make sure that you're southbridge is either VT82C596B or VT82C686A. You must also have a UDMA 66 capable hard drive and be using an 80 pin cable which enables faster transmission of data. Windows 98 is UDMA 66 enabled, but if you have Win95 you should install our busmaster drivers.

Q: My system uses Win98 so should I install the VIA bus master & AGP drivers?
A: Microsoft has bundled full support for VIA chipsets into Win98 therefore it isn't necessary to install the VIA bus master driver but VIA suggests installing the VIA AGP driver and IrQ routing miniport driver. Check out the Win98 FAQ for Win 98 installation procedures with VIA chipsets.

Win98 Installation
Q: What is the procedure for installing Win98 on VIA chipset based systems?
A: There are four important steps to follow:
1) Go into BIOS setup and enable USB
2) Install Win98 on your system
3) Download and install the VIA IrQ routing miniport driver from our driver page
4) Download and install the VIA AGP driver from our driver page (for MVP3 & VP3 chipsets only)


Just load the VIA IRQ Routing drivers and the VIA AGP patch (and maybe the VIA inf driver, though I don't think that is necessary). You can download those drvers individually instead of the VIA 4-in-1 driver at the VIA driver page.

Also, some people seem to feel that it is best to install the AGP patch AFTER installing your card's video drivers, since apparently some video drivers will overwrite important parts of the AGP patch.

 

[Garyrom]

Thanks for the great help. All is up and running smoothly now, thanks to your help.

It was appreciated.