ABIT KT7A and Western Digital HDDs

Hey everybody, I've got a little problem I need help with. I've just upgraded my system from a PIII 800 to an AMD 1.4. My problem is when ever I enable DMA for my WD HDD, Norton's Speed Disk or Win98s Disk Defragmenter comes up with write verification errors. I've run scandisks surface scan with no errors, no bad sectors. If I disable DMA Speed Disk and defrag work fine, slow, but fine. Does anybody know if there's any conflicts with Western Digital HDDs with DMA enabled and the ABIT KT7A motherboard? :confused:

Oh, I forgot to say this. I had no problem having DMA enabled on the PIII system, everything worked fine.

First thing I would do, is to install the latest drivers for the chipset and then see what I have to see.

aliendyne is right, download the latest chiopsete driversor install the via 4 in 1 from the drivers CD

Well, I've downloaded and installed the VIA 4in1 ver.435 chipset drivers right from the start, plus I installed the DMAtool (VIAIDE3014.zip) after reading the replies to my post just to see if that would help, but it didn't. Other than having problems with defrag and speed disk the system seems to run very well. I just want to be able to defrag my HDD without any problems. I'm not overclocking the system at all and I disabled the USB to free up an IRQ and I/O. I don't get it, are there any issues with the KT7A and Western Digital HDDs?

Thanks for the replies guys, any other suggestions would be most appreciated. Thanks

Hmmmmm......what size and how old is the drive?

I have WD drives with a 1.4 AMD. I have nothing but problems with a disk check with Norton in Win2000 & XPO. I finally gave up on norton. I use it only fopr Anti-V and Reg Clean. Help from Norton, over months, was like - ah for get it. I have bad felling for Norton. So I was never able to correct the problems, even with new and newer than new drivers. I will say the problem seemed top point at NTSF. I think you said you where running 98 and I believe 98 does not offer NTSF. Anti-V is also a bit of a problem with Norton.

Bob

My hard drive was manufactured in May of 2000 and I bought it in June. It's a 12GB HDD.
Like I said, if I disable DMA I have no problems running the disk utilities but then my system runs really slow.

I've run WD's DLGtools a bunch of times to see if there were any problems with the HD but it passed all of the tests. Wrote 0s to drive, checked the drives integrity, passed all of the tests, it took a couple of hours to run the tests too.

The motherboards Rev. is 1.3 but I'm unsure of the BIOS version since the screen just flashes it real fast. I can't install Windows 2000 Pro because after the system copies all of the files and starts to install them, I'll get corrupted file error messages and if I hit enter to continue, after setup is finished and gets to the little blue bar in W2Ks startup (right before the ctrl-alt-del screen), the system takes a memory dump (blue screen) and then the system will reboot. So I'm running ME, arrghh! So if anybodys got any suggestions, please let me know.

Sorry bout the book, any help as always would be most appreciated, thanks for the replies thus far.

You can use the "pause" key to stop the startup procedure and write down the version of the BIOS. Then press Enter to continue.

Have you checked the drive on another machine? Is this possible?

have you got another harddrive to test in the system?

Yeah, to answer AlienDynes 2nd question, I've tried the drive in an other machine, but the other machines motherboard is only capable of UDMA\33 and the 12 GB drive is UATA\100. The HDD from the other machine is also only UATA\33, so it doesn't seem to have any problems on the ABIT board but then again it's not running @ UATA\100.

I've downloaded BIOS ver 65 hoping to see if that fixes my problem, but I'd like to know if anybody here has tried it yet first, it's suposed to be compatable with the new AMD XP processors up to the XP1900+. The BIOS I have now won't auto detect the processor I have now which is the T-bird 1.4Ghz, it detects it at 1050 or is 1050 just the boards default setting and you have to go and change it. But I've done all that, plus other things, one thing I've noticed in the BIOS is a setting for IDE bus delay, or something like that, it's set at 1 and you can set it to 3 I think, I'm not sure. I have set the BIOS back to performance defaults and disabled the USB and set the PnP OS to NO. The reason I can't verify any of these things right now is because all of this is from memory cause I'm writing zero to the HDD in that machine again and am gonna try and set the IDE bus delay to 0 and see if that helps me or not. I've read all of the post here about how great the KT7A-RAID boards were and thought that I'd try a KT7A board myself. Never thought I'd go through all of this with it though.

After the tests are done I'll post back and let you guys know exactly what that IDE thingy was that said it could be changed from 0-3?

Thanks for the replies guys, I'll keep ya's posted.

I found out the BIOS version, it's 3N. I flashed it to ver.65 and that didn't even help. I flashed it back to 3N and returned it to the vendor for a new board only to have the same problem with the new motherboard. Is there something I'm missing? I made sure that S3 STR wasn't enabled in CMOS and and moved the shunt to 2-3 instead of 1-2(default). What gives? Could it be the power supply? I made sure it was one of the recommended ones from AMD, and it works in an other system cause I already tried that, I just don't get it. Why am I still getting write verification errors in defrag and speed disk?

Even though you say you've tried the power supply in an other system, did you try it in another system with a 1.4 T-bird? The reason I ask this is because the 1.4 seems quite the power monger. Which power supply do you have? Could it be a power supply recommended for a different speed Athlon, one slower than the one you're trying to run? Have you experienced any crashes besides the one during W2K setup? Underpowering could also cause your harddrives not to do what they were intended to do, like write correctly. If you've already turned the motherboard that you had originally in for the one you have now and have the same type of issues, I'd start looking at power supply issues. Have you tried installing that copy of W2K in an other machine to see whether the files get copied correctly? If your systems not getting powered correctly it will not do the things you want it to. I'd look at the power supply. I think that's where your problem lies.

Yeah, now my systems starting to put little green stripes at the top of the screen and locks up. What's going on here? First it was write verification errors now I have crashes with little green lines stuck up at the top of the screen, could it be my AGP video card causing this to happen? My power supply is recommended for the 1.2 Athlon, would there really be that much of a difference between the two that would cause my system to act like this. I thought that the power supply was rated for the 1.4 but I was wrong. I just saw Enlight and the model number on the power supply and thought it would be OK for the 1.4, damn, does it really make that much of a difference?

Little green lines? Yeah, little green lines with a crash sounds like an AGP/FSB over clocking issue with the motherboard. Are you overclocking? AMD only recommends the KT7 to run at 1200MHz with a 200MHz FSB (100MHz).

And the power supply thing, I was hoping somebody else would've stepped up and answered that one. Sure, if your power supply ain't giving enough juice to all the right places on the motherboard it may cause data corruption, it's possible, especially if your CPU isn't getting the juice it needs while being overclocked.

The KT7A isn't recommended for the 1.4 Thunderbird. Try underclocking the CPU to 1.2 and then bumping the clock up from there to find a stable setting for your setup. There's no law stating that the 1.4 gotta run at 1.4 and I'd also set the FSB to 100 instead of 133. So that would be 1200MHz with 100MHz in the Softmenu. When you're bumping the clock up make sure you don't change the FSB from 100 to 133 or that could cause some problems also.


Good Luck.

Which revision board do you have? If you have a rev 1.0 , 1.1 or 1.2 and you have flashed your board with the 65 Bios then you have used the wrong one for starters as that is for the rev 1.3 ONLY. The latest BIOS for the rev 1.2 or less is 64. The Rev 1.2 or less do not support the Athlon XP due to timing issues upon power up, although if it does POST ok then you should be fine although the SSE support is disabled via the hardware & the CPU is stated at it's correct speed not the XP rating. If you have flashed your board with the wrong revision BIOS you may encounter problems such as these.

The Green lines say to me that you are using an nVidia card in AGP4x mode without changing the AGP driving force to what is recommended by the card manufacturer AND have got Microsoft BackUp still installed. Change the AGP mode to 2X or lower, remove MS BackUp and change the Driving force for the AGP to what is recommended by the card manufactruer (EA or DA normally).

Also, get a 1.4Ghz Rated PSU, as you are asking for problems if it is on AMD's rated list and doesn't mention 1.4 specifically. If it is an Enermax PSU, change it as the 5v rail is probably running too low (common problem).

Abit do not state any issues with Thunderbird 1.4Ghz CPU's on the KT7A family of boards and even wrote better support for it in the last 2 revisions of the Bios updates.If you use the 64 BIOS the KT7A is 100% fine with the 1.4Ghz T'Birds at 133FSB (well none of the ones I have supplied have ever come back to me including my own personal system here)

With the CPU speed problem, are you 100% certain that your RAM is PC133 as if the board is setting the CPU to 10.5 x 100 instead of 10.5 x 133 then it is either that your memory isn't PC133 rated or the BIOS needs updating to the latest for the revision of the board that you have.

The HDD issue I have not seen nor encountered, but then again I wouldn't touch a WD HDD with Jungleman's P**** ;) ;) nor supply them as all the ones I have used/supplied in the past have all developed faults well within the first 12 months and the noise of them drove me mad .

Check out <a href="http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm" target="_blank">Pauls KT7 FAQ</a> for the optimal settings for your board.