trying to load promise ATA 100 contoller drivers???

can someone help? I was told that I need some drivers installed for my ASUS A7V promise....as you probably can tell, I don't really know what I'm doing. All I know is that I tried to put in a WD 80GB drive, and I get BIOS errors. I was told to update some drivers, which I have on floppy, but I can't get my computer to let me load them. I was told to hit F6 during setup, but I don't know exactly when I guess. I've been trying to get those loaded to solve my problem, but can't. HOW DO I DO IT?? Thanks y'all....

by the way

my OS is win2000 pro (although it won't boot, that's what is loaded on the HD), Athlon processor, ASUS A7V mobo, toshiba dvd-rom.....

What is the exact BIOS error message ?

here's the story:
I bought a system (athlon 1gig, Asus A7V mobo, toshiba dvd-rom ) and replaced the hard drive with a western digital 80GB. i loaded win2000 pro on it, tried to boot and it wouldn't boot into windows. I get the message flashed on the screen "Ultra100 Bios not installed because no drives are attached" I was told by Didou (who has been very helpful) to get promise drivers. I got them onto a floppy, but can't get the system to give me a chance to load them by hitting F6. That's where i'm at, trying to hit F6 at the appropriate time, getting the drivers installed, and getting the Bios setup corrected. I'm a beginner at this, so i'm in need of specific steps to help me. if y'all can have patience to help me, I would greatly appreciate it....thanks.

here's the story:
I bought a system (athlon 1gig, Asus A7V mobo, toshiba dvd-rom ) and replaced the hard drive with a western digital 80GB. i loaded win2000 pro on it, tried to boot and it wouldn't boot into windows. I get the message flashed on the screen "Ultra100 Bios not installed because no drives are attached" I was told by Didou (who has been very helpful) to get promise drivers. I got them onto a floppy, but can't get the system to give me a chance to load them by hitting F6. That's where i'm at, trying to hit F6 at the appropriate time, getting the drivers installed, and getting the Bios setup corrected. I'm a beginner at this, so i'm in need of specific steps to help me. if y'all can have patience to help me, I would greatly appreciate it....thanks.

I have no experience of Promise RAID controllers, though I do have a Promise Ultra100TX2 PCI card (non-raid). If you are booting from CD, then you should see a message scroll across the bottom of the blue boot screen as the CDROM is booted into the install process for Windows 2000. You should hold down the F6 key as soon as you have selected to boot from CDROM and the blue screen appears. Once you reach the end of booting you should be presented with an opportunity to load your drivers. I know that should happen as I've had to do this once before.

Make sure you disable RAID in the bios as you are not using the RAID feature. Read the manual for correct jumper settings if required. Also make sure you are connecting your hard drive to the correct port (ide0) and make sure that your bios is set to boot to that port.

You'll find more info on your mainboard over here ...

Asus A7V133 Motherboard Review

Be sure to post in that other thread if you manage to fix things ...

Help please: ultra 100 bios is not installed because there were no drivers attached

At what point do you see this "ultra100 bios not installed because no drives attached" error message - as the machine itself is detecting the drives, or when the OS is?

i see it as the machine is booting and detecting drives. windows will not boot. the "starting windows" screen comes on, fills the progress bar, and freezes there.

Then your problem could be the IDE cable, or the jumpers being improperly set, etc. Don't worry about drivers if your machine is not actually detecting the devices at all - that's a hardware fault then, and you need to open the machine and see press all cables firmly in, then try again. If still no, try one device at a time, and try checking jumper settings.

i've checked all cables, had each card out, cleaned connectors, tried to boot with only hard drive and video card running...all with the same result. i've tried everything in the above thread in nic's post that he told me to update. didou told me it was probably the drivers for the promise controller(?)

i don't know what or how to set jumpers means.

on your drive, you will note some pins, two of them will be covered by a black plastic jumper. Somewhere on the drive there is probably a label telling you which pins to jump together in order to se the drive for "master, slave, or cable select.
If you don't find a label, or need additional info, check the manufacturer's site, they usually have a diagram showing jumper placement.

Read your mainboard manual. It should clear up quite a lot. If you don't understand something in the manual, then just ask here. It's very difficult to fix problems when we don't have any knowledge of your mainboard, and can't verify anything you tell us. Did you change anything between when it worked, and now when it doesn't?

If you're still getting the "Ultra100 Bios not installed because no drives are attached", it's because your WD drive is connected to the Promise controller.

In order to do so, you need to connect the WD to the BLUE IDE connector right next to the AGP slot.

Once that's done, you have to boot on the W2K install CD.

When it's loading drivers ( one of the very first stages of the install ), you can see a message on the bottom of the screen : "Hit F6 to load 3rd party drivers". That's when you should hit F6 & have your floppy with the drivers on it.

got quite a lot of experience with this particular mobo actually..

Don't 'quite' see what the problem is though...

...obviously i know the PC won't boot..

But the whole "Ultra100 Bios not installed because no drives are attached" is exactly as it says on the tin... the drives either jumpered wrong like you say, got no power to it, got a damaged cable or plugged into the on-board IDE channels.

Which makes me ask whats the problem? if its on the on-board channel you don't need the whole F6 shananigans... and you did say you've loaded it which you couldn't have done without the promise drivers being installed... it gets to the splash screen and freezes...

Software problem, not ness. hardware prehaps...

maybe we could clear up whats actually going on?

If he actually booted on the drive while getting the "Ultra100 Bios not installed because no drives are attached" error message, it's clear the HD isn't installed on the Promise controller at all.

If you don't load the Promise drivers during the NT4/2K/XP setup, it won't see the drive at all & won't go any further.

PS. If the WD drive is alone on the IDE bus make sure the jumper is set to SINGLE DRIVE, not MASTER.

my hard drive is connected to the blue primary ide connector, my toshiba dvd to the secondary ide (black), and the floppy to the connector labeled floppy. the blue and black connectors under the ide connectors are labeled as ATA100(primary and secondary). they are next to the promise chip. they are both empty.

Because you aren't using the RAID feature of your board, and because the RAID controller has no attached hard drives, then I suggest you disable the RAID controller in the bios. That should do the trick and your system won't hang while it looks for devices that don't exist. You have the manual, so you should be able to find the correct way to do this. Also, as you previously pointed out your system does boot, but hangs at the windows screen, which is exactly what happens with my promise controller, when I don't have any hard drives connected. Disable that RAID controller.

nic: the manual states:"to configure your system to use the RAID 0 option, you must run the Fasttrack "Simple" Bios before installing the OS"
so do I need to re-format my hard disk on another computer? do you know how to run fasttrack or simple bios?