IDE troubles with A7VXXX with promise bios build 42

[ToRN]

A lot of people who own or work with an Asusboard with an promise controller have experienced strange problems after upgrading to a bios with promise bios build 42. It can go from slower booting to not being able to boot with the ata controller or dissappearing drives in windows..

This problem occurs with boards which have an older promise chip. There is NO fix for it. However, there are several sites offering modified (and therefore unsupported) bios files with and older build (build 35) of the bios.

I found the modified files for the A7V on A7V Troubleshooting. If other people find modified bios for the other boards, please post them here.

I expercienced the problems on A7V, A7V133(-X) and A7M266. Post here if you have another board and similar probs.

A7V modified bios files

 

[Didou]

I have an ASUS A7V266-E Raid & I have a problem but I don't know if it's related.

Here's how my IDE devices are layed out.

PROMISE CARD:

1- IBM 75GXP 30GB ( BOOT )
2- NONE
3- MAXTOR 40GB ( 6L040J2 )
4- MAXTOR 40GB ( 6L040J2 )

VIA Southbridge

1- PLEXTOR 24/10/40A
2- NONE
3- CREATIVE 12X DVD Player
4- NONE

When I burn CD's my buffer always goes down to +- 6% never higher. I'm glad I have burnproof otherwise I's be doing coasters all the time. Even though I don't loose the CD ( they work fine on a stereo ), the burn process takes almost twice as long. I tryed using NERO? EASY CD CREATOR, CDR-WIN, same thing. I installed the 4 in 1s 4.38 hoping it would fix something but no dif.

Maybe I should try that build 35 for the Promise chip.

 

[Didou]

Worth a try

ASUS has posted a new Beta BIOS, it's 1008 Beta 1.

I flashed mine this morning & so far things are working much better. There are quite a few new functions in the BIOS setup, might wanna try it...

ASUS FTP GERMANY

 

[ToRN]

Has it solved the buffer prob?

 

[Didou]

No spare CDs for the moment

I'll post the results very soon.

 

[Didou]

*update*

I burned a few CDs this afternoon & it seems my buffer problems ( I call it the ping pong syndrome ) has been cured.

I had reinstalled my system from a ghost & it seems I forgot to re enable DMA for my Burner. Upon reinstalling PowerDVD, he warned me that it would be better to enable DMA, which I did.

I no longer have buffer problems but I can't really say if it was related to the DA issue or it was cleared by the BIOS update...

 

[ToRN]

What build of promise bios has it? I don't have the promise chip , so I can't tell.

I will check if the other bios (A7V, A7V133, A7M266, ...) get the same build, to try to find out if it really resolves the problem.

 

[Didou]

The promise BIOS that came with my A7V266-e was Build 43. When I bought the card, the BIOS was version 1004 ( Build 42 of the Promise is contained in early BIOSes I think).

With the 1008 Beta BIOS, the Promise BIOS is still @ Build 43.

 

[ToRN]

All not-working versions have bios version 42. Early bios have version 3x and the newer ones appearantly have 43.

Everyone who has an Asus, could he please try out the newer one and tell his experience?

Early conclusion: don't use a bios with build 42 if you don't have the latest version of an asus motherboard.