Primary IDE or not?
 

Im a bit out of my depth here so please bare with me ;)

Numpty subcontracted MESH engineer came to visit yesterday to resolve a graphics problem i have. To cut a long story short he replaced the MOBO and installed a fresh copy of XP pro on the second drive.

Now i have a couple of iritations and concerns about the BIOS settings being right and things plugged into the right sockets


1. The hard drives are not on the primary IDE controller, the two DVD drives are on this controller and the hard drives are on the third IDE controller. Should i swap them??

2. They are both SATA drives, same size same make how should they be configured to get the best performance. I dont need raid and im not too keen on having files split across drives. Everytime i try to access the C drive now there seems to be a lag that wasnt there before

3. Final issue that has always been there. I keep getting this error in the event log

Source ati2mtag
Event id 52248
Description: CPLIB :: HDCP - Failed HDCP key binding verification

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

so your os is on a sata? if this is the case your optical will be on primary ide on the mobo but the bios may not see it as ide 1 if sata are set for ide sometimes sata set to ide take priority.Do you now have 2 operating systems? does it try to dual boot? Sata drives are always master so it does not matter which one has the os on ive had os's spread all over machines when ive multi booted. As for why its lagging is c: still holding os or is it the old os?
Do you use hdcp off your gfx? if not and its not causing any problems then I wouldnt worry about

I would personally back up all data to whatever drive your gonna want to use as slave and volume label it spare then id open the case and ensure the drive you wish to use as operating system is on sata 0 or sata 1 whichever is the lowest . Then id perform a reinstall of windows to this drive. You wont make a mistake as you set the volume label of the slave so this will show up in set up :)

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

I'm a bit confused...you mention IDE and SATA drives - which are which? If the hard drives are SATA and the DVD drives IDE then it shouldn't matter whether they are on the primary channel or not, which in turn should affect how the SATA drives are connected...

your last issue could be a driver issue...try updating the drivers for your graphics card to the latest ones. Download the latest catalyst drivers from here link

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

The HDCP error would be caused either by a setting in the control centre or a problem in the WDM driver rather than the main driver I believe so dont install full driver package

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

just re-read the OP and realised that the error is in the event log - i just presumed that it was occuring on boot which was the reason for updating the graphics drivers!

unless you are trying to access some HDCP content then I don't think the error is anything to worry about...patches to games seems to have solved the problem for some people though reading other forums (fora?)

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

my understanding of HDCP is hi def over componant which is a cable that sits out of the gfx card and is driven by the wdm drivers and controled via the control centre software (which I hate btw) If control centre starts with the pc I would remove it from startup via msconfig its bloat as far as im concerned
I could well be totally wrong in my understanding and would welcome an education ;) :)
Educated myself and I was totally wrong ;) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDCP its DRm kill kill destroy. It appears to be somethign to do with your crossfire config

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

yes the os is on a sata and it looks like its on raid1 as its on the master drive, to get it to boot into the other (corrupt) operating system i have to get it to boot from the salve sata which looks like its on sata 3

when it boots it says the optical drive are on the primary ide and the hard drives are in the third ide which confuses me

regarding the lag, c is always holding the active os as the c drive changes depending on which you boot from.

i dont know what hdcp is yet ;), just trying to get this thing running clean so i can ghost it

---------- Post added at 21:53 ---------- Previous post was at 21:52 ----------

already on the latest

---------- Post added at 21:55 ---------- Previous post was at 21:53 ----------

hmmmm :confused:

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

well there may well be a second native ide controller making the 3rd channel correct. personally I would do the back ups and mark the second drive as spare. Then id go into bios and ensure all sata controllers are either set to ata or base not raid .Then id reinstall windows to the drive not marked spare.

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

This has already been done, just to be safe the slave was disconnected at the time of the install

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

so why are you saying raid? if its all set to ata it wont be on a raid channel?

If that is the case then all is fine now you say c: lags so is this c: on main os or c: on hold os? as you said both drives are c: dependant on which os your on ;)

You could run a scan disk on boot using the chkdsk /r command in console on the os drive thats lagging of course also enure its defragged? use something like diskeeper so you can resize the MFT if needed :)

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

this is where im confused the hard drives appear in the bios on the third ide

its an ASUS P5W DH Deluxe mobo btw

---------- Post added at 22:03 ---------- Previous post was at 22:02 ----------

sorry i meant sata 3

---------- Post added at 22:05 ---------- Previous post was at 22:03 ----------

only appeared to lag on the OS i want to keep, but doesnt appear to be doing it now :mad:

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

Then thats fine I to an running that board with os on first sata and optical on primary ide :) I also have drives on the hdd only second ide controller and sata drives on all but the asus ezraid which is crap

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

aha, then do you see the hard drives on the third ide? i dont see a second ide in the manual

Is there anyway i can compare my bios settings to yours to see if anything is amiss

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

errrrm I wouldnt imagine you have done anything wrong it does sound right to me :)
I put my os hard drive on the lowest number sata in the cluster of 3 either 0 or 1 im not sure . In disk management it still shows as disk 0

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

my os drive is showing as disc 0 when i boot with the good os.

Not sure what happens if o boot from the slave and go to the corrupt OS


Everything else from a performance point of view is the same as before the mobo was changed, according to 3dmark06 so i assume that is telling me about the processor and GFX. I just get the feeling the drive is slower, could just be a mind thing

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

possibly give it a few days run all your cleanups and defrag just in case.

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

possibly right, thanks, will rep when ive dished a couple more out

One last thing ;) when would the crossfire lose its settings. Im 95% sure it keeps droping down to one card. This evening i booted up did a few bits and was checking everything was the same as before the mobo was installed. I ran 3dmark06 to check it an the frame rate was poor. Checked crossfire was on and it was. I had to reinstall the drivers for the cards to get the frame rate back. This isnt the first time ive had to do this

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

im not sure to be honest. I take it you have a good psu powering them off seperate rails?

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

its an HEC-550TD-PTE

so it 550W and it looks like its powering them off of different rails. Too many cable ties to be sure

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

All seems ok to me. Keep an eye on your crossfire set up maybe find a friend with a different but good psu to test if it does go wrong again :)

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

errrm i dont know anyone with a power supply like that or infact anyone with a mobo that would take them ;)

---------- Post added at 23:27 ---------- Previous post was at 23:26 ----------

in fact it has gone wrong again, back down to 35 fps on the first part on 3dmark06 when its normally around 67-70

---------- Post added at 23:31 ---------- Previous post was at 23:27 ----------

turning crossfire off saving it and then turning if back rectified it this time. But it went again and this time the same approach doesnt fix it

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

is there a new control centre maybe?

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

it looks like 3d mark turns it off??? I go in a crossfire is working and the frame rate is good, i exit 3dmark and go back in immediately and crossfire is no longer working hower the control centre says its still on

---------- Post added at 23:36 ---------- Previous post was at 23:36 ----------

Got the latest one, will have to look at this tomorrow night

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

how odd what about testing it in game most consoles have a framerate show command

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

If i have crossfire on and run 3dmark its fine, if i leave 3dmark and go back into 3dmark it stops working. It doesnt mater how many times i turn crossfire on and off if i go back to 3dmark with crossfire on it will still not work.

If i go back to 3dmark with crossfire off and then run 3dmark leave 3dmark and go an turn crossfire back on when i go back to 3dmark it works fine until i leave 3dmark again

Wierd!!! will try a game tomorrow

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

Tried a couple of games, neither of them will start if crossfire is switched on, both generate an error report. However if crossfire is switched off both games work

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

all I can think of is maybe the crossfire cables faulty ?

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

it has been changed once but i hadnt seen this fault before. What i dont understand is why it works fine when i go into 3dmark06 and then it stops when i leave until i got through the process i posted.

---------- Post added at 21:35 ---------- Previous post was at 20:38 ----------

installing the crossfire driver that were released yesterday seems to have resolved the 3dmark06 issue

Still cant go into any of the 2 games i have load with crossfire on though

---------- Post added at 21:42 ---------- Previous post was at 21:35 ----------

i think i may have crakced it!!!

Both of the games seem to work if you go into them setting up the same screen resolution as has been defined to windows

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

Just saw you nomiate me and I was thinking about this thread when I saw this http://www.aria.co.uk/ProductInfoComm.asp?ID=25405

Think i may consider this if I was running 2 cards

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

i dont seem to have a problem with power (that i know of ;))

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

No but yeah but no but lol It was just something I was pondering for the future :)

Re: Primary IDE or not?
 

I think a fan on the electricity meter might be better:p: