I need advice on installing the MB drivers for an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard?

[Smoke]

I'm having real trouble installing the motherboard drivers on an ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard. There seems to be some bugs in the available drivers. Of course, I may be doing something wrong. At one time I finally got the system working perfectly, but my friend, whom I'm building the computer for decided he wanted to add a DVD drive. I haven't been able to get the system to run right since then. I've tried installing the drivers at least 20 times and they don't want to install correctly or function correctly. After the first 4-5 times, I decided to download new drivers from ASUS. My friend only has Windows 98SE and he wants that operating system installed on this machine. The ASUS website does not show any all-in-one Win98 motherboard driver for the A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, but is does show one for the Standard A7N8X motherboard (not the Deluxe model). Most of this driver seemed to work, only the AUDIO portion of the all-in-one driver did not work. The first time I got the system to work perfectly, I used the Win98 all-in-one driver for the Standard motherboard (that I had downloaded), but I had to delete the sound devices, and manually install the sound drivers from the originally supplied motherboard driver disk (this was the only portion of this driver that worked. There seemed to be something wrong in both sets of drivers, but something different. However, I had not yet installed the DVD drive. At this point, the system worked perfectly. After I added the DVD drive, my problems never stopped.

At first, I notice there was no sound when I played a DVD video disk. I put an AUDIO CD in the drive, and it played the music perfectly. The system also has a CD-R/RW drive. I double checked to see if it could play an audio CD, and it could. Then, I looked at the Windows Master Volume dialog box settings, and made sure the Video audio settings were not muted. I set all devices on, and turned the volume settings to maximum--still, I had no joy, no audio from a DVD video disk. I took the DVD drive out and subsitituted it for an identical DVD in another system. The DVD drive worked perfectly in the other system. I removed it and returned it to my friend's system. The Windows Control System Properties dialog box shows all the audio drivers installed and working. However, in the Main Control Panel dialog box, discovered that when I clicked on the nForce Control Panel option it gave me an error message. I'm not sure, but think the all-in-one installation driver is not installing the nForce Control Panel utility. The error messages says the audio drivers are not installed, but they're there plain to see in the system properties dialog box. I have reformatted and reinstalled the both originally supplied and downloaded all-in-one drivers more than a dozen times, and I can't get it to work. The driver's don't want to install the nForce Control Panel that controls the DVD audio. My next strategy is to try and use a driver from NVIDIA, because I'm not having any luck with the drivers from ASUS.

The particulars of this system are: A7N8X Deluxe motherboard, Athlon XP-2700+ CPU, Corsair XMS3500 DDR Memory CAS Latency 2-3-3-7-T1 (434 MHz), ASUS V9280S GeForce4 4200 8X AGP video card, Western Digital WD 120 GB HDD, a Lite-On JLMS DVD-ROM LTD-166S, Lite-On IDE Model LTR-52246S CD-RW drive, PS2 Mouse, and 101 keyboard.

Has anyone had a similar experience with this motherboard and its' drivers, and know how to solve any of my problems? Help!

[BipolarBill]

Are you using the audio connector from the DVD drive to the sound "card"?

Frankly, I think that your friend needs a talking to. Tell him it will never work right in Win98 (likely so) and he'll probably cave in and let you install ME/2K/XP (the latter is best). You'll both be happier. It's just plain stubborn and dumb to hang onto that geezer of an OS.

[Smoke]

Hello BiPolarBill!

It's good to hear from you again. You've helped me in the past. I value your advice! I think you're right again. However, I had the system working great with Windows 98SE until he wanted to add a DVD drive as an afterthought. I had to jump through some hoops using part of the drivers from the original installation CD and part of the drivers I downloaded from the ASUS website.

Tonight, I finally managed to get the nForce Control Panel installed and working, but there was still a problem with the DVD software. It couldn't recognize the file format. Originally, I had great DVD video, but no sound and no nForce Control Panel. I also noticed that the all-in-one driver doesn't like to install unless the VGART driver is installed first. I thought that was peculiar?

Windows 2K and XP are great operating systems, but the security interface and administrator issues are difficult for most novices like my friend. Those operating systems are great where tech support is available, but unsophisticated homeusers have trouble with permissions, passwords, etc. Also, he wants to network his PC and his kid's PCs at home in a peer-to-peer network, and their machines all run Windows 98 too. I found it very difficult to put a Windows' 2K machine on such a network. No matter how you set the permissions, other users couldn't access the 2k-machine from a Win98 machine, and the 2k-machine refused to accept the print driver of a Win98 printer server PC. Would a WinXP machine fair any better in such a peer-to-peer network? I'd surely like to know. I'll try to convince him, but I don't know if he has the money to purchase those operating systems right now. He just had an engine fail in his wife's car, and it cost him of $3,000 to fix, and he's got over $1500 tied up in his new PC.

Thanks for your advice! It was good hearing from you again. Bye.

Smoke

[BipolarBill]

Have you installed DirectX 8.1? Is the DVD drive set to DMA mode?

Since there are no "drivers" for DVD drives, I assume that you mean the DVD software. Who made it? Have you patched it yet?

I think that XP Home is pretty easy after you find out a dozen or so tricks. As far as connecting to XP from other PCs, the knuckleheads need to actually log onto the network with Client for MS Networks instead of clicking "Cancel". :rolleyes:

Driver-wise, XP has just about every printer driver made folded into the setup.

[Smoke]

Yes, I did set the DVD drive to DMA mode, and I also installed DirectX 8.1. But I didn't think about looking for a patch for the CyberLink PowerDVD XP software that came with the DVD drive. The ASUS motherboard also comes with a DVD software player, and it is also giving me a similar error (I think it is also made by CyberLink for ASUS). This makes me think it is not the software, but my motherboard or audio driver installation.

I'm going to try several ideas out today. If they don't pan out, I'm gonna try installing my personal copy of Win2K onto the system just to see how well it works. I haven't used 2K in five or six months, and I'm not sure if I remember all the particulars of assigning permissions. Would it be better to install 2K from DOS on a clean HDD, or can I install it over Win98? Will it work both ways? That's one thing I'd like to know. Is there a website that can help someone with installation and configuration issues with Win2K?

Again, thanks for your help. Enjoy the football! Bye.

Smoke

[BipolarBill]

You can install Win2K over Win98 and keep both, but you're better off installing it to another drive/partition.

[Smoke]

After contacting ASUS tech support, and following their steps, I was able to isolate the problem to the PCS System Management Bus driver, which should be loaded first. The driver asks for a file named "nvsmb.cat" that does not come with the supplied Installation disk. The file is available in the downloadable driver for the basic A7N8X motherboard (not the Deluxe model). There is no downloadable Windows 98 installation driver for the Deluxe version of the motherboard at the ASUS website. If the "nvsmb.cat" file from the downloadable driver is substituted and used, the installation process then asks for a file named "machine.cat" that is also not on the provided installation disk, but also not on any of the ASUS downloadable drivers for Windows 98 or on the downloadable drivers from NVIDIA. An ASUS tech said a Case # would be assigned and they'd get back to me. I haven't heard from them in two days. They did provide me with a proper order for the installation of the drivers, and that was some help. I can get the system to work great for everything except DVD audio, the installation of the nForce Control Panel, and the proper installation of the PCS System Management Bus driver.

So, there's either something wrong with the driver installation program, or there are at least two missing driver files. I'm not sure not sure which problem it is yet.

Another issue. Does anyone know anything about cloning a partition to another drive using Norton Ghost 2003? The manual states that by default Ghost tries to maintain the same size ratio between the new disk partitions. It also states you can change the size of any destination FAT, NTFS, or Linus Ext2/3 partition by entering the new size in megabytes. However, there is no mention anywhere in the manual where this can be accomplished, or in what part of the Restore process this takes place. I don't remember seeing an option to change or reset the destination disk or partition's size in the Restore Wizard process or in the Options menu on the Main Menu screen.

I want to substitue a new larger hard-drive onto a machine I am building, and just clone an Ghost image file of the Boot drive (C:) to a newly installed hard-drive from DOS with the Ghost Boot Disk, after I've run FDISK, formatted the drive, and run ScanDisk. Is my plan workable? I also believe I can do a disk-to-disk clone, but this system already has a second HDD, and I didn't want to remove it if I don't have to. I would appreciate any help offered.

Smoke

[BipolarBill]

Ghost is easy to use.

When you clone drive to drive, you're presented with a breakdown of partition sizes. You can adjust them right there.

When you load an image of a partition to a whole drive, you don't get that dialog. The partition will expand to take up the whole drive - unless you create a partition ahead of time of a size that you want. You do not have to format - Ghost will do that. Just create what you want and load the image to the new partition.

Ghost can work with any healthy disk - raw, formatted or virus-infested - it doesn't matter. All will be overwritten when you clone or load.

[Smoke]

Hello,

Thanks for the information on Norton Ghost! I really appreciate it. I guess the best option is to clone drive to drive.

I already had a Ghost image of the original drive (a very old, small drive) on a CD-R disk, and was hoping I could restore it to the first partition of the newly installed drive (60GB, with a first partition of 30GB, and a second partition also approximately 30GB) after booting with a Norton Boot Disk. If I were to perform a restore in such a manner, would the image expand to take over just the first 30GB partition, and leave the second partition intact? This way I could leave the second physical hard-drive in place and not have to remove it from the computer. Anyway, that was the reasoning behind my original question, and why I was going to partition and format the new drive ahead of time.

Again, thank you! You're a real life-saver to novices like me. Take care of yourself. Bye.

Smoke

[BipolarBill]

Originally posted by BipolarBill
The partition will expand to take up the whole drive - unless you create a partition ahead of time of a size that you want. Just create what you want and load the image to the new partition.

[Smoke]

Hi BipolarBill,

Thanks. I think I got it now.

Here's one more dumb question. Is it okay to use an older ATA/33 drive (slave) together with a newer ATA/133 drive (master) on a single eighty-pin EIDE cable plugged into a single controller?

I know an ATA/66/100/133 can be plugged into an ATA/33 controller and they will operate at ATA/33 speed. I also know that most of the older ATA/33 drives can be accommodated by the newer ATA/66/100 controllers, but nothing is ever said about using both types of drives on a single 80-pin EIDE cable. I'm guessing they can, but I've never seen it written down anywhere.

Smoke

[BipolarBill]

They'll work together fine. The ATA133 drive should be master and the ATA33 drive should be used just for backup (seldom used). Every time you use the ATA33 drive, it will slow the other drive.