When Dream Machines Become Nightmares:
Seems my computer is becoming more and more unstable. In trying to find out what might be going on, I uninstalled and replaced the driver and software for my ATI READEON VE, but now I'm back to where the Hydravision software simply will not load. I can live without it for now, but it's just one symptom of some growing problems. I found something that might be the basic cause of many problems, but I'm uncertain how to proceed.
I have a PII 350MHz system with 128M ram (yes I need more) on an ABIT BH6 motherboard, two 6G hard drives, an ATAPI CD-ROM and one floppy drive. The immediate problem is that most of the time when I boot up now, The Device Manager is showing me a warning that the Primary IDE controller (dual fifo) has a problem. If I click on Properties, it says the device is either not there or not all the drivers are installed. If I try to update the driver, Windows says the best available driver is already in there, and sure enough the Driver File Details show the same ones as for the Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo), which never registers the problem.
Back under System Properties, the Performance tab says there is a compatibility mode problem: "Compatibility mode paging reduces overall system performance", followed by a list of my 3 logical drives saying "Drive X is using MS_DOS compatibility mode file system". Details on the first message return:
Compatibility mode paging reduces overall system performance.
Windows was unable to identify a real-mode driver or memory-resident program loaded in your Config.sys or Autoexec.bat file. You will see another message that lists the name of the driver or program causing the problem.
Because Windows could not identify the driver or program, it has switched to MS-DOS compatibility mode to ensure the program will run. However, this decreases overall performance. To improve performance, remove the program or driver causing the problem, or contact its manufacturer for an upgraded version.
The drive specific message Details returns:
Drive X is using an MS-DOS compatibility mode file system.
This problem often occurs on more than one drive. Usually it is caused by a driver listed in the Config.sys file that Windows does not recognize and that is related to the message Compatibility mode paging reduces overall system performance. If you see both messages, see the Help for the Compatibility mode paging reduces overall system performance message first.
If you only see the message Drive X is using an MS-DOS compatibility mode file system on one drive, that drive is using an MS-DOS compatibility (real-mode) driver, which may reduce that drive’s performance. Contact your hardware manufacturer to see if an updated driver is available for your drive. If not, the drive’s performance may be less than optimal, but you can still use it.
The instructions for installing the IDE controller that came with the motherboard hint that there is something going on with the CD-ROM, and sure enough there is stuff in config.sys and AutoExec.bat files. The C\config.sys file is:
REM ======== ATAPI CD-ROM Install Modification - Begin ========
DEVICE=C:\CDROMDRV\ATAPICD.SYS /D:CD003
REM ======== ATAPI CD-ROM Install Modification - End ========
and that file is in that path.
So... any guess why I sometimes don't get this compatibility problem, though now it seems to happen most of the time? And what if I try to reinstall the IDE drivers.. Do I risk losing access to the hard drives and CD-ROM?
Any help would be most appreciated.
TIA
Dan |
