Based on experience and lessons gained from fielding three dozen (or
more) emails over the past two years helping individuals find
work-arounds to various problems or questions arising from the use of
JE4333APM, I offer the following (unsolicited) observations:
The majority of issues stem from (often unexplainable) resource
conflicts (I/O, IRQ, etc) associated with changing the BIOS while
attempting to preserve a current hardware and OS configuration. I
believe most could have been avoided had users followed my
recommendation to reinstall the OS and drivers after updating the
BIOS, but many apparently thought I was just saying this for my
health.
For these problems, there are two solutions that seem to work in 90+%
of all cases.
Solution #1:
- Install the Chipset INF and, more importantly, the IRQ
Miniport/Routing driver from an earlier version of the VIA 4-in-1
Driver (such as v4.35~v4.3
, even if the OS is 'supposed' to have the
IRQ Routing patch for VIA chipsets (including Win98SE and ME). Even
if you already installed it prior to the BIOS upgrade, install it
again. The 4-in-1 setup should detect the OS then give a choice of
drivers that are recommended. The VIA ATAPI Vendor Support Driver is
NOT required for the vast majority of configurations. There is no
point in using more recent versions of the 4-in-1 on any flavor of
Win9x since they offer nothing for these older platforms and may
actually cause more problems
- Enter BIOS SETUP and set Reset Configuration Data under PNP/PCI
Configuration to "Enable", Save and Exit
- Boot to Windows normally, check for new resource conflicts or device
problems in Device Manager. If all is well, test the system to see if
anything "magical" happened (and it has been described as "magical"
when it works - lol!)
Solution #2 (assuming #1 was tried without success):
- Pull every non-essential PCI/ISA card (audio, modem, NIC, etc) and
uninstall their drivers (restarting as prompted)
- Enter BIOS SETUP and set Reset Configuration Data under PNP/PCI
Configuration to "Enable", Save and Exit
- Re-install cards and latest drivers one at a time, testing each
thoroughly for proper function before installing another
- If a problem crops-up after installing a certain PCI/ISA card, you
know where the problem was. I've seen this several different times, a
particular card simply does not like a particular slot for no apparent
reason and it will even cause other devices to balk at the
arrangement. Underlying cause is likely a PCI bus arbitration, bus
parking, or IRQ sharing conflict, may or may not be resolved by
disabling/enabling PCI2.1 compliance features such as PCI Delayed
Transaction. Try swapping slots with another card
Other observations and senseless rambling:
JE4333 (and thus JE4333APM) appear to support HDD capacities up to
80GB and perhaps larger. There should be no BIOS limitation between
32GB and 100GB+ that wasn't already addressed excepting some
idiosynchracy with a particular make and model of HDD. Theoretically,
JE4333 should be good up to the hardware ATA/IDE limitation (~137GB).
YMMV. If not, there's always the option of an add-in IDE Controller
PCI card with its own BIOS.
There is an incompatibility between older versions of Microsoft's
FDISK and hard drives with capacities larger than 64GB. A new version
of FDISK can be downloaded from Microsoft through KB article Q263044.
For potential problems using FDISK to partition hard drives larger
than 128GB, see KB article Q327202.
JE4333APM seems to work fine with Windows XPSP1. However, changing
from an ACPI mode configuration to a non-ACPI BIOS is obviously going
to conflict with the HAL utilized by XP. Again, installing the OS
after updating the BIOS would avoid this problem because Setup should
detect the BIOS as non-ACPI, preventing XP from installing in ACPI
mode.
You can ensure ACPI mode is not installed by pressing F5 during XP
Setup when it prompts the user to press F6 for installing third-party
SCSI drivers, then selecting "Standard PC" from the Computer/HAL menu.
I've also read that pressing F7 when prompted by XP Setup to press F6
will accomplish the same result, preventing Setup from installing in
ACPI mode.
To determine if your system was installed without ACPI enabled, right
click "My Computer" then click Properties > Hardware > Device Manager.
Expand the entry called "Computer". If the entry is "Standard PC"
then XP was not installed in ACPI mode. If it reads "Advanced
Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) PC", some people have
reported being able to successfully change this mode to Standard PC
without reinstalling XP, but I've never done it, and doing so carries
some risk, so I'm not going to discuss it any further.
Never install an OS with the full compliment of devices and
peripherals unless you're restoring an image of a known-working system
configuration. Always install an OS on a minimalist configuration (no
audio, modem, NIC, printer, scanner, etc.), then add your optional
devices and peripherals after the OS is up and running with the latest
chipset/device support. Many, many, problems can be avoided.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled insanity. Hope some will
find this helpful.
Regards,
Tim
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