Via Bus Master Drivers

[Steegs]

I built a machine and don't have the via bus master drivers, so windows keeps telling me. I went over to soyo and peroused around their site a bit and found this under support & then via chip sets:

"Via Bus Master Drivers:

Make both primary and secondary IDE channels performing DMA transfers instead of PIO in early version Windows 95.If you are using Windows 95 OSR2, OSR2.1 or OSR2.5 release, or Windows 98, you should not download this driver, as these operating system versions already contain a Bus Master driver from Microsoft."

should i try soyo's bus master drivers even though they arent for me?

I've been told that XP is supposed to handle these drivers, but they arent on the XP cd. They aren't on the cd that came with the mobo, and they arent in the driver section under my particular mobo on soyo's web page.

I've also been told that these are raid drivers (it appears under "scsi and raid controllers" in the devise manager) but i downloaded XP's raid drivers off soyo's website and that isnt it.

thanks
-steegs

[Alfie]

What you're looking for are the specfic drivers for the raid controller(Promise or Highpoint)depending which controller is on your motherboard.
Once you find that out,go to the website of the controller's manufacturer and get the latest drivers.Unless you can find them at Soyo's website.
Via's busmastering driver is not the one to use.

[Steegs]

I did go to soyos website and i downloaded the promise raid drivers specificaly for winXP and i pointed to them when it asked me for drivers. It came back with these arent the ones. Is there any way i can force it to use those drivers?

[Alfie]

Did the drivers come with an install program?
Did they come in a zipped file and is it unzipped?

[Steegs]

the raid drivers you were talking about that i downloaded from soyos webpage were zipped. I unzipped them, pointed to them, and no luck.

the via 4in1, which i got from via's website, is an installation program. i tried installing and seemingly nothing happened.

-steegs

[Alfie]

Have you tried XP's add new hardware?Let XP search for the devices and see what it comes up with,if it can't find them then choose from the list.

[phatboi]

hey, i have a Soyo Dragon Plus, here's my setup. Soyo Dragon Plus, Alpha PAL 8045 w/ Delta fan, TDK 24X burner (secondary master), Pioneer Slot Load DVD (secondary slave), WesternDigital 60 HD(2 partitions, primary master), Zip100 (primary slave). i also have it hooked up to a router. I have WinXP also. i've reinstalled the OS 3 times. first time i switched was b/c i switched motherboards, second time was b/c of a bad install, third time was b/c i bluescreened. i installed the Via Drivers each time. my disk came with Via drivers, FastTrak raid drivers, sounddriver, and the smartcard reader driver. you should have all those drivers on the disk. just run the disk, click on the motherboard, and then install each driver separately. don't install the via drivers, not even the updated ones, i did that and i think that might be why my computer bluescreened (along wit some registry tweaking). but XP should run fine w/o the drivers. i know mine does now. what are you tryin' to install?

[Steegs]

alfie, i tried the add new hardware and that just brinngs up the "via bus master drivers". And it's from there that i pointed to the drivers. I havent searched in the list of drivers that came with xp, so ill go to add new hardware and see if i cant find a match on my own.

phatboi, i tried installing them from the cd. first thing i did when i got it up and running. im trying to install the "via bus mater drivers." i belive it is a part of via's 4in1. but you are right, everything seems to run fine without the drivers installed.

thanks for the replies guys, im kinda stumped.
-steegs

[Alfie]

Is RAID set to enabled in bios?
Are you sure the controller is Promise or is it another controller?

[Steegs]

Alfie, yup im sure its promise fast track. and yup raid setting in bios is off and the raid jumper setting on the mobo is set to off as well.

-steegs

[Alfie]

You may want raid enabled,as this will let Windows know there's something there.
With it enabled,the raid controllers are enabled,similar to com 1 and 2,try it enabled and see if that cures it.

[Steegs]

yup that did it, thanks for you prolonged help alfie!

-steegs

[Alfie]

Glad that it's working and that I could be of some help.
Good luck!

[alexmacdonald]

Get the Bus Master Driver directly for VIA http://www.viaarena.com/?PageID=66
If you already have this driver you must make sure you turn off driver signing in the system properties or this un-signed, but safe, driver will not install. At this point you may have to manually update the driver by picking it from the "show all compatible devices" list. Driver signing is a good idea, but M$ have always been 6 months behind the vendors in certifying them.