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General discussion

ms-dos compatibility mode

by bigmac Mar 4, 2004 9:08AM PST

I am having problems with my primary and secondary ide controller(dual FIFO).
getting error message device either not present, not working properly or does not have all drivers installed(code 10) try updating devices

I tried to update the drivers but my windows me system says the drivers instaled are the latest.
IOSUBSYS\ESDI_506.pdr
VMM32.vxd(IOS.VXD)

in my device listing it says my INTEL82371AB/EB PCI BUS MASTER IDE CONTROLLER IS WORKING PROPERLY
But i get problem indicators for the primary and also the secondary IDE Controler(DUAL FIFO)

I believe the problem is because windows changed my system during a recent boot and said it was changing my drives to ms-dos compatibility to prevent loss of data. All my hard drives are now indicating they are using ms-dos compatibility and that compatibility-mode paging reduces overall system performance.

another big problem i have is that i trird to use restore to all my previous restore points and the system tell me that it cannot restore my computer to any of the points.

my system is a custom pc with a ASUS P2B-AGP Motherboard with an INTEL PENTIUM II 350MHZ CPU, 256MB of PC/100 SDRAM, INTEL 440BX AGP Chipset, ULTRA DMA/33 BM IDE
I'm running Windows Me and have already used Ad-Aware 6.181 and Spybot to rid myself of all parasites, my antivirus program is AVG6.0
Please tell me how to get my system back to using the oldprimary and secondary ide controlers. Thanks in advance

Ken McDonald

Discussion is locked

4 Posts
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Re:ms-dos compatibility mode
by JMarchi Mar 4, 2004 10:05AM PST

The first thing you do in this situation is reload the motherboard drivers and see if that resolves the problem.

Of course running ME is a potential problem, friends don't let friends run ME. If you can put 256meg in the system you might consider XP to truly resolve problems.

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Re:Re:ms-dos compatibility mode
by bigmac Mar 8, 2004 4:32AM PST

Thanks for the reply Jeff. I tried to load the motherboard drivers but they gave me a memo saying they can only be installed under DOS and that the windows dos prompt will not work. This doesn't help me with Windows ME as my OS.

I am now having problems getting my CD drive to show up under My Computer or Windows Explorer even though it is detected properly at start up by the BIOS.

I even used a windows 98 2nd Edition OEM boot up disk and the CDROM universal driver that it temporarily installs did allow me to use the CDROM Drive. But when I go back to a normal boot the CDROM DRive is no longer available. The CD Drive is a Hewlett Packard Model 8200i CD-Writer Plus.

I think I'll take your advice and ditch ME. The cost of windows XP is beyond my extremely limited budget especially if I have to buy replacements for my old equipment that are not supported with XP. I'll go back to my old dependable Windows 98 2nd Edition. It should be able to get my system back up and running when it configures itself to my system. At least it did work under that version of windows before.

Do I have to reformat drive C: in order to get from windows ME back to Windows 98 2nd. Just trying to load 98 2nd Edition on my computer it warns me that i have to use an update version rather than my OEM Full version. The option to go back to windows 98 when it was backed up during the ME installation is no longer available to me as I had deleted the backup a long time ago.

Thanks in advance.

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Re:Re:Re:ms-dos compatibility mode
by Stan Chambers Mar 9, 2004 1:46AM PST

If you used the Windows ME upgrade disk installed over Windows 98, then all you need to do is uninstall ME in add/remove programs.
If you did a reformat and clean install with ME, I don't know of another method to go back to 98, other than a reformat and clean install of 98.

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Re:Re:Re:Re:ms-dos compatibility mode
by bigmac Mar 15, 2004 5:52PM PST

I've sucessfully reformated my drive c: and re-installed a clean copy of windows 98 2nd edition.

The computer is working perfectly again with all drives recognized and functional.

Thanks for your input guys

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