My Adaptec SCSI card is giving me boot problems

Are you sure all termination is correct, and also that have scsi id's correct. I believe you a termination problem with the last drive not being terminated. Access the adaptec bios and load the default values for the card by pressing ctrl A, also goto advanced options of the scsi card and then there is an option to verify media or something to that effect and besure that that the card see's the media, this is important that you can access the drive from the bios of the card, if not then Winnt will not see the drive. If you need more then let me know.

That should be at boot up, when prompted hit control A. to access the scsi bios.

The Termination is OK, I've have allredy checked it!
The ID is allso ok. 4(CD;Term) 5(HD) 6(HD) 7(2940;Term(Auto))

The problem is that a can't boot and this problem didn't I have before. With out making eny changes I suddenly can't boot with the scsi devices on.

/Rickard

Do you have any other hard disks in the system? If not, then you should change the HD ids to 0 and 1. ID 0 should be used for the boot device unless you have IDE drives as well.

Have you made any changes to boot.ini ?
Maybe you can change multi to scsi in the ARC path in that file.
This way you can find out if your system will boot without scsi bios enabled.
Also check for conflicts...maybe some older settings are playing you a trick incase something was installed earlier on the server.
good luck...

ups...actually booting without bios isn't really the answer, I meant that you could use it to isolate the problem...

Do you have another card available to test with? There is the possibility that the card itself has gone south.

My system configuration looks as follow;
P225MHz, 128EDO, Sb16, 3c905, M.Myst.170,
EIDE
ID  Size    ???
0;0 1.6GB   Winnt (Boot)
0;1 1.6GB   Program Files
1;0 1.6GB   Files
1;1 3.2GB   TEMP (IDE)
SCSI UW 2940 (Bios is disable;ID 7;Auto Term)
ID Size   ??SCSI   ???  
6  1.1GB   USCSI   Files
5  4.3GB   USCSI   Files
4  CD-rom  USCSI     ?    (Term)

The system freez(when the blue screen apear) when my scsi drives are connected but when I remove the cable from the card (No drives connected) the system starts nice. This problem was suddenly there!! But I hade some problem with my SCSI drives when I tried to explore them; the cd started to making noise, the drives is also making noise (reading and writing as I could se from the "Performance Monitor" only on the disk whitch I tried to acces), explorer.exe freez and the system is dumping error messiges in "Event Veiwer"  mostly nr:11 but also nr:9 (Se above).

The card is clean, I think, it is about 2~3 weeks old... hopefuly not the source of all the problem.

On my workstation nothing has been changed, this happend just suddenly.

I will soon test my cable but I think it is OK.

/Rickard

Adjusted points to 300

Try removing the cable from each of the scsi drives 1 by 1. leave the cable connected to the other drives. reboot. does it seem to have something to do with a specific drive?

From your above comment, I take it you have four IDE drives, two SCSI drives, and a SCSI CD-ROM.  Any external SCSI devices?

Is the CD-ROM on the end of the cable?
Try tcalesa's suggestion above also.

Yes, about the disks.
No, externals scsi devices.
Yes CD-rom at the end.
/R

Yes, about the disks.
No, externals scsi devices.
Yes CD-rom at the end.
/R

Yes, about the disks.
No, externals scsi devices.
Yes CD-rom at the end.
/R

Yes, about the disks.
No, externals scsi devices.
Yes CD-rom at the end.
/R

Must be that darn internet echo.  : )  (I hate that!)

Have you tried tcalesa's suggestion?

Just another suggestion/comment Udden.

Adaptec family cards 'generally' don't like a CDROM as the final device in a chain.  This will mostly work but has been a cause of intense hair pulling by me on occassion.

I would suggest if at all possible that you turn off the termination on the CDROM device, move it to the middle of the cable and enable termination (or use the auto term feature) on a HD attached to the end of the cable.

Hope this helps..

Are you using a 3Com Ethernet card? If yes, I think below is the answer:

Article ID: Q153128
     SUMMARY

     When you use SCSI controllers based on Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) and the PCI-based 3Com EtherLink 3c59x network adapter, you may experience  problems with SCSI device and/or SCSI controller timeouts, failing Windows NT fault tolerant disk mirrors, or the system may stop responding or crash. The following event messages are examples of what you may find in the event log if you are using the Adaptec 2940x SCSI controller or other PCI-based SCSI controllers in conjunction with the 3Com 3c59x network adapter:

        Event ID: 11
        Source: aic78xx
        Description: The driver detected a controller error on Device\ScsiPortO.


        Event ID: 9
        Source: aic78xx
        Description: The device, \Device\ScsiPort0, did not respond within the timeout period.


     CAUSE

     The 3Com EtherLink 3c590 and 3c595 PCI network adapter driver (El59x.sys) that shipped with Windows NT has problems with bus mastering when multiple
     PCI-based controllers are installed.

     These error messages can also be caused by poor or incorrect SCSI termination, a failing device or controller, inferior SCSI cabling, or a poorly written device driver for
     the SCSI controller.

     Additionally, Please reference Knowledge Base article:

     Q154690 - How to troubleshoot Event 9 and 11 Error messages.

     RESOLUTION

          Obtain the fix provided by 3Com for the 3C59x driver (version 1.10.00 or later).

          The new driver, el59x.sys (version 1.10), is available at the following World Wide Web location as 3c59xx.exe (a self extracting file):

                http://infodeli.3com.com/infodeli/swlib/shipping_adapter_files.htm

          The driver is also available from the 3COM Bulletin Board Service (BBS) at (408) 980-8204.

     -OR-

     - Sometimes a low-level format performed by the SCSI controller will resolve these event messages.

For clarification:  Auto Termination is only applicable for the connectors on the card itself.  Not the SCSI cable.  Any SCSI cable must be terminated manualy either by terminating resistor packs, or a jumper on the device at the end of the cable, or a terminator that plugs on to the end connector on the SCSI cable.

Jason,
Any objection to a lock? it's been several days and he's either tried my suggestion, or possibly abandoned the Q. He may respond to an answer.

tcalesa:  Thanks for asking instead if just doing it.  It might spring intrest again.  If it's a holiday break, then Auto Answer shouldnt be a factor.  You or me?  : )

You've invested more time. Go for it.

OK, I hate to do this normaly, but Im hoping this will urge Udden to respond.  I thouroghly expect this answer to be rejected.

Udden:  I you still need help with this, please look over our comments, andd respond to them.  If the problem is fixed another way, then let us know.  Then remove the question through Customer Service area.
Thanks, and Happy Holidays.

Have been on hollyday! and I've sent my modem away to be uppgraded to v.90 (For Free :)

I will read all you comment later today probebly!

Rickard

Try checking the bios for the 2940. Make sure that none of your drives is set for booting. Make sure that your final scsi device is terminated and that none of your other terminal devices are terminated (multiple terminations) this can cause all kinds of problems. Also, make sure your board is set up for auto termination.

rmolihna:  This had already been said.  We welcome your comments, just please don't submit an answer with other peoples comments.

I've tried it allredy! Thank's anyway.

I do have a 3c905 F.EtherLink.

I resently removed my 1.1GB SCSI drive and I don't have hade any more problem. I got error messages about corupt files and the error list in the drive has grown. I think it was the source of the problem!

I will probably remove this question in about a month.

Rickard Uddenberg

Udden,
    Sorry to be too late but I think you can have an experience with this. I've got some "?" about can not setup NT with 2940 UW interface and your case like the same. Do you remember this Jason_S?!
    The first thing that is you must use your manufacture's driver to install your interface, but not an NT compatible one. With some "unknown" problem, the needed file aic78u2.sys (which must be used for your adapter but not ais78xx.sys) was not copied properly. If you can not find this file in WINNT\SYSTEM directory, manually copy it to the right place. Before restart your system, make sure that the device assocciated with this file (something likes aic78u2 in DEVICE panel) has been set to start at boot time. Then you can boot your system properly.
    The main problem is the lack of "aic78u2.sys" in system directory. At boot up, system load the aic78xx as default. This driver find out the UW interface is something compatible with the one it can handle then try to control and... stuck. I really don't know if the UW need anything in aic78xx driver but if there's still problem at startup, disable the aic78xx device to prevent it try to control the UW interface.
    Although, this answer can not solve your problem now but I think you still need to use UW interface in future. So give it a try!
Minh
PS: is it OK Jason_S ;-)

What's this hnminh? My suggestion worked! it was a drive having a problem...

Udden,
Please reject and I'll repost an answer. The unfortunate thing about losing the drive is that you will get the errors you described unless the drive was part of a stripe with parity set or a mirror. I hope the data wasn't critical. If it was, you may wish to recover by putting it in a w95 machine with a SCSI controller. W95 will sometimes work as it is less hardware intensive.

Good Luck

Udden,
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Customer Service @ Experts Exchange

tcalesa
I sent an email to Udden asking him to reject the current answer.  

Linda

Thanks

Sorry I been so slow!
But it solved it self for at least a while! Now my PlexWriter isn't working!!! I hate my computer!!!!! :)
It can read but not write!!??
//Rickard

tcalesa,
You need to now post an answer so the question can be graded.