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Slow SATA performance on Mac Pro in XP/Bootcamp

No hard drive performance problems, but 5 exclamation points in device manager

I've tried nLite for slipstreaming the Chipset driver in 3 total times. It has not made any difference. I've also tried running the installation package from Intel for the chipset, yet I still have the device issues afterwards.

According to SiSoft Sandra I'm getting 61 MB/Second.

The different problem devices in the manager are as follows:

"Base System Device"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 3 - 25E3"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 5 - 25E5"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 6 - 25E6"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 7 - 25E7"

Please lend me some advice if you know how to fix this issue.

Thanks
 
Thanks, but now I have a different problem

Dysert, thank you for your recomendation. "Base System Device" is no longer showing up in the device manager.

Instead, I now have a "PCI Device" entry with an exclamation point.

Please provide me with further help if you are willing. I will be grateful.
 
Fixing the Keyboard Problem

Borman said:
I having gotten far enough to start installing Windows, nLite is where it gets stuck at the Integrating drivers.

Edit: New problem. Keyboard not responding in the blue Setup screen for Windows. My Macbook Pro never gave me this much trouble :( Using the keyboard that shipped with the Mac Pro
Click to expand...

Hi!

This one caught me.. Unfortunately the fancy "might mouse" that includes standard with the Mac Pro is * NOT * compatible with the boot installation process of XP.. ???

The Fix?

Disconnect your mouse during XP installation until you ACTUALLY need to use the mouse. It will then automagically detect it, and you can continue your graphical install.

Terrabit!
 
Updated XP Installation Instructions

Hi!!

A big thanks to all posters in this forum!!! I have made a significant update to the XP instructions on the website based on your postings! I'm sorry some of you burnt so many CD's in the process of getting XP installed. Hopefully the new instructions will help others avoid the same difficulties :)

http://macprojournal.com/xp.html

I have also added a new page on possible hardware dedicated cryptographic support (AES, MD5, SHA-1) on the Mac Pro as shipping today!! I hope its interesting to you. ( I personally like ciphers a lot. )

I intend to add a few more pages in the near future.

If possible, it would be good if people linking to the website update their links to point to the full human readable URL, and avoid using the fall-back IP address. The IP address makes it harders for others Mac Pro users find the website contents via google.

Terrabit!!
 
Installing XP on Independent Hard Drive

I am awaiting delivery of my MacPro. I have slipstreamed a CD with XP according to Terrabit's instructions.
I would like to install XP on a dedicated 2nd hard drive. I was planning on not using Boot Camp Assistant to partition drive but rather to directly install XP on 2nd drive allowing XP installer to format drive. After XP installation, I plan on installing Apple supplied Boot Camp drivers.
However, Terrabit implies in his updated instructions that without initially using Boot Camp to partition drive for XP, the SATA fix will fail. Is this the case ?? If so, can Boot Camp partition the 2nd hard drive and allow for XP installation ??
I would appreciate any comments. Thanks
 
ldstern@

I think he wanted to say, that if you install XP to second disk you will still have slow SATA and you still have to slipstream the drivers. Not that it won't work with slipstreamed cd.
 
SATA and Mac Pro

I've read all this thread with interest, but I still have some doubts as to how to proceed. I think I followed all instructions regarding the nLite creation of a slipstreamed version of the XP installation CD with the SATA drivers, etc., but the desired result hasn't been achieved.

When the instructions say that XP be installed again, is that a full install, i.e., previously erasing the whole of disk C? Or is it a reinstall (by pressing R at the appropriate prompt from the Windows installer? I tried this option, but, as far as I can see, the only thing I achieved was throwing all Windows security patches overboard and copying iastor.inf, iastor.sys, iastor.cat and a few other files to the WINDOWS subforlders, but my internal hard disks are still running in PIO mode.

Please, confirm if an install from scratch is necessary. I'm thinking of a different solution which should be theoretically possible. Can any of you provide the relevant registry entries that actually tell Windows how to handle SATA hard drives? There shouldn't be that many. I mean, for instance, my registry, under the branch My Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet0001\Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318},
contains several sub-branches (0000, 0001, 0002, etc.). Each of these sub-branches has several keys. For instance, sub-branch 0000 has a String key called DriverDesc whose value is "Intel(R) 631xESB/6321ESB Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 269E", and then there's the String key InfPath, which points to "esb2ide.inf", etc. It's my hunch that a Mac Pro that has SATA in place will have something slightly different. Perhaps InfPath will be something like "iastor.inf"; then, DriverDesc could be something different as well, perhaps including the words Intel and RAID; and, quite likely, the main branch under which all this information is stored will be called something different, probably not {4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}. Of course, cross references within the registry to all these entries should be coherent.

So, the big question is, for those of you knowledgeable about the Windows registry and navigation with regedit, is, can you provide this information? If you can, we could solve this problem for all Mac Pro owners without burning any more slipstreamed CDs and without waiting for a new release of boot camp. Chances are Apple won't solve the issue before Vista (and I mean Vista, not Leopard) is launched!

Many thanks to all that try.
 
ldstern said:
I am awaiting delivery of my MacPro. I have slipstreamed a CD with XP according to Terrabit's instructions.
I would like to install XP on a dedicated 2nd hard drive. I was planning on not using Boot Camp Assistant to partition drive but rather to directly install XP on 2nd drive allowing XP installer to format drive. After XP installation, I plan on installing Apple supplied Boot Camp drivers.
However, Terrabit implies in his updated instructions that without initially using Boot Camp to partition drive for XP, the SATA fix will fail. Is this the case ?? If so, can Boot Camp partition the 2nd hard drive and allow for XP installation ??
I would appreciate any comments. Thanks
Click to expand...

Hi.,

You don't need boot camp to partition the drive, but you _need_ boot-camp to build you the CD rom full of macintosh drivers which you install as the last step.

Regardless of whether you partition the drive with boot camp or not, you need the slipstreamed XP CD with Intel drivers to fix the SATA problems.

Terrabit!
 
EMR said:
I've read all this thread with interest, but I still have some doubts as to how to proceed. I think I followed all instructions regarding the nLite creation of a slipstreamed version of the XP installation CD with the SATA drivers, etc., but the desired result hasn't been achieved.

When the instructions say that XP be installed again, is that a full install, i.e., previously erasing the whole of disk C? Or is it a reinstall (by pressing R at the appropriate prompt from the Windows installer? I tried this option, but, as far as I can see, the only thing I achieved was throwing all Windows security patches overboard and copying iastor.inf, iastor.sys, iastor.cat and a few other files to the WINDOWS subforlders, but my internal hard disks are still running in PIO mode.
Click to expand...

I would recommend a complete clean reinstall, by overwriting the old installation / reformating the windows partition. (Obviously backing up your data before hand).

Unfortunately, at this time, we need to install the updated intel drivers at the very _beginning_ of the windows installation, and from what you describe, the 'R' option is not achieving this result.

Thanks for giving the 'R' option a try.

Terrabit!
 
ive been reading, and im new to windows, but i followed the custom XP boot trick and now I'm get about 48.5 MB per sec. on average, does that sound right? or is there a setting i can still change? According to HD Tune , im using UDMA Mode 6? Shouldn't I be usung 7? Im so confused. Thanks



shawn
 
Windows Device manager reports troubled devices.

I've tried nLite for slipstreaming the chipset driver and the SATA driver on 3 seperate CDs and have done a total of 4 seperate partition deletions, partition creations, file system formats, and Operating System installations. My HD performance has been fine, according to SiSoft Sandra I'm getting 61 MB/Second. I have conflicts in my device manager with each and every installation that I perform. I have attempted to run the installation package for the chipset which I downloaded from Intel a number of times and the conflicts remain. I followed Dysert's advice and did download the package for the dual onboard NIC and the driver has functioned for me, but it did not really help in clearing up device issues in the device manager.

The different problem devices in the manager are as follows:

"PCI Device"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 3 - 25E3"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 5 - 25E5"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 6 - 25E6"
"Intel(R) 5000 Series Chipset PCI Express x4 Port 7 - 25E7"

My technical ability is very low from within the Apple operating system, but I would like to check inside of the device manager equivelant (if it exists) to see if Apple's OS agrees that there are hardware troubles, in which case my problem is not coming from the software that I'm installing. If someone could tell me where to go and what to click inside of the Apple OS it would be helpful.

Please note before responding that these device manager issues were the same whether I installed with the slipstreamed disk or installed with the Retail Windows XP Pro SP 2 disk that my vendor shipped me last week.

If someone is familiar with these issues on the Windows side, then please help me out with some directions on how to clear up these device issues.

Thanks
 
Screen Shots of Terrabit's Fix

I have put up a web site to complement Terrabit's great one.

It is http://st118.startlogic.com/~macproxp/ - of course it has a link to Terrabit's XP page for easy reference. I hope this may be of help to those who are not as savvy at Windows :confused:

Hopefully Apple will resolve all of soon with another Boot Camp rev.
 
Aargh!!

Need some help here. I followed the instructions meticulously for setting up XP on a secondary HD (dl drivers, copy XP SP1, dl SP2, use nlite to slipstream SP2 and drivers, make ISO, burn ISO to disk). My problem is that when I get to the ultimate step of booting from the CD, the Mac Pro doesn't see it as a bootable drive. What am I missing?? :confused: I burned the CD on a Windows machine if that matters. Also, I *can* boot from the CD on my Windows machine.

Thanks for any help.
 
htat's very nice toonerh.
one thing though, that drivers folder you have in the macxp root folder, is redundant and "might" cause issues on install for some people. i say might because im not sure if it will or not. when you go to create the iso, those 3 drivers/chipsets are put into another folder under I386. so with the iso made, you've got the same drivers in 2 seperate places. whether or not this will cause problems i dont know, but just wanted to give you a heads up.

great job on the screen grabs from beginning to end though!
 
Wait, is it even possible at this point to do this install onto a Boot Camp-made partition?
 
peas said:
htat's very nice toonerh.
one thing though, that drivers folder you have in the macxp root folder, is redundant and "might" cause issues on install for some people. i say might because im not sure if it will or not. when you go to create the iso, those 3 drivers/chipsets are put into another folder under I386. so with the iso made, you've got the same drivers in 2 seperate places. whether or not this will cause problems i dont know, but just wanted to give you a heads up.

great job on the screen grabs from beginning to end though!
Click to expand...
You're right the drivers are in a redundant folder, but I tested it twice and it works :) Windows looks mostly in I386.
 
I got it to work on my second burn attempt. It's not so difficult as it seems at first. Especially thanks to people like Terrabit and Toonerh. Great service to the community! :D

I was wondering, for some reason XP is the OS to start up by default. Is there a way to change this to make OSX start by default? And is anyone else using a non-Mac keyboard? I'm using a Microsoft Media keyboard and I still don't know exactly which button to hold down when booting up to make the selection. It seems sometimes the Start buttons works, and other times it's Alt. I keep the Mac keyboard on hand when neither seem to work. :rolleyes:
 
Everything worked great - first try. I'm getting 60ish for read times. Great instructions, Terrabit!
 
Videographer said:
I got it to work on my second burn attempt. It's not so difficult as it seems at first. Especially thanks to people like Terrabit and Toonerh. Great service to the community! :D

I was wondering, for some reason XP is the OS to start up by default. Is there a way to change this to make OSX start by default? And is anyone else using a non-Mac keyboard? I'm using a Microsoft Media keyboard and I still don't know exactly which button to hold down when booting up to make the selection. It seems sometimes the Start buttons works, and other times it's Alt. I keep the Mac keyboard on hand when neither seem to work. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

The windows equivalent of the "option" key is "alt". Try holding ALT down when your restart.
 
Videographer said:
I was wondering, for some reason XP is the OS to start up by default.
Click to expand...
Boot Camp 1.1 adds a Windows XP Control Panel for startup, select Mac OS X there. Or force boot Mac OS X with the Option key and select Mac OS X in Startup inside System Preferences.
 
Okay, I managed to install XP without Bootcamp. Several problems:

First, Windows couldn't find drivers for the ethernet adapter. No problem--downloaded them and installed correctly.

Second, Windows can't find PCI drivers. Still working on that.

Third and most importantly, Windows only sees TWO cpus!! Anyone else have that problem?

[Edit: Windows Device Manager lists 4 cpus, but the task manager shows that only two are operating.
 
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