Windows 95/98 IDE Drivers

Windows 95/98 IDE Drivers

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If your computer is running Microsoft Windows '95, or Windows '98, then our software requires the use of some specific drivers in order to discover your IDE disk drives. They are included in SMARTMon, and will be installed automatically for you if you do not have them. Although these drivers come with Windows 95 OSR2 and above, it is possible that they were not pre-loaded on your system.

Specifically, we require the Microsoft version of the files:
<bootdir>:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\ESDI_506.PDR
<bootdir>:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\SMARTVSD.VXD

Where <bootdir> represents the disk drive that your O/S is booted to.

If either of these files are missing, corrupted, or not the correct version, then SMARTMon may not detect your IDE disk drives.

Combined, these files allow the software to gracefully talk directly to your IDE disk drives, without the operating system getting in the way, and without causing data loss or interruption while other applications are concurrently communicating with your disk drives.

Known Compatibility Problems (IDE only, Windows '95/98)
Due to limitations with Microsoft's drivers, this software may not detect your IDE drives on the following systems:

·	Any system that is running in MS-DOS compatibility mode.

·	Micron '486 DX/2 using PhoenixBios(TM) A486 ver6.

·	90 Mhz Pentium-based system with Award BIOS version 4.50g.

·	Any system running the first release of Windows '95.

·	Windows 1.x through Windows 3.x based systems.

SMARTVSD Troubleshooting Checklist

·	The ESDI_506.PDR and SMARTVSD.VXD files must be installed in \WINDOWS\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS. We have seen system configurations where the files were loaded elsewhere.

Your file system must NOT be running in MS-DOS compatibility mode. To check this, select system properties dialog box (from the Windows screen), and click the performance tab. If running in compatibility mode, it will tell you. (Believe us, you don't want to be running in compatibility mode anyway, as it is much slower and less-efficient).

·	Your IDE drives are running a third-party ESDI_506 driver which wasn't properly written to specifications. If that is the case, please let us know so we can work with the vendor to resolve this.

If running Windows '95, then the latest ESDI_506.PDR driver can be downloaded from microsoft at: http://support.microsoft.com/support/downloads/dp2884.asp. If running Windows '98, then the driver is included in the CD-ROM distribution set, and is not online (as far as we know). If you do not have a distribution set, then contact your system supplier for the files.