Windows 7 Intel 845E chipset drivers and the CDROM caching issue

[DmytroL]

Hi all,

I've installed Windows 7 on my old desktop PC built on a GA-8IE mobo based on the Intel's 845E chipset. The OS installed just fine and has been working no problem except for the USB file transfer speed, especially when downloading pictures from digital cameras (mine and my friends' - so this was definitely not a problem with a specific camera).

It occured to me that when I had Windows XP on this machine, installing the chipset drivers from the CD that came with the mobo did a noticeable performace increase. So I decided to try the same trick with the new OS and launched the installer in the WinXP SP2 compatibility mode as an admin. Surprisingly, the drivers did install, the system booted up, and the USB file transfer became faster (although not as fast as in XP SP2) - as well as overall responsiveness became a bit better.

However, now I'm plagued with the CD-ROM caching problem that was fixed back in WinXP SP2 - namely, when I eject a CD and insert another one, Windows still thinks the previous CD is still in the drive and won't re-read the newly inserted disk. As I couldn't find a way to disable CD caching, I tried to remove the Intel's Ultra ATA controller driver - to no avail. The system won't boot up if I replace it with the newer driver from Microsoft - most likely because the chipset drivers installer replaced some more newer drivers with older OEM ones from Intel. So now I am kind of stuck - neither I can fix the CDROM caching issue, nor can I roll back to the original drivers (well, at least without reinstalling the whole system)

Well, I can leave with the caching problem, as I also have a DVD burner installed on the same IDE channel and that one does not seem to have any caching issues. But still, I am concerned about the stability of the system having chipset drivers created back in 2001 and designed for an older OS.

Please advice...

 

[Highwayman]

I'm amazed such an old driver was even allowed to install, anyway have you tried the newer ones found on the mobo support page? to be honest though once a board is more than 3 years old the OS probably has better built in drivers.

 

[DmytroL]

The mobo has been unsupported since 2002... not sure if such a new OS as Windows 7 even knows about specifics of THAT old piece of hardware. Well, anyways, how do I roll back to the original drivers, then? Rolling back just the ATA controller driver does not help - the system shows BSOD (code 7B) on next boot.

 

[Highwayman]

actually windows 7 has the largest driver base of all Os's and does indeed support old chipsets, thats kinda the point....my old pc is intel 865 chipset and ran without any factory drivers installed.