Sorting out the ASPI driver mess

Before you try anything else, give the latest drivers (version 4.71) from Adaptec a try. They are supposed to work under 98/ME/NT/2K/XP and don't care if you don't have an Adaptec SCSI card installed.
http://download.adaptec.com/software_pc/aspi/aspi_471a2.exe

If that doesn't work.......

The ASPI drivers allow CDDA32 and DAT2WAV the ability to talk to the CDROM/DAT drives. Between Microsoft and Adaptec, the ASPI driver situation is completely screwed up. There are more versions of the ASPI32 drivers available than you can count. We will attempt to explain what versions you should use under what configurations.

The four files needed for WinNT/2K/XP are the following:
(example: WINNT is the WindowsNT home directory)
WINNT\SYSTEM\WINASPI.DLL
WINNT\SYSTEM\WOWPOST.EXE
WINNT\SYSTEM32\WNASPI32.DLL
WINNT\SYSTEM32\DRIVERS\ASPI32.SYS

The four files needed for Win95/98/Me are the following:
(example: WIN95 is the Windows95 home directory)
WIN95\SYSTEM\IOSUBSYS\APIX.VXD
WIN95\SYSTEM\WINASPI.DLL
WIN95\SYSTEM\WNASPI32.DLL
and ONE of the following two files
WIN95\SYSTEM\ASPIENUM.VXD
(this is the file that comes from Adaptec)
WIN95\ASPI2HLP.SYS (this is the file that comes with Win95)

To use SCSI devices with Win95/98/Me

In order to use SCSI devices under Win95, you must have ASPI drivers installed. On a generic Win95/98/Me install, there will be ASPI drivers from Microsoft automatically installed for you.
If you have an Adaptec SCSI card and you don't have any ATAPI drives, it doesn't hurt to update the ASPI drivers for Win95/98/Me with the upgraded drivers from the Adaptec web site. WARNING: using these ASPI drivers to upgrade your machine may disable the ability of any software to talk to ATAPI drives. You can get the Adaptec drivers from:
http://download.adaptec.com/software_pc/aspi/aspi_471a2.exe

To use ATAPI drives with Win95/98/Me

In order to use CDDA32 with ATAPI drives under Win95/98/Me, you must have ASPI drivers installed. On a generic Win95/98/Me install, there will be ASPI drivers from Microsoft automatically installed for you. The ASPI drivers that Adaptec has on their web site now MAY NOT allow CDDA32 to talk to ATAPI drives. If this happens you may get it working again by fixing the registry. See the necessary registry settings below.

To Use ATAPI and SCSI drives under NT/2K/XP with SPTI

ASPI drivers are not necessary for CDDA32 under NT and 2K. We are able to use the SPTI (SCSI Pass Through Interface) Drivers which do not require the user to install any special drivers. CDDA32 should work just fine right out of the box. CDDA32 still requires ASPI under XP

To use ATAPI and SCSI drives under NT/2K/XP with ASPI

Even with the introduction of the SPTI drivers, you can still use the ASPI interface with NT and 2K. Microsoft doesn't ship any ASPI drivers with Windows NT, so you have no choice but to use Adaptec's ASPI drivers. The trouble is that the ones that they are shipping now do not directly support ATAPI drives, only the SCSI ones and their controllers. There is a workaround. It is likely a problem with the registry settings. See below for the settings that should work.

Hunting for ASPI Drivers

Either the original ASPI drivers installed with Win95/98/Me or the newest version of the ASPI drivers from Adaptec now support both ATAPI and SCSI drives. The install program from Adaptec checks an entry in the Registry before installing. If you don't have EZSCSI or an Adaptec SCSI card installed then these drivers won't install. In that case have a look at one of the files below that will install. Once the new drivers are installed on the machine, the driver checks for a specific registry entry during the boot up process. If the entry is there, then ATAPI access is allowed through the drivers. If the entry is not there then only SCSI access is allowed through the drivers.

The first thing to check is to make sure that you have a fully functional set of driver files. Adaptec has produced a tool called ASPICHK which will tell you all about the health and version numbers of the drivers on your system.
http://download.adaptec.com/software_pc/aspi/aspichk.exe

The folks at grc.com had produced a program called ASPI_ME that would automatically install the latest version of the ASPI drivers under Windows95/98/NT and set up the appropriate registry entries to make sure the ATAPI drives work. However, Adaptec went after them because they were distributing copies of their drivers without permission. Have a look and see anyway:
http://www.grc.com/freestuff.htm

Ahead, the guys who make Nero, have their own NT and Win9x ASPI drivers
http://www.nero.com/nero7/enu/ASPI_Driver.html

InitIO ASPI for Win NT4/2k/XP
http://www.initio.com/support/index-download.htm

If you are still having trouble check Registry Settings

You may find that an important entry in your registry is not set correctly. The following entries need to be set if you are trying to use an ATAPI drive with a more recent version of the Adaptec ASPI drivers.

Registry Entry for Win95/98/Me
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\APIX]
"ExcludeMiniports"=""

Registry Entries for WinNT 4.0/2K/XP
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ASPI32]
"ErrorControl"=dword:00000001
"Start"=dword:00000001
"Type"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\ASPI32\Parameters]
"ExcludeMiniports"=""

Restoring the driver files from the original Win95/98/Me installation CD or disks

If all else fails you can restore the ASPI drivers to the files that came with your Win95/98/Me disks. Once you have extracted the files you can just copy them into the appropriate locations and reboot. A number of people have let us know that the files can appear in any of the cab files, not just win95_03 or win98_40. If you can't find the files in the these cabs, you may have to try the others. For Win95 here is an example:
extract /e d:\win95\win95_03.cab wnaspi32.dll
extract /e d:\win95\win95_03.cab winaspi.dll
extract /e d:\win95\win95_03.cab apix.vxd
extract /e d:\win95\win95_03.cab aspi2hlp.sys
(others have found the files in win95_04.cab)
For Win98 here is an example:
extract /e d:\win98\win98_40.cab wnaspi32.dll
extract /e d:\win98\win98_40.cab winaspi.dll
extract /e d:\win98\win98_47.cab apix.vxd
extract /e d:\win98\win98_46.cab aspi2hlp.sys




company logo

Software | Downloads | Ordering | Contact Us

Products

[ATAINF]
[CDDA]
[CDDA32]
[CDGPlay]
[CDROMCHK]
[CDROMINF]
[DAT2WAV info]
[CDG Project]
[SCSIPing]
[Spindown]
[WAVDump]

Support

[Report Problem]
[ASPI drivers]

Ordering

[EMail/Fax]
[Contact Us]

Files

[Downloads]

Information

[DAE FAQ]
[DAT FAQ]
[CDG FAQ]
[CD Text FAQ]
[Chipset Bugs]

News

[Previous News]
[Privacy Policy]

Copyright ©
1996-2007
Computall Services
All Rights Reserved


Valid HTML 4.01 Strict