My problem is that when I boot,my hard drive is not being detected.At first I thought my drive had crashed but now I am not so sure.Since both the PC & hard drive are about 4 years old & have had a lot of use, I purchased a new hard drive.IDE Western Digital Caviar 80 gigs;I also wanted a new drive because the previous one was too old & too small.Anyway, I installed the drive & booted up-nothing happens,the BIOS cannot detect it. I checked the jumpers & cables-still nothing. The drive is good;I can hear it spinning.Having reached the limit of my technical knowledge, I am now asking for help.
Something a lot of people forget is that the bios battery can go bad. If you don't know what it is, it looks like a quarter on the main board. If it goes bad, no boot up. Jerry
WD drives are not like Maxtors or Seagates with their jumpers. Jumpering it single (like you would a Maxtor, single-drive master on the controller) will mess up the WD. If it is a single-drive master on the controller, the WD requires [bold]no[/bold] jumper. If jumpered master, and there is no slave present, it will not detect (it spins, and pauses, and thinks about it, and spins, and then won't detect). Hopefully this will help you ;-) Your symptoms sound exact... If not that then ? If the HD is good, then your answer should be either in the jumpers, or else in the BIOS. Regards
Jerry746-when I switch on the power I see the first POST screen & then it stops responding. Could this be caused by the CMOS battery? I assumed that this would prevent even the POST appearing?
The_OGS.I know about the jumpers,but thanks anyway.What could be the problem in the bios appart from the battery?
With a dead battery, it will beep and post 'warning - BIOS default settings' or somesuch, and then startup with time/date Jan 1 1990, y'know? So something you would need to address ASAP but, doesn't seem the problem here... Can you ID your mobo make/model for me? Sometimes must chase old HD setting from BIOS before it will detect new HD, hopefully this is your situation Can you press DEL and get into BIOS setup before it 'stops responding'? L8R
May sound obvious but it is worth disconnecting the other IDE device - as freezing can be caused where you get a Jumper setting conflicting. Bios problem - in my experience as long as the device remains plugged in and only turned off by the standard shut down, the BIOS battery isn't used i.e. won't reset until you take the plug out.
Next silly question you have activated the disk first. Actually reading your thread again - it sounds like you have taken the new drive out of the box and plugged it in and nothing happens ? If that is the case most new hard drives need to be partitioned first. Run Windows 98 Startup and then type A:\fdisk Create Primary Drive if you are not partitioning the drive then do the whole lot in one. When you reboot you will be able to see the hard drive and then you must format it NTFS probably especially as FAT32 only see 64 Gb per partition. Cheers
If my previous suggestion had no affect - please describe exactly what you have done and what happens when you turn on the power. Are you saying that only the new drive is in the PC ? Are you saying that the BIOS stops and goes no further. Have you entered the BIOS usually pushing the Del Key to see if it is there? Are you saying the Bios hasn't loaded at all ?
The bios loads,looks for Primary Master,cannot find it;then I get the message "boot drive failure,insert system disc & press enter".This is what happened with the original h/drive,so I thought the h/drive had failed.I purchased a new h/drive & exactly the same thing happens.I tried booting from Win XP;XP finds & formats the new drive,reboots to continue the install & then finds & formats without getting any further.When I tried to boot from Win 98,I get a message saying "you have no hard-drive or your hard-drive is damaged".So this is all very strange.
Hi Netherlands - I am just outside London Next thing to do is see if the hard drive is detected in the Bios - Long straw from your description of the fault. I am starting to run out of ideas.
Here is some info on the mobo: • Support Slot 1 for Intel • VIA® VT82C596B Chipset - Advanced Power Management Features - Dual bus Master IDE Ultra DMA33/66 • An IDE controller on the VIA® VT82C596B Chipset provides IDE HDD/CD-ROM with PIO, Bus Master and Ultra DMA33/66 operation modes. The most recent Award® BIOS (v3.5 dated Oct.2/2000) contains this fix: "Support IDE HDD size over 65GB" http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/mainboard/mbd/pro_mbd_detail.php?UID=115 Make sure you have BIOS 3.5 (mobo shipped with 3.0) and so, five revisions = many fixes Report to us your BIOS version and we will continue methodical troubleshoot from there... Also after update BIOS make sure recent VIA 4in1 installed! Thanks haymarket - but you're getting a little ahead of yourself... ;-) Know you're just tryin' to help, L8R
I believe the 4.51 is an Award Version (the brand of the BIOS used by MSI for your mobo) and not the specific version of the BIOS revision (the information that can be uploaded or 'flashed' onto the mobo eeprom). Work with me here - I'm not getting paid for this You flash your BIOS like everyone else, in 'real' mode (as opposed to 'protected' mode). Real mode is how the 80x88 CPU used to operate, before they invented the 386 circa 1990. You can start a modern PC with a system floppy disk, without any config.sys or autoexec.bat, and get real mode (using 8088-like 20 bit addresses and 16 bit registers). Without getting too technical: that's how you flash your BIOS. The package for your mobo (w6199vav35.exe - 234KB) contains, within the compressed file package, the flash utility you should use. Supposedly there is a Windows-friendly MSI 'Live Update' utility which you could install & run, but this of course assumes your system is functional... Anyway we're showing you the 'old fashioned' way, which still works fine ;-) So flash that corksucker and let's see if we can get you up & running again... BTW tell me what size was your old HD? I wonder why it quit, anyway (if it used to run OK with your BIOS version.) This may not be your ultimate solution, could still be something funny goin' on, but it should be flashed anyway. We must be methodical. Don't worry, if that mobo isn't totally f*cked we will get it going again!
Since my system is not functional,flashing the bios is not an option.Anyway,I have to admit that I took the system into a repair-shop today.The guy tried a few things which we had also tried,without result of course.They are going to delve deeper after the weekend,but "could be your IDE channel".I sincerely hope not,but we will see.I will keep you posted;in the meantime,many thanks for your input.
You misunderstood me; The Windows-based MSI 'Live Update' utility requires a functional system to update BIOS. A 3.5" BIOS-flashing boot disk does not! You just insert and start PC. You don't require any hard drives installed, nothing but a video board and keyboard (not even a mouse). Very simple stuff I have given you a direct link to your mobo, where instructions on creating the BIOS flashing disk can be found. It clearly states v3.5 "Support HD larger than 65GB" which I felt might be important for you... Let's see if your repair guy figures it out, shall we? Good luck
