PC Problem ---------- I'm trying to build a new PC, but I'm having a problem with getting it to boot up properly. It's taking way too long, and won't boot from the HDD. Please see below for the screens I see when booting up. Following that I have posted a list of all the components. Any help would be HUGELY appreciated. Things to check, helpful sites/forums, what the "no 80 conductor cable" message is about? I have the HDD set to master and on IDE1. The cd drive also set to master on IDE2. Initially it would only detect my processor as a XP1733, but I changed the clock speed to 166 and it now shows as XP3000 I installed XP on it (since it will only boot from a CD) However, once I take the CD out, I can't get it to boot from the HDD Something is not right, and, to be honest, I am lost. Please someone save me! :-( Thanks in advance. SCREENS WHEN TURNING THE PC ON: ------------------------------------------------ Pheonix Amd BIOS v6.00P6 VIT1216 BF Grand XP3000+ Memory Test 524288k Memory clock DDR400 Detecting IDE drives (this takes about 20 or more seconds. too long??) Primary Master WDC WD-1200JB-OOEVA0 15.05R15 Primary Slave None Secondary Master ATAPI COMBO52XMAX VER 1.00 Secondary Slave None Secondary IDE channel no 80 conductor cable installed (You then have choices to press DEL to go into CMOS, F9 to selct boot device etc) Then it waits for about 30 seconds and goes to the following screen: ----------------------------------------------- VIA Technology Inc. VIA Serial ATA RAID BIOS Scan devices Serial-Ch0 Master : No Device Serial-Ch1 Master : No Device Then it goes to the following screen: Hardware monitor.... (info about CPU temp etc) Verifying DMI Pool Data .......... Update Success Boot from CD: and then it just hangs...... System components: -------------------- CASE-T3005300W - TASK 300W PEARL-WHITE CASE FRONT USB MB-B-M7VITGRAND - KT600, 2xATA133, 2xSATA, 2xSATA RAID, 8xAGP, 5PCI, 6 CHNL SND, ATX, 2xDIMM DDR400, 8xUSB2.0 (4xOnBoard), 10/100 LAN & Nortons Ghost, and Nortons Internet Security (Inc's Antivirus, Personal Firewall & Others 512MB PC400 - 512MB DDR 400 PC3200 WD1200JB - 120GB 7200rpm 8Mb Cache UATA100 FDD-MSU144FDD - Mitsumi 1.44 FDD DVD-MCOMBO-W - Mitsubishi Combo Drive VGA-RD9600XT - Power Color Radeon 9600 XT 128MB DDR 8xAGP TV DVI - VGCPR96TC3 SP-3D602S - JUSTER 1000W SILVER SPEAKERS XP 3000+B - AMD ATHLON XP 3000+ Socket A Boxed 333 Mhz
It just means your harddrive is limited to ATA33 rather than what I would suspect would be ATA100 or ATA133. Get a new IDE cable. Sounds like a mobo problem already..... What's the boot order? Is IDE0 set as one of the boot items? Thoughts of messed up mobo....... Again... thoughts of messed up mobo.... (try the new IDE cable first tho) OK this is cracked.....your secondary channel doesnt require an 80 pin cable and nor does it benifit from one ... I have heard of mobos that require 80 pin cables on both primary and secondary but I didnt think they actually implemented that requirement! Worth checking.. IDE cables are cheap/free. And you are absolutely positive nothing is wrong with the installtion?
Ahhh... I give up No. I'm not positive it's setup correctly. But it seems reasonable enough.... I fixed the "no 80 cable conductor" problem. I had the cable the wrong way around. I had to plug the blue end into the motherboard IDE2 slot and the black end into the cd drive. But it was a bit of a red herring since it made no difference (appart from not getting the error anymore) I cleared the cmos, removed anything non-essential, removed and refit the video card, removed and refit the 512 Mb ram stick, disconnected non-essentials such as front USB wiring etc etc. It just takes too damn long to detect the IDE devices. Thats the first noticable thing. From there on things don't get any better. Eventually it will try to boot from the cd drive, but we're talking about a 2 minute wait while it produced the 3 pages of info I posted initially. I'm starting to think it's the motherboard... but I'm learning I don't know bugger all about PCs I think I'm going to just take it somewhere and pay someone to figure it out Which sucks as I was building it for a friend and will probably end up footing the cost myself.
I think it is the motherboard as well -- dont bother getting someone to check it out -- try and get it replaced; shouldnt be too hard to convince someone it's on crack
All it ended up being was that I had the harddrive set to Master, but it wanted to be set to CS (Cable select). Changed it this morning, and now it's running like a dream. wooohoooooo!
I belive that when you have only one hard drive on ide 1, it should be set as cable select(cls). only when it's two drives in the same ide cable that one should be set master and the other to slave.
Powerply, I am not sure that the hard drive will work properly in CS mode, unless you have it connected to a CS cable. Some others who frequent this forum will know, for sure.
Dont think ive ever heard of that (or a CS cable for that matter). Nor this ... CS mode is just there for people who dont want to mess up their Master/Slave settings (i.e., have two devices wanting to be master)
lol Praetor. I meant with the jumper set to cable select, and for whatever reason, I do think that there is a CS cable. I will have to do a little searching, because I swear that I saw it somewhere. But, it could be the age factor. I found something about it: Parallel-ATA cable type: a 40-pin, 80-conductor UltraATA 66/100 cable is required for current model (UDMA 4 and higher) Deskstar Parallel-ATA drives. Cable varieties: There are flat "ribbon" cables like the one shown above and narrower, rounded cables. There is a trade-off with using round cables. Round cables will increase airflow, however signal "cross-talk" can manifest in round cables with poor shielding, since the conductors are tightly wound. Note: Older ATA drives used a 40-pin cable -- an inexpensive ATA cable with 40 wires. These older cables are still available, but we don't recommend using them with our newer drives for performance and compatibility reasons. Newer UltraATA 66/100 cables have a ground in between each line for better resistance to noise -- less noise, means better reliability and performance. Connecting the drive using cable select: Cable select is an alternative method to having separate jumper settings for master and slave. System manufacturers often provide drives configured to use cable select, and cable select is the standard configuration for many systems. With cable select, the jumper settings are the same on both drives (set to cable select) and the position on the cable determines whether a drive is master or slave. First, make sure both devices are jumpered to the "cable select" position, then connect the ATA "ribbon" cable as either master or slave, as shown above. Although the standard 80-conductor UltraATA cable shown above will work with cable select, some system manufacturers supply special cables specifically designed to be used with cable select that do not have the standard black, gray, and blue connectors (e.g., the connectors are all black). Some of these cables have distinguishing holes in the the connectors to indicate placement, rather than using the typical black, gray, blue color scheme. If you are using a cable that looks different than what's shown above, follow the manufacturer's recommendations. (Hint: Typically, with these cables, the middle connector is always slave and the end connector furthest away from the center connector attaches to the controller card or motherboard, while the end connector closest to the center connector is "master.") The URL where I got this is http://www.hitachigst.com/hdd/support/cabling/deskstar.htm _ _X_X_X_X_X_[small]Bruce Wallace Vietnam Vet - 1970 - 1971 3.06 Ghz Intel P4 CPU Asus P4C800-E Deluxe Motherboard 1Gig Corsair 3200 LLPro DDR Ram Plextor PX 708A DVD Burner Sony CRX320E DVD 16x + CD-RW 52x24x52 Combo ATI Radeon 9700 Pro Video Card Audigy2 Platinum[/small]
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think the cables mentioned there are physically different from the standard 80 conductor cables (other than the color of the connectors). It's been a couple of years since I taught A+ certification classes, so I may be remembering this wrong, but the standard connectors are also designed to have the slave on the middle connector and the master on the close end for CS to work properly (or at least to guarantee that it works).
I am sure that you are right, Vurbal. I did not delve into it any farther, the first time that I saw it. I still set my drives to master or slave, and not CS. Just force of habit from doing it so many times over the years.
Yeah, that's how I always did it until I ran into a situation where the drives on a PC didn't work until I used CS. Now I usually try CS first and use Master/Slave as my fallback position. Edit: There are also still cases where newer equipment has to use Master instead of CS. My firewire drive enclosure won't recognize a drive if it's not set to Master. _X_X_X_X_X_[small]In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move. Backup A DVD With DVD Rebuilder & CCE Basic: http://www.afterdawn.com/guides/archive/dvd_rebuilder_tutorial.cfm[/small]
