A strange thing has happened

[Martyuk39]

I built a system last week with a Barton 2500 and the usual standard things. I gave it to the user and she said the CD doesn't work. It turns out that no device is recognised on the secondary IDE controller. It was fine last week. Typically that mobo doesn't have SATA so it looks like I'm going to have to run hard disk and CD on the primary controller. If the secondary controller has somehow developed a fault, I'll live with both devices on the primary - it's too much trouble to RMA it and get a new one - the whole system only cost £220 of our English pounds. Could it be a software issue? I've got the latest BIOS. And I've reset the BIOS to failsafe defaults, with no joy. Or should I just hit it with a hammer?
Martin

 

[ChineseDemocracyGNR]

It could be a bad cable.

 

[Fern]

Check the 5v molex connector the cd is hooked up to. I had a psu that went bad, took me a while to figure out why a perfectly good,known-working cd wouldn't show up or work. It was a brand new psu too.

Fern

 

[Martyuk39]

Thanks - but perhaps I didn't make myself clear. The CD works in the primary channel. It's not the problem. Both cables work in the primary channel. They're OK. It's the secondary IDE controller that appears not to be working.

 

[Fern]

I'm stuck here witha lappy, my nForce rig is at home sooo, and this may be irrelevant or stupid but does the second IDE controller show up in the device manager?

 

[Martyuk39]

Good question - the system is in the office and I'm at home - I'll check tomorrow. Although I know it does show up in the BIOS, namely it says there's a secondary controller with nothing attached!

 

[Martyuk39]

The secondary controller is indeed seen within Windows XP.

I've tried setting up the hard disk and CD on the primary controller as master and slave but the hard drive (Western Digital 80 GB Caviar 8MB Cache) just does not like it at all. When I first built the system it was coming up with "verifying dmi pool data" which I resolved, courtesy of mechBgon, by removing the jumper from the drive altogether. Once I put it back in, it just stops at that point. Oh and it takes 10 times as long from switching on to get to that point.

So I'm going to take it back, a right pain.