BIOS, IDE and MBR...correlation?

[Shagg]

I recently installed a new Athlon xp 1900 chip with a biostar M7VKD mobo with a drive already containing a copy of win98se. This hard drive had been installed on another system with an athlon thunderbird 1.2 ghz and an Abit motherboard. I have the hard drive connected to IDE 1 set as master. I'm having a problem having IDE 2 recognize 2 cd roms. One is a creative dvd and the other is a sony cdrw.

My question is, Is there something on the hard drives main boot record that might conflict with the BIOS during POST?

Would I need to reformat the hard drive and install fresh copy of windows so that the BIOS will recognize the cd roms connected to IDE2? Strange thing is that when I connect the cd roms to IDE1, the bios will recognize. This is the second MOBO I have exchanged since I thought the problem was with the mobo.
I have tried all 1 million combinations and even been to the VIA forums for help.
any help will be greatly appreciated.

shagg

 

[Shagg]

Please help..someone.

 

[raxrax]

Hi,

It's not quite clear from your post exactly what you're seeing. Do you mean the CDRW and DVD (or one of them at least) don't appear on the list of drives that comes up a few seconds after you switch on, ie well before Windows boots - well I'll assume that's what you mean.

In that case, I think the most likely problem is some kind of conflict between the CDRW and the DVD when they're on the same IDE channel. Have you tried attaching one of them to IDE 1 along with your hard disk? Were they both recognised then (and if so, did they work)? Actually, looking at your post again, it seems you may have tried something like this already - but it's not clear if you attached one or both CD/DVD drives to IDE 1.

Forgive me if this sounds really obvious, but did you try changing the master/slave jumpers on the CDRW and DVD, and perhaps switching their positions on the IDE cable. I suspect you did...

From my limited experience, if you're seeing this problem before Windows starts booting, I doubt the hard drive is a factor. I think it's very unlikely that the MBR could conflict with the BIOS and prevent the CD/DVDs from working right.

However, IF both CD/DVD drives show up in the BIOS, BUT ARE NOT in Windows 'My Computer', then I guess that could be because the Windows IDE driver is suitable for the old ABIT motherboard, but doesn't work so well on your M7VKD. A solution to this is to 1) go to WIndows Device Manager and change the IDE/ATA controller driver to 'Standard PCI IDE controller', 2) delete all other references to CD/DVD/IDE drives or controllers in the Windows Device Manager, then restart - it might ask to load new drivers from the Windows CD-ROM then. Please DON'T try this unless you think it's necessary though, as its a fairly drastic step, and could possibly make things worse - it's part of the standard procedure for moving a disk+os from one mobo to another, so you can find better descriptions on the web.

By the way, if you're worried about that a CD/DVD on the same cable as a hard disk will slow the hard disk down a lot, AFAIK this isn't a problem any more with modern drives/motherboards. Guess you could always try benchmarking with and without the CD or DVD sharing IDE 1.

Markc

 

[Shagg]

Thanks Raxrax

Yes, I did try the jumper settings and switching the position in the cable. You are right about the hard drive and cdrom. When they are both hooked up to ide1, the BIOS then recognizes the hard drive and then the cd rom.
In Device manager, both IDE's show up, as well as the VIA bus master controller. Someone wrote that even if the cd roms dont show up on IDE2 during bootup, in "my computer", or in Device Manager, that that's ok. That I should then install the latest VIA 4in1 drivers and that would solve the problem. Is that true?

thanks