Dell 8400 BIOS won't detect 2 IDE devices, does in Windows

[jorwex]

Topic says it all. There's a SATA drive with the OS on it, and a storage IDE harddrive as well as a DVD drive. No matter the cable, the BIOS will detect only the middle device on the cable (with cable select, or master, or slave). Once in windows xp, the drives work.

It doesn't totally affect too much cuz the IDE drive is just a storage one, but it's annoying.

Thanks!

 

[robisbell]

in the bios, make sure all ports are set to AUTO. also, check the motherboard capacitors, had one thrown out that just needed 2 caps to get the IDE/SATA working again.

 

[jorwex]

I just checked all of the caps. They look good. The dumb dell bios has the SATA Operation mode set to SATA/PATA Combination. Any other suggestions?

 

[jorwex]

actually. 5 of them are tented. crap.

1000uF, 10V

 

[jorwex]

thanks

 

[robisbell]

you desolder and put new ones on, thing will run smooth as silk, check out the local tv repair shop or online, they'll have them, actually after I replaced the bad ones that machine performed above system spec, with a plain 2Ghz cpu, the caps are easy to get and easy to replace, if you are good with a soldering gun.