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Help needed - Upgraded to Epox 8rda+ - Won't Post

S

Slick5150

Diamond Member
I decided to upgrade to an Epox 8rda+ motherboard, and also installed new 2x256 mb PC3000 Kingston HyperX Ram. I put the Athlon XP 1700, 2 hard drives, Lite-On CD-RW drive, and Albatron Geforce 4 TI 4200 video card from my previous box in, and powered it up. It runs the RAM check, everything shows up ok, and then things just lock up. I can't get into the bios, and the computer won't get past the "detecting IDE drives" message if i don't try to get into the bios. I don't get any beep codes (just 1 normal beep).

The floppy drive light stayed on when it locked, so I tried booting without the floppy drive, but the same result. I'm really not sure what the problem is here, but would certainly appreciate any help!

Thanks
 
Check the jumpering of your hard drives, for starters, and make sure you didn't forget to plug them into the power supply, too 😀
 
Everything is plugged in, and set up right. I'd assume even if it weren't that I'd be able to get to the bios anyways, wouldn't I?

I'm kind of stumped here. Any ideas?
 
Strip the system down to the essentials to start with. CPU, heatsink, video card, keyboard, one stick of RAM (use plain-vanilla Crucial PC2100 temporarily, if you have some).

Clear the CMOS with the PSU unplugged. Double-check your JCLK jumper to the left of the northbridge (it should have a cap connecting the pins). Unplug any unnecessary case wiring, especially case USB wiring or FireWire wiring.

Now plug in the power supply, start the system and begin hitting the Delete key to get into the BIOS.
 
I cleared the CMOS, the jclck jumper is correct. I unplugged everything except the hard drive/video card/put a stick of PC2100 Crucial in, booted it, it checks the RAM ok (the CPU speed and RAM speed aren't neccessarily right, but that's because they haven't been set in the bios), if I try to get into the bios, it still freezes up at that point. If I don't hit anything, it says "detecting IDE drives..." and freezes.

Does this sound like a motherboard problem? Or perhaps the processor got damaged while moving it to the new motherboard? Any other thoughts? I could certainly use some other thoughts on this one.
 
Hmm.. Ok, unplugged the hard drive (no IDE devices now plugged in), and I was able to get into the bios. What is this telling me now?
 
Next think I would do is set up the system with just your floppy drive and update the BIOS right off the bat. You just need to download the self-extracting file that contains the BIOS, extract it, put the .bin file on a floppy diskette, and reboot the 8RDA+ with the floppy in the drive. Hit ALT + F2 at the POST screen and wait while it automagically updates the BIOS. This suggestion isn't intended to solve your IDE hangup, it's just a good idea.

As for the IDE problem, try a new, boring, flat 80-wire IDE cable, put the hard drive on the end connector (not middle), ensure that the drive is jumpered for Single Drive (if it has such a setting) or else pick Master, and try again. If it won't go, try with the other hard drive.
 
Are you using win2k/xp? If so, they don't like switching motherboards. You would need to reinstall over the top to get it back into windows.
 
Well this is strange. I jumpered both drives for single drive operation, plugged in my Western Digital 60gb drive (my primary drive on my system), and the same freeze happened. So I tried just plugging the Maxtor 40gb drive in, and it was detected, and I could get into the bios. So the problem apparantly has something to do with the first drive. It's jumpered correctly, so I can't think of why it would be causing this to happen.

Any ideas now that we're narrowing this down?

BTW - Thanks very much for the help thus far.
 
What are your drives' jumper settings, and which ones share a cable? With three drives (maxtor, wd and CDRW), two of them will have to share a cable. If you haven't tried already, you might try the Maxtor and WD together on one cable as Master / Slave, and the CDRW on its own cable... but I suspect that's what you tried already.

I also heard thirdhand that some WD drives came out which didn't get along with some motherboards, including nForce2. Check NesuD's post in this thread and consider calling WD tech support at (800) 275-4932 or email them from their support page, if the WD keeps refusing to play nice.
 
They were originally both on cable select (the WD drive being primary master, Maxtor being primary slave), and the CD-RW being the secondary master drive. That setup worked just fine on my old motherboard, so i assumed that it would on the new motherboard. Even when I had the WD drive set as an only drive, and just had it plugged in, it wouldn't work, but when I just had the maxtor plugged in, it worked fine. So it definitely doesn't seem like its setup wrong, but the motherboard definitely doesn't seem like it likes the WD drive being there.

I'll check out that other thread, and see if it may just be some kind of incompatability (which wouldn't make me happy since 99% of the files I need are on that drive).

Thanks again for the help, and any other info would of course be appreciated
 
Sure thing. Cable Select is not generally the right choice, although I know Dell used it quite a lot and other pre-builts might as well. Stick with Master, Slave or Single Drive as applicable, is my advice 😀 Hope it works out for you, I'm liking my 8RDA+ pretty well so far.
 
mech: after reading other forums on problem w/ WD drives and the 8rda+ board, I came across people solving the problem by clipping wires 1&2 on the IDE cable. Seemed like a strange solution, but I tried it, turned the computer back on, and go figure, the drive is detected fine now.

Apparently it's a timing problem with a select few WD drives (which of course I have one of), and clipping those wires gets around it. So, as long as this workaround doesn't cause any other problems, no big deal I guess.

 
That, or you can probably RMA the drive, but seeing as how your data is on it, you'd need to do the advance-RMA thing I suppose. Anyway, glad to hear it's working for the moment! 😀
 
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