Im going nuts here...

[MartyMcFly3]

Alright, I am building my 2nd computer and it is giving me MANY MANY headaches.

Before, the computer detected both the Hard Drive on the primary IDE channel and the 2 CD-ROMs on the Secondary IDE channel. I have other problems past that involving the installation of XP, but at least it made it that far.

Now for some reason it just stalls on "Detecting IDE drives". I unplugged the Secondary IDE channel and lo and behold it got past it. The jumper settings are correct on the CD-ROMs as well. For the life of me I cant figure it out.

System Specs
Antec Solution SLK2650-BQE Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply
BIOSTAR M7NCG 400 Socket A (Socket 462) NVIDIA nForce2 IGP Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD Mobile Athlon XP-M 2200+ (35W) Barton 266MHz FSB Socket A Processor Model AXMD2200FJQ4C
2 sticks of mushkin SP3200 512MB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) Unbuffered System Memory Model 991093
Western Digital Caviar SE WD800JB 80GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive
SONY Black IDE CD Burner Model CRX230EE/B2
TOSHIBA Black IDE CD Burner Model SR-M8102 BLK

 

[stevty2889]

What jumper setting do you have on the western digital drive? They have been known to cause some strange issues. If it's a single drive it has a seperatate setting for master, or master with slave. Make sure it's on the single master setting. Have you tried with each CD-rom drive seperatly on the second IDE channel, or tried another cable?

 

[MartyMcFly3]

Originally posted by: stevty2889
What jumper setting do you have on the western digital drive? They have been known to cause some strange issues. If it's a single drive it has a seperatate setting for master, or master with slave. Make sure it's on the single master setting. Have you tried with each CD-rom drive seperatly on the second IDE channel, or tried another cable?

Ive tried on both. After checking out the hard drive again I see currently that....

THE JUMPER IS MISSING!!!! Time to do a little searching Must not have secured it last time I changed it.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

Found the Jumper. Hooked everything back up and it detects nothing now.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

Tried just plugging in the Hard Drive... Hangs up on Detecting IDE Drives

 

[DaiShan]

Ok, for a fresh install of windows, you want to have as few peripherals as possible hooked up. First, you will put your HDD on its own IDE channel as primary master without slave, then you will put your CD ROM on the secondary IDE as primary master. Do not use cable select. Also, you should not have your NIC, or sound card in while installing windows. If you have having problems with everything installed, the best bet is to narrow it down piece by piece. Let us know when you have done that (and hopefully installed xp successfully on the HDD) Also, check the cable for kinks/nicks, if at all possible try a known good, or brand new IDE cable and make sure that both ends of the cable are secured.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

The only thing I have hooked up at the moment is just the hard drive. I have no additional peripherals plugged in (This computer is for my Aunt so she doesnt need a video card or anything special). I cant get past Detecting IDE Drives. Tried multiple IDE cables. No luck.

 

[DaiShan]

Hmm, try this: make a windows boot floppy, boot from that, then type:

cd c:

cd d:

Alternatively, you can run fdisk to see if it can see your HDD. You will need to put fdisk on the floppy for this to work. If you can cd to c and d, then try creating a fat32 partition on the hard drive and see if that works.

 

[MartyMcFly3]

How do I do that if I cant get past the POST?

 

[MartyMcFly3]

?