Problem with new 180gb hard drive has me stumped!

[DaiShan]

Ok guys, I added a wd 180 gb hard drive to my system, and when it is connected it will not load windows, it just hangs, when I try to re-install windows when it goes to "loading windows 2000 setup" it hangs. No problems when it isn't connected. My system is as follows

OS Windows 2000 advanced server (although I have tried professional, and regular server as well to no avail)
Motherboard : Epox 8kha+
CPU: Tbird 1.4ghz
Ram: 512 Crucial (2X256)
Video card: Geforce 4 Ti-4200 128mb
Sound card: Hercules Game Theater XP
Hard drive controllers: Promise tx2 ata 100 card that came with the 180gb, and an Adaptec 29160
Hard drives: 80gb IDE as primary master on the onboard controller 180gb as secondary master (I have tried it on the controller card as well, same problem) 18.1gb quantum atlas 10kIII U160(boot drive)
Optical drives: 52x cd-rom primary master on the controller, 32x cd-rw secondary master on the controller
PSU: Antec true blue 480watt, 50 cfm fans in the hard drive bay, and one in the front of the case, with two antec 80mm's in the rear exhaust

I have tried all combinations of jumpers, as I assumed at first that was the problem, I have set it to master with no slave (single) master with slave (put a slave on there) and tried the alternate jumper settings in the WD trouble shooting guide on the instruction manual. The drive was formatted with an ntfs partition and set to active with the WD software, no problems at all untill I hook up the drive, with it unhooked, system runs fine. Any ideas? This one has me stumped, I would like to have the 180 in there, but don't know what to do.

 

[beethree]

Hi,
It looks like we have the same problem, but mine is with a WD 120 G.
What I'm trying right now is pre-formatting the hard drive before the OS install. I've been able to get to the formatting point with Win 2000 boot discs ( www.bootdisk.com )
Also, I was able to load Linux 8 with no problem. If you have Linux, you might wany to test this to see if your drive will load any OS.

 

[sunkim50]

I think some motherboard have trouble dealing with hard drives over 120 GB. Make sure you have the latest bios from Epox for your mobo.

Maybe that will help the situation

 

[beethree]

Formatting the Hard Drive did the trick, I'm installing XP pro with no problems now.
Hope this works for you.

 

[DaiShan]

Thanks for the replies, to clarify, the 180gb is solely for extra storage, as my SCSI drive is my boot drive, the 180gb is formatted using NTFS, my motherboard recognizes it as a 180gb hard drive, the controller card that came with it recognized it as 167gb. I will try the latest bios. Thanks again.

 

[idea]

Try swapping ide ribbons, one crapped out on me once. Also I'd like to mention I've owned 2 maxtor ata133's for about 2 weeks each before they burnt out during a power outtage (why are they so sensitive to abrupt power outtages??). After I got done rma'ing the first, the second one was toast before I even had the time to enjoy it.

 

[DaiShan]

Yeah, I actually switched to rounded IDE cables from svc afteer I had the problem at first, also on your system, do you use a good surge protector? Maybe it was something else killing them?

 

[DaiShan]

No go on the bios, I have the latest bios for the motherboard, and the card, I'm thinking my SCSI and the ata controller card aren't playing nice, esp since I have SCSI set to boot device.

 

[redbeard1]

Would this be of some help?

Microsoft 48 bit support

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: redbeard1
Would this be of some help?

Microsoft 48 bit support

thanks redbeard1 !!

 

[DaiShan]

Thanks for the link, however on my last clean install (about an hour ago) after I install and get things set up, then do the first reboot after setting admin password and local settings etc, it says invalid system disk insert system disk and press any key, when I have the cd in the drive however the message I get is could not load 2000 because hard drive path could not be found.

 

[DaiShan]

Ok, I enabled 48 LBA support as per the Knowledgebase article's instructions, however one quirk I noticed while adding the value data for the registry key: in the instructions it says to add value data 0x1, however you cannot enter 0x1 via keyboard commands, I copied and pasted it in, but the key only reads 0 for value data. Needless to say it did not work. The exact error I get on boot is "Windows 2000 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt <windows 2000 root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe. Please re-install a copy of the above file. When I unplug the 180gb drive I don't get the error. Another problem I am having is, the machine will not boot if there is not a bootable cd in the cd-rom drive attached to the ATA controller card, it says insert bootable disk and will not go any further, with the disk in the drive there are no problems. I am going to try formatting the drive into two ~90gb drives to bypass the 48bit addressing issue, and see if that helps, as for the other problem, anyone think it might be the computer using the ATA card before the SCSI card for boot? I have to look up the PCI slot numberings for this board, maybe (long shot) if the SCSI card is in an earlier numbered slot (like 1) than the ATA (like 4) it will attempt to boot from SCSI first, I dunno, I don't really need the extra storage, but I hate not being able to fix a problem!

/edit the 86gb partitions did not work, oh well thanks for the help all.

 

[Kartajan]

possibilities:
is there a bios/ Firmware update for the ATA CONTROLLER CARD?
if yes, install that & try again
if no, take it out and use the ATA controller on the motherboard and see if that does anything

if yes didn't work, take it out and use the motherboards ATA controller- see if that does anything.

BTW: with the system in whatever state allows you to operate the machine, I would slipstream SP3 into your 2k install. This will remove the need for the previously listed registry modification... How to slipstream 2k, and still be able to boot from the CD.

 

[qquizz]

I have also seen posts where people using master/slave jumper configuration have had problems. When they used cable select, the problem went away. Sorry, I cant provide any links or more details to that issue.