What are the signs of a faulty Secondary IDE channel?

[amdguy]

The bios of the MSI K8N Ne0 Would detect the CD-ROM but when i boot into windows, WINXP won't see it..

and I also cannot boot from the WInXP CD even thou my setting in the bios for boot sequence is correct. I changed cables and CDROM and the same problem persist...

is my IDE Channel toast?

 

[Abhi]

If you havent already, you might want to try and delete the IDE Channel from the device manager in XP. Reboot.

 

[eklass]

also you can play with which devices are on what channel as see if you can isolate the problem to a channel/cable/device

 

[Scott66]

Try to autodetect your drives to really see if your BIOS detects the CDROM or if it is just remembering the configuration from before. Many BIOS let you turn off your detect sequence so your boots will be faster

 

[Zepper]

Try an 80-wire cable and switch to Cable Select instead of Master/Slave.
.bh.

 

[bacillus]

are there any exclaimation marks or error messages in device manager?

 

[Lonyo]

Have you tried the drive as slave on the same channel? (Stick it on the other part of the cable and see if it works).
I seemed to have a half dead IDE channel once, drives would only work as slave on that particular channel, master seemed dead, (with different drives and cables).

 

[Yanagi]

basicly to sum it up what the other have said.

First try it on your primary IDE channel. Make sure your HDD is master and the CD-ROM is slave. if it works grnd. you know its not the CD.

Try setting it to master and remove all HDDs/opticals from the secondary IDE channel and see if BIOS detects it. If its found in BIOS the problem is most likely to lie in windows. You could then try to reinstall your IDE drivers by just removing it and let windows detect them again