what's going on here? (problems w/IDE controler on desktop)

[NTB]

OK, I posted this in the OS forum last night and nobody answered me, so I'll put it here. I'm begining to think it's a hardware problem, anyway...

I went to re-install Windows XP on my desktop (BEBOP in the Rigs link below) the other night, which in and of itself went flawlessly. But after the install, Windows showed FIVE different hard drives in My Computer. There should have only been three, and all three have one partition a piece. Figuring this was a Windows problem, I sat and fiddled with it for a long time, to no avail. So I tried re-installing again, this time with my old version of 2k rather than XP. Different OS, same result. Showed more HDDs than I actually had. Tried switching cables thinking I had a bad one or something, and still got the same result. So, WTF is going on here? My board's not dieing on me, is it? I hope not; this thing is only a few months old...

EDIT: Removed one of the drives; there are now 2 HDDs in there - but My Computer still shows three; one of which gives me an error if I try to double-click on it.

Nate

 

[Pariah]

Boot into DOS and see how many hard drives fdisk detects.

 

[NTB]

Fdisk finds 2 (took the old 15GB HDD out earlier today)

EDIT: Also, the only place the extra drives show up is in My Computer; Device Manager and Disk Management only see the actual drives.

EDIT 2: OK, this thing is doing some really wierd stuff. The two remaining drives are a 40GB and an 80GB. Originally I had the 40 as the boot drive; if I disconnected the 80 (Slave on primary IDE channel) the computer would not detect the 40GB and would not boot. Both drives had to be plugged in.

Switched the drives around, and installed 2k on the 80GB. Installed, booted, and there's the ghost drive. Disconnected the 40 (now the slave), and this time the system WILL still boot. And the ghost drive is there whether the 40 is connected or not. I'm confused

Nate

 

[Rootaah]

Originally posted by: NTB
Fdisk finds 2 (took the old 15GB HDD out earlier today)

EDIT 2: OK, this thing is doing some really wierd stuff. The two remaining drives are a 40GB and an 80GB. Originally I had the 40 as the boot drive; if I disconnected the 80 (Slave on primary IDE channel) the computer would not detect the 40GB and would not boot. Both drives had to be plugged in.

Something wrong there, check the jumpers on the 40GB drive. If you are going to leave it in by itself, there may be TWO jumper settings for master that you need to look at:

SINGLE Drive

Master With Non/ATA Slave

Western Digital and Maxtor drives typically have those settings on the newer stuff. Find a way to isolate where this "ghost" drive is coming from first. Also, if you see the ghost drive, can you select it and attempt a format? Lastly, if you give up and don't care about clean installing, low level the drives using their respective utilities. I've seen that fix screwy problems.

Rootaah

 

[NTB]

Hmm...I thought I'd checked the jumper settings on all the drives, but I'll look again. Anything is worth a shot. I'll look into the utilities for the two drives as well; I have one drive from each company - One WD and one Maxtor.

EDIT: Rootaah - Clicking on / attempting to format the ghost gives me an error message: "[drive letter] is not accessible; the parameter is incorrect."

Nate

 

[NTB]

OK, now I'm getting somewhere - I checked the jumpers on the 40GB (WD) and they were set incorrectly. There is a different setting for Master w/ slave and Master Single. Changed that around, booted up, and the Ghost disappeared. Next step, I guess, is to change the jumper back to Master w/ slave and LLF the 80GB drive; see what that gets me. I'll be back.

Nate

 

[drewis]

Hmm... Make sure you have your latest chipset drivers for your IDE interface (i.e. via 4n1's, intel storage driver). Also, make sure you have enabled both IDE channels in your device manager. When I was fixing a friends computer, he had troubles installing and running XP, gave me an invalid parameter message. It was because he hooked the slave drive up to the last IDE connector on the ribbon, and he had his jumpers wrong. When I fixed it, the installation and detection went flawlessly. I know this is a simple mistake but, who knows.

 

[NTB]

I think the 80GB may be dieing on me . I'm sitting here trying to format it, and I can hear it click at roughly 1-second intervals as it works. Sounds almost like my A: drive grinding around.

I tried to run Maxtor's PowerMax software, but it did not detect any HDDs, period. Since they were all NTFS formatted, this doesn't really surprise me; that's why I'm trying to split up and Format the 80 in FAT32.

EDIT: That is my A: drive grinding away. HDD's not doing anything

EDIT 2: Don't know why it did that. Anyway, I re-booted, then split the 80 into 3 logical drives and formatted them. The ghost has disappeared; all drives showing up in My Computer are now useable. I'm still going to try and run the Maxblast software though.

Nate

 

[Rootaah]

Originally posted by: NTB

EDIT 2: Don't know why it did that. Anyway, I re-booted, then split the 80 into 3 logical drives and formatted them. The ghost has disappeared; all drives showing up in My Computer are now useable. I'm still going to try and run the Maxblast software though.

Nate

If the drives are coming up and you have formatted them ok, I'd hold off on the MaxBlast. If you low level it now, you'll lose all of those partitions.

 

[NTB]

That's what I'm doing, Rootah. The 80 seems to be working now, and the ghost has disappeared. The drives are set up now as they were originally; the 80 is the slave and the 40 is my boot drive. After it decided to work again; I went through and cleared 2k off in favor of installing XP, which is what I wanted to do in the first place - Have an LCD monitor and I like to use XP's Cleartype. Everything is formatted and partitioned now, and XP is up and running. I'd still like to know what was going on for the last few days though.

Nate