Hard drive issue... Help please!!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tulnio
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Tulnio

I have a Celeron 1.3 GHz with 512 RAM and no hard drive I am working on
for a friend. Put in a new SeaGate 80 Gig Hard drive and the trouble
began. Booted the machine with WinXP cd and partitioned and formatted
the drive. Windows coppied files to the drive and rebooted. Then the
system doesn't recognize the drive and can't finish the installation of
Windows. ERD commander shows that the files are on C:, but system won't
boot off of the drive.

Any ideas?

Tulnio
 
Youre jumper pins on the hd are set properly,since xp failed to install,try
moving the drive to another IDE connection,you could/can set with cdrom,
just change jumpers set hd as master,or set it solo.Also make sure the
hd is set as second in priority,cdrom 1st,in the BIOS.Try again
 
When you installed the drive did you install it as the master drive on the
IDE cable??
Did you connect it to the right IDE connection....#1??
Did you adjust the pins on the back of the drive to show it as master??
Did it show up in the BIOS??
Is the Bios set so that drive is in the boot order??
peterk
 
Ok, here is an update

Swapped primary and secondary cables at the motherboard and get the
same thing. Boot sequence is hd-0, cd-rom, hd-2, and it skips the hard
drive and goes straight to the cd-rom.

NOW, Primary master is cd-rom, slave is LS-120. Secondary master is the
80 gig, no slave. Doesn't work.

Pulled the jumper making it a slave, got the same thing.

Jumpered it for cable select and tried both master and slave positions
on the cable and same thing.

It is just really strange that Windows got it's files on it, but won't
boot from it to finish the install.
 
Yes, everything is connected corectly. The drive shows up in BIOS,
where it is supposed to be, (when I move the drive, it moves in the
BIOS). It just doesn't want to let Windows finish the installation.
Copied the files, but won't boot from it so it can finish the install.

Tulnio
 
Then its time to go back to square one
Reboot with the XP CD in the drive and do a reinstallation
You said you Partitioned the drive ..try to install into the same partition
first...formatting during the process.
If that doesn't work try a different partition.
peterk
 
The computer boots off of the CD for the first part of the install process.
For all subsequent parts of the install, the computer must boot off of the
hard drive, but you must have the Windows XP CD in the CD tray for the
install program to access. It is up to YOU to make this happen on "your"
computer. It may not occur automatically.

Many/most new computer will ask you during booting, if you have a bootable
CD installed, if you want to boot from the CD. The information may instruct
you to press the "space" bar, or any other key to make this happen. With
some of the newer computer you are "protected?" from viewing this very
confusing (being facetious here) information by being shown a splash screen
from the computer manufacturer. This splash screen can usually be turned off
in the bios (good riddance).

When the first part of the install has completed, and the computer reboots,
DO NOT initiate the "boot from CD" sequence again. Allow the computer to
boot normally to continue with the installation.

If you have an older PC, you may have to initially go into the computer's
bios and manually set the boot sequence to boot from the CD first, with the
hard drive as a second boot device. This will allow the computer to start
the install process. If this is the case, after the first part of the
install has completed, you must again go into the bios and re-adjust the
boot sequence so that the hard drive becomes the first boot device and the
CD becomes the second device.

After that, the install will continue.


--
Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User

Quote from: George Ankner
"If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!"
 
Tulnio said:
Yes, everything is connected corectly. The drive shows up in BIOS,
where it is supposed to be, (when I move the drive, it moves in the
BIOS). It just doesn't want to let Windows finish the installation.
Copied the files, but won't boot from it so it can finish the install.
Click to expand...


One item to check and this one gets overlooked at times.
In the bios configuration setup, is the bios anti-virus
disabled? When enabled, it blocks writing to the boot
sector and the symptoms support this possibility.
 
Ok, here is where we are now.

Just the hard drive and the cd-rom installed. Took care of the BIOS
settings for the boot sequence.(hd-0, cd-rom, floppy) Windows cd in the
drive, starts the installation, upon reboot, still not completing the
install. Put the drive in another machine and I can see the files that
setup wrote to the drive. But it won't boot from it, and goes straight
to the cd-rom. I went through all of the BIOS settings and made sure
that everything was set properly. At this point I am thinking that I
have another hardware issue with this thing. Maybe a controller problem
or something like that?

Any insight?

Tulnio
 
I get the same problem with now TWO brand new hard drives. When I take
the drive out of the machine it works perfectly in another machine.

Another thing, when I put the drive in the machine I am now working on
and format it, when I put it in the other machine it tells me that the
drive is not formatted. (just tried this this morning.)

Now what?

Tulnio
 
Tulnio said:
I get the same problem with now TWO brand new hard drives. When I take
the drive out of the machine it works perfectly in another machine.

Another thing, when I put the drive in the machine I am now working on
and format it, when I put it in the other machine it tells me that the
drive is not formatted. (just tried this this morning.)

Now what?

Tulnio
Click to expand...

Then you know the issue is with your motherboard and not the drives.

Malke
 
The new question is this, is it possible I missed a BIOS setting or
something?

S.M.A.R.T.
UDMA

Some other silly thing like that?

Would really hate to replace a good motherboard over an oversight.

The system woked, was put into storage for a year, and now this.

I did make something like progress, I finally at least got a BSOD but
there wasn't a error code on it.

Tulnio
 
Tulnio said:
The new question is this, is it possible I missed a BIOS setting or
something?

S.M.A.R.T.
UDMA

Some other silly thing like that?

Would really hate to replace a good motherboard over an oversight.

The system woked, was put into storage for a year, and now this.

I did make something like progress, I finally at least got a BSOD but
there wasn't a error code on it.

Tulnio
Click to expand...

It's very simple really. If several hard drives don't work on a
motherboard and work perfectly on another motherboard... This isn't an
issue of BIOS settings but of the physical viability of the connectors
on the motherboard. I assume you did the most basic testing first of
swapping out the ribbon cables for known-working ones, making sure you
are using proper 80-wire ones and not old 40-wire ones.

However, naturally I can't see or test your motherboard from here. Take
the machine to a professional computer repair shop (not your local
equivalent of BigStoreUSA) and have them test it for you. There is no
shame in getting a hands-on second opinion.

Malke
 
Tulnio said:
I have a Celeron 1.3 GHz with 512 RAM and no hard drive I am working on
for a friend. Put in a new SeaGate 80 Gig Hard drive and the trouble
began. Booted the machine with WinXP cd and partitioned and formatted
the drive. Windows coppied files to the drive and rebooted. Then the
system doesn't recognize the drive and can't finish the installation of
Windows. ERD commander shows that the files are on C:, but system won't
boot off of the drive.

Any ideas?

Tulnio
Click to expand...

Is the partition set as "active"? I've seen a few where that somehow fails
to happen.
 
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