NO DRIVES DETECTED, installing WINXP

  • Thread starter Thread starter Andrew Bestfrenn
  • Start date Start date
Without thinking
relic said:
Unbelievable. You are the stupidest person I've encountered on
usenet.
Click to expand...

WOW! That's quite a statement! Especially considering the nitwits in the
public froups.
 
relic said:
Unbelievable. You are the stupidest person I've encountered on
usenet.
Click to expand...

Richard Urban = Crusty Old Bastard. Look at some of Urban's previous posts
and you'll see that he's a whole lot stupider than you think.

http://tinyurl.com/24whp

(Note that he is a microsoft.public poster too :-(*) )
 
relic said:
What else did you do? /Just/ installing a new HDD won't cause your problem
unless you didn't get the IDE Cable back on correctly.
Click to expand...
--------
thankyou for all who are trying to help:

what initially caused the problem was that
I tried to install winxp from a cd in drive D.
I got a warning suggesting I use smartdrive.exe
but tried to install without it. I got all sorts
of messages saying 'file not copied exactly' etc.
eventually the system froze and I had to reboot
with WINXP partially installed , and voila: no
drives could be detected.

Now I have an even bigger problem. I was in the bios
trying different settings.
It is a Fujitsu MPC3102A hard drive
I tried setting the bios to:

user type: HDD
Translation method: manual
cylinders: 16383
head: 16
sector: 63
multisector transfers: maximum
smart monitoring: enabled
PIO mode: 4
Ultra DMA mode: 2

I saved the new settings and rebooted
this time it booted up and said 'primary master fail'
while listing primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave etc.
as: none

It seemed to be at least detecting the hard drive or trying to.
From there I tried a program called Device Manager
It said 'cannot detect hard disk' so I exited.
I kept trying to get either Device Manager or the BIOS
to detect the hard drive.
NOW, I have somehow reset the bios so that I cannot get even get
into the IDE settings. When I bootup from A drive, I press delete to
enter setup, but now hen I enter setup, it no longer takes
me straight to the boot menu, but to the main menu instead. From the
bios
setup main menu, I go to the boot menu, and IDE hard drive is listed
as
'none' . When I try to change the IDE hard drive setting from
'none' (and get back to the IDE parameter settings) , I cannot get in.
I get two thoroughly demoralizing
options, either 'none' or 'disabled' Now what do I do?
 
Andrew said:
--------
thankyou for all who are trying to help:

what initially caused the problem was that
I tried to install winxp from a cd in drive D.
I got a warning suggesting I use smartdrive.exe
but tried to install without it. I got all sorts
of messages saying 'file not copied exactly' etc.
eventually the system froze and I had to reboot
with WINXP partially installed , and voila: no
drives could be detected.

Now I have an even bigger problem. I was in the bios
trying different settings.
It is a Fujitsu MPC3102A hard drive
I tried setting the bios to:

user type: HDD
Translation method: manual
cylinders: 16383
head: 16
sector: 63
multisector transfers: maximum
smart monitoring: enabled
PIO mode: 4
Ultra DMA mode: 2

I saved the new settings and rebooted
this time it booted up and said 'primary master fail'
while listing primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave etc.
as: none

It seemed to be at least detecting the hard drive or trying to.
From there I tried a program called Device Manager
It said 'cannot detect hard disk' so I exited.
I kept trying to get either Device Manager or the BIOS
to detect the hard drive.
NOW, I have somehow reset the bios so that I cannot get even get
into the IDE settings. When I bootup from A drive, I press delete to
enter setup, but now hen I enter setup, it no longer takes
me straight to the boot menu, but to the main menu instead. From the
bios
setup main menu, I go to the boot menu, and IDE hard drive is listed
as
'none' . When I try to change the IDE hard drive setting from
'none' (and get back to the IDE parameter settings) , I cannot get in.
I get two thoroughly demoralizing
options, either 'none' or 'disabled' Now what do I do?
Click to expand...
 
Andrew said:
thankyou for all who are trying to help:

what initially caused the problem was that
I tried to install winxp from a cd in drive D.
I got a warning suggesting I use smartdrive.exe
but tried to install without it. I got all sorts
of messages saying 'file not copied exactly' etc.
eventually the system froze and I had to reboot
with WINXP partially installed , and voila: no
drives could be detected.

Now I have an even bigger problem. I was in the bios
trying different settings.
It is a Fujitsu MPC3102A hard drive
I tried setting the bios to:

user type: HDD
Translation method: manual
cylinders: 16383
head: 16
sector: 63
multisector transfers: maximum
smart monitoring: enabled
PIO mode: 4
Ultra DMA mode: 2

I saved the new settings and rebooted
this time it booted up and said 'primary master fail'
while listing primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave etc.
as: none

It seemed to be at least detecting the hard drive or trying to.
From there I tried a program called Device Manager
It said 'cannot detect hard disk' so I exited.
I kept trying to get either Device Manager or the BIOS
to detect the hard drive.
NOW, I have somehow reset the bios so that I cannot get even get
into the IDE settings. When I bootup from A drive, I press delete to
enter setup, but now hen I enter setup, it no longer takes
me straight to the boot menu, but to the main menu instead. From the
bios
setup main menu, I go to the boot menu, and IDE hard drive is listed
as
'none' . When I try to change the IDE hard drive setting from
'none' (and get back to the IDE parameter settings) , I cannot get in.
I get two thoroughly demoralizing
options, either 'none' or 'disabled' Now what do I do?
Click to expand...

You won't be able to select a boot device that isn't seen first.

1. If you set the IDE Devices to Auto, do they detect anything?
2. What make/model is your Motherboard?
3. Where did you get the XP CD? It sounds like a copy of a KaZaA download,
not a Microsoft Windows XP CD.
 
Trollslayer@thecave said:
Without thinking


WOW! That's quite a statement! Especially considering the nitwits in
the public froups.
Click to expand...

Seems he *is* a microsoft.public froup poster. I'll have to change that from
"the stupidest" to "one of the stupidest" I guess.
 
Without thinking
relic said:
Seems he *is* a microsoft.public froup poster. I'll have to change
that from "the stupidest" to "one of the stupidest" I guess.
Click to expand...

It's like swimming in a sea of stupidity in there...seeing the stupidest is
impossible. LMAO
 
If the BIOS cannot see the drive, you're not going to get anywhere!!

Is there a BIOS limitation preventing you from seeing the drive? The A7V133
is an "older" mobo.

You need to answer Relic's questions about your config.
 
I am installing a new hard drive onto a system
w/ asus A7V133 motherboard .
Trying to format it and install winxp.
I have made a boot disk that includes smartdrive.exe

When it is booting up
it says: detecting primary master (press F4 to skip)
detecting secondary master (press F4 to skip)

etc. and then lists all drives as not there
ie: primary master: none
etc.

It then is able to boot to the DOS prompt
but that is as far as I can go. Cannot get to the
D: prompt, because it has not detected drive D (cd ROM)
none of the commands work
A:>FORMAT does not work
FORMAT/ u does not work
FORMAT / s does not work
FDISK does not work
please help
how do I get it to detect my hard drive etc.
on bootup? I think it is a bios setting of
some kind.
Click to expand...

If I have translated this correctly - we are talking about a 10 Gb
Fujitsu hard disk here folks, albeit slightly older vintage than the
ones that have long gone to the scrapheap. This may be the real
problem!

Andy.
 
relic said:
----------
You won't be able to select a boot device that isn't seen first.

1. If you set the IDE Devices to Auto, do they detect anything?
2. What make/model is your Motherboard?
3. Where did you get the XP CD? It sounds like a copy of a KaZaA download,
not a Microsoft Windows XP CD.
Click to expand...
--------
1. no, it was initially set to autodetect for the IDE hard drive,
and though it did not detect the IDE drive, at least it allowed
me several options other than 'auto' when I clicked on it. (user
type, etc.) Now that I have switched it from 'auto' to 'none' ,
when I click on 'none', to change it, it only gives me one other
option: 'disabled', so therefore I can't switch it back to autodetect
or even get in to manually set the parameters.
2. the motherboard is an asus a7V133
3. the xp cd is a download

thankyou for your help and interest
 
Richard Urban said:
If the drive isn't detected, why do you think you can format that which
isn't there? Check your cables. Check your bios settings. Check everything
considered hardware.
Click to expand...
-----------------
thankyou for your interest.
It cannot possibly be the data cable, because I tried a second one
from
a working computer. It cannot be the power cable, because I tried the
power feed from the CD Rom, which was working initially,
For some reason the bios is not detecting the IDE drive, whether I set
it
to autodetect or if I set it to user type hdd and input the
parameters.
Now I am really stuck because in desperation I set the bios IDE
setting
from 'auto' to 'none', and I cannot get back in to switch it .
It is shutting me out with only the two options 'none' or 'disabled'
to choose from. I cannot switch it back to autodetect or anything else
because
those options are no longer available. Any help with this would be
tremendous.

Andrew.
 
It may be time to consider a new hard drive. BTW, 2 years ago my 2 sons and
I all had Asus A7v133 M/B's. It's not the board, unless it is defective in
some way

--
Regards:

Richard Urban

aka Crusty (-: Old B@stard :-)
 
Andrew said:
--------
1. no, it was initially set to autodetect for the IDE hard drive,
and though it did not detect the IDE drive, at least it allowed
me several options other than 'auto' when I clicked on it. (user
type, etc.) Now that I have switched it from 'auto' to 'none' ,
when I click on 'none', to change it, it only gives me one other
option: 'disabled', so therefore I can't switch it back to autodetect
or even get in to manually set the parameters.
2. the motherboard is an asus a7V133
3. the xp cd is a download

thankyou for your help and interest
Click to expand...


It sounds like you're mixing up screens. If you don't have your motherboard
manual, you can download one here:
http://www.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socka/kt133a/a7v133/a7v133-105.pdf

The 'Auto', 'None', 'Disabled' choices you're talking about should be on the
"BOOT" menu. You're not going to be able to do anything there until the disk
is detected. Note that every BIOS menu has a Reset Defaults option (F5), do
that!

In the BIOS, select the "MAIN" menu (page 54 in the manual) and set the four
IDE channels to Auto like shown in the picture. If you highlight each and hit
Enter, you should see a sub-menu like shown on page 55. With it set to Auto
at the top, it should fill out the drive statistics beneath. If it does not,
there is no drive detected. If you start with the Primary Master, it should
see your disk assuming that's where you installed it (that's where it /should/
be installed). You can check the other three positions to see if your hard
disk is detected on any of them. While you're doing that, is your CD being
detected?

If it is detected somewhere else, I'd move it (and its master/slave jumper) so
it is the Primary Master.
If it isn't detected anywhere, either the disk is bad (you need a new one),
the motherboard is bad (ditto), or the cabling to the drive is not installed
correctly.

I'd check the cabling and jumpers:
The IDE Cable is made with 3 plugs like this "|_______|___|" The 1st plug (at
the end of the long piece from the middle plug) goes to the motherboard. Most
are keyed on the edge, but not all; pin 1 is on the end with the colored wire
on the edge of the cable... pin 1 on the motherboard is marked where you can
see it, pin 1 on the drive end (last plug) is towards the Power Plug.

On the drive will be a sticker or some labling of where to place a jumper over
pins to set Master or Slave (some drives also have a Cable Select setting).
Make sure the disk is jumpered to be the Master. If it still doesn't get
detected, try it connected as Secondary Master to see if it could just be a
problem with the Primary IDE Channel.

You're not going to be able to begin installing anything until a Disk is
detected in BIOS. Cables, Jumpers, BIOS Settings all have to be right, then
if it doesn't work, Bad Disk, Bad Cable (but you can easily try another one),
Bad Motherboard.
 
JohnR said:
Bob Harris wrote:
|| then it is
|| neither partitioned nor formated, so of course DOS won't see it.

DOS can still see it. What else would fdisk and format be for?
Click to expand...

true... DOS will see the drive, but will not assign a drive letter
until after FDisk is run.
 
relic said:
Uh... /READ/ the last two posts so you can see how silly you look to us.
Click to expand...

actually, you both are correct, but Richard's wording is slightly off
some.

The OP has said that the drives were not detected by the BIOS, so of
course DOS will not be able to see the drives, formatted or not.

and yes... on a system where the BIOS detects the drives, then DOS can
see them, even if they haven't been FDisk'd or formatted. They just
don't have a drive letter until after the FDisk program has been run
 
Daniel said:
actually, you both are correct, but Richard's wording is slightly off
some.
Click to expand...

Actually not. I said that his answer had nothing to do with _why_ JohnR said
what he did. It didn't. His post 'corrected' JohnR's post wrongly. Urban
kept harping on what the OP had said, blithely unaware of the meaning
(apparently) of the two posts he replied to. If he felt the need to comment
to the OP, he should have done that instead of replying to whom he did.
....but what else would you expect from a microsoft.public.windowsxp.xxxx
poster.
 
JohnR said:
Andrew Bestfrenn wrote:
Click to expand...

ew hard drive onto a system
|| w/ asus A7V133 motherboard .
|| Trying to format it and install winxp.
|| I have made a boot disk that includes smartdrive.exe
||
|| When it is booting up
|| it says: detecting primary master (press F4 to skip)
|| detecting secondary master (press F4 to skip)
||
|| etc. and then lists all drives as not there
|| ie: primary master: none
|| etc.
||
|| It then is able to boot to the DOS prompt
|| but that is as far as I can go. Cannot get to the
|| D: prompt, because it has not detected drive D (cd ROM)
|| none of the commands work
|| A:>FORMAT does not work
|| FORMAT/ u does not work
|| FORMAT / s does not work
|| FDISK does not work
|| please help
|| how do I get it to detect my hard drive etc.
|| on bootup? I think it is a bios setting of
|| some kind.

Get into the BIOS. Be sure it is set to autodetect rather than to use user
settings. If the option exists in your BIOS, have it detect the drives right
away.
If you don't know how to do this, post specs on your motherboard and/or
system brand and model.
Click to expand...
======
thankyou for your response

Here are the specs of the system
AMD Duron 750 megahertz cpu.
motherboard:
Socket A for AMD®: Athlon®: / Duron®::550MHz ~ 1.3GHz+ CPU
Chipset VIA®:KT133A and VIA®: V82C686B
FSB 266/200MHz
Memory 3 x DIMM Socket to Support Max. 1.5GB PC133/VC133 non-ECC SDRAM
Expansion Slots 1 x AGP Pro / AGP 4X
4 x PCI
1 x PCI/AMR Shared
VGA AGP Pro/4X Slot
IDE Ports 4 x UltraDMA/100 (PromiseR ATA-100)
Audio (Optional) AC ' 97 Compliant Codec
IDE RAID (Optional) Promise®: IDE RAID Controller to Support RAID 0 or
1
Special Features Power Loss Recovery, ASUS®: JumperFree?, CPU
Throttle, STR (Suspend-to-RAM), SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)

Back Panel I/O Ports 2 x USB Ports
1 x Parallel Port (EPP, ECP), 2 x Serial Ports
1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port, 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port
1 x Game/MIDI (Optional)
1 x Audio I/O (Optional)
Onboard I/O Interface One Header Supports Additional 2 USB Ports
20-pin ASUS®: Panel
SIR (Integrated Serial Infrared)
Headphone
MIC
CD/AUX/Modem Audio In
CPU/Power Supply/Chassis Fan
ATX Power
IDE LED

BIOS 2Mbit Award®: BIOS, PnP, ACPI, SMBIOS 2.3, Trend®: ChipAway Virus
(TCAV), Green, Boot Block BIOS

Industrial Standard PCI v2.2 and USB v1.1
Manageability WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL, WOR, Chassis Intrusion, SMBus

the cables are not the problem, as I have tested them on another
system.
they are properly connected, etc.
Here is what has happened. the system boots, without detecting the
drive.
Went into the bios to see the settings.
The bios was already set on autodetect, but it was not detecting the
IDE.
I tried switching from auto to user type hdd and inputting the
parameters.
I tried setting the bios to:

user type: HDD
Translation method: manual
cylinders: 16383
head: 16
sector: 63
multisector transfers: maximum
smart monitoring: enabled
PIO mode: 4
Ultra DMA mode: 2

I saved the new settings and rebooted
this time it booted up and said 'primary master fail'
while listing primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave etc.
as: none

It seemed to be at least detecting the hard drive or trying to.
From there I tried a program called Device Manager
It said 'cannot detect hard disk' so I exited.
I kept trying to get either Device Manager or the BIOS
to detect the hard drive.
NOW, I have somehow reset the bios so that I cannot get even get
into the IDE settings. When I bootup from A drive, I press delete to
enter setup, but now hen I enter setup, it no longer takes
me straight to the boot menu, but to the main menu instead. From the
bios
setup main menu, I go to the boot menu, and IDE hard drive is listed
as
'none' . When I try to change the IDE hard drive setting from
'none' (and get back to the IDE parameter settings) , I cannot get in.
I get two thoroughly demoralizing options, either 'none' or 'disabled'



(What initially caused the problem was that
I tried to install winxp from a cd in drive D.
I got a warning suggesting I use smartdrive.exe
but tried to install without it. I got all sorts
of messages saying 'file not copied exactly' etc.
eventually the system froze and I had to reboot
with WINXP partially installed , and voila: no
drives could be detected.)

Now I have an even bigger problem. I was in the bios
trying different settings and in desperation switched
the IDE setting to 'none' and now cannot even switch it back.
It is a Fujitsu MPC3102A hard drive that I am trying to install.
 
JohnR said:
Andrew Bestfrenn wrote:
Click to expand...

ew hard drive onto a system
|| w/ asus A7V133 motherboard .
|| Trying to format it and install winxp.
|| I have made a boot disk that includes smartdrive.exe
||
|| When it is booting up
|| it says: detecting primary master (press F4 to skip)
|| detecting secondary master (press F4 to skip)
||
|| etc. and then lists all drives as not there
|| ie: primary master: none
|| etc.
||
|| It then is able to boot to the DOS prompt
|| but that is as far as I can go. Cannot get to the
|| D: prompt, because it has not detected drive D (cd ROM)
|| none of the commands work
|| A:>FORMAT does not work
|| FORMAT/ u does not work
|| FORMAT / s does not work
|| FDISK does not work
|| please help
|| how do I get it to detect my hard drive etc.
|| on bootup? I think it is a bios setting of
|| some kind.

Get into the BIOS. Be sure it is set to autodetect rather than to use user
settings. If the option exists in your BIOS, have it detect the drives right
away.
If you don't know how to do this, post specs on your motherboard and/or
system brand and model.
Click to expand...
======
thankyou for your response

Here are the specs of the system
AMD Duron 750 megahertz cpu.
motherboard:
Socket A for AMD®: Athlon®: / Duron®::550MHz ~ 1.3GHz+ CPU
Chipset VIA®:KT133A and VIA®: V82C686B
FSB 266/200MHz
Memory 3 x DIMM Socket to Support Max. 1.5GB PC133/VC133 non-ECC SDRAM
Expansion Slots 1 x AGP Pro / AGP 4X
4 x PCI
1 x PCI/AMR Shared
VGA AGP Pro/4X Slot
IDE Ports 4 x UltraDMA/100 (PromiseR ATA-100)
Audio (Optional) AC ' 97 Compliant Codec
IDE RAID (Optional) Promise®: IDE RAID Controller to Support RAID 0 or
1
Special Features Power Loss Recovery, ASUS®: JumperFree?, CPU
Throttle, STR (Suspend-to-RAM), SFS (Stepless Frequency Selection)

Back Panel I/O Ports 2 x USB Ports
1 x Parallel Port (EPP, ECP), 2 x Serial Ports
1 x PS/2 Keyboard Port, 1 x PS/2 Mouse Port
1 x Game/MIDI (Optional)
1 x Audio I/O (Optional)
Onboard I/O Interface One Header Supports Additional 2 USB Ports
20-pin ASUS®: Panel
SIR (Integrated Serial Infrared)
Headphone
MIC
CD/AUX/Modem Audio In
CPU/Power Supply/Chassis Fan
ATX Power
IDE LED

BIOS 2Mbit Award®: BIOS, PnP, ACPI, SMBIOS 2.3, Trend®: ChipAway Virus
(TCAV), Green, Boot Block BIOS

Industrial Standard PCI v2.2 and USB v1.1
Manageability WfM 2.0, DMI 2.0, WOL, WOR, Chassis Intrusion, SMBus

the cables are not the problem, as I have tested them on another
system.
they are properly connected, etc.
Here is what has happened. the system boots, without detecting the
drive.
Went into the bios to see the settings.
The bios was already set on autodetect, but it was not detecting the
IDE.
I tried switching from auto to user type hdd and inputting the
parameters.
I tried setting the bios to:

user type: HDD
Translation method: manual
cylinders: 16383
head: 16
sector: 63
multisector transfers: maximum
smart monitoring: enabled
PIO mode: 4
Ultra DMA mode: 2

I saved the new settings and rebooted
this time it booted up and said 'primary master fail'
while listing primary slave, secondary master, secondary slave etc.
as: none

It seemed to be at least detecting the hard drive or trying to.
From there I tried a program called Device Manager
It said 'cannot detect hard disk' so I exited.
I kept trying to get either Device Manager or the BIOS
to detect the hard drive.
NOW, I have somehow reset the bios so that I cannot get even get
into the IDE settings. When I bootup from A drive, I press delete to
enter setup, but now hen I enter setup, it no longer takes
me straight to the boot menu, but to the main menu instead. From the
bios
setup main menu, I go to the boot menu, and IDE hard drive is listed
as
'none' . When I try to change the IDE hard drive setting from
'none' (and get back to the IDE parameter settings) , I cannot get in.
I get two thoroughly demoralizing options, either 'none' or 'disabled'



(What initially caused the problem was that
I tried to install winxp from a cd in drive D.
I got a warning suggesting I use smartdrive.exe
but tried to install without it. I got all sorts
of messages saying 'file not copied exactly' etc.
eventually the system froze and I had to reboot
with WINXP partially installed , and voila: no
drives could be detected.)

Now I have an even bigger problem. I was in the bios
trying different settings and in desperation switched
the IDE setting to 'none' and now cannot even switch it back.
It is a Fujitsu MPC3102A hard drive that I am trying to install.
 
Back
Top