Bios did not see HD ??

[ylan]

I was helping a friend to reformat his HD and re-install Win98 SE ( Mobo : Abit BE6-II, 128 Mb RAM,Pentium III 550 Mhz) . The reformatting and re-installation went O.K. When the system rebooted, it went into safe mode and in the starting screen I noticed the bios did not see the HD . When I clicked on "My computer" , I saw all 3 partitions there ( C:, D: and E: ) as before . In addition, the CD-Rom was not listed !

Please advise how to fix these problems . My real concern was why the Bios failed to recognize the HD . Something wrong with the HD ? Thanks,

 

[ylan]

Some additional info: HD is a Western Digital 13 Gigs. Thanks.

 

[torturedmind]

make sure all cables and power plugs are properly seated/inserted (both for hd and cd drives and make sure they're functioning perfectly. also, the ide cable (the flat ribbon cable for your hd) should be inserted in such a way that the red strip is near the hd's power terminal. that red strip should laso corresponds to pin #1 of the terminal on your mobo. you should see a label there on your mobo.

hope this helps. peace!

kilroy
philippines

"If the automobile had followed the same development cycle as the computer, a Rolls-Royce would today cost $100, get one million miles to the gallon, and explode once a year, killing everyone inside."

 

[ylan]

Thanks for the tips which are the first things I checked . So far , installation-wise everything seemed O.K. I would like to mention again that I can access all folders in drives C:, D: and E: . I can now see the CD-ROM drive . Before, I could not see it in Safe Mode and I did know why. I wonder the battery of the CMOS has anything to due with the current issue ( i.e. Bios fails to see the drives ).

 

[ylan]

After a reseach on the Net, I found out that this was normal for a Mobo with 4 IDE connectors , two of which were for Ultra DMA HDs. The Bios shows only HDs connected to standard IDE connectors. The implication here is alarming : you can not install WinXP on a HD connected to an Ultra DMA connector on this particular Mobo ( i.e. Windows sees what the Bios recognize ). One might need to connect the HD to a standard IDE connector to install WinXP ? So this Bios recognition is a non-issue now in my case. Thanks ,

 

[micker377]

By "four IDE connectors", do you mean the standard two IDE sockets that accept a cable with two connectors each, or four actual IDE sockets? If you do have four actual sockets, two of them are for a "raid" setup. Any new mobo can use UDMA IDE hard drives. UDMA is a function of the hard drives themselves. Some mobo's can use the extra ports for IDE drives (my Soyo board did), but most can only use them for raid. What motherboard is this? Do you have the manual for this mobo? If so, look near the back of the manual for info on how to setup for raid. Also, look in the front of the manual for specifications. Look under "ports", and it should tell you about the IDE ports. It might also say whether the ports can be used for normal IDE drives.

 

[ylan]

As mentioned above, this is an old mobo by Abit for Intel chipset 440BX ( in 1999) . It has 4 IDE sockets and can accomodate up to 8 IDE devices ! I actually tried to install WinXP Pro on a HD connected to the Ultra DMA 66 socket . WinXP installation program stopped after inspection . It said it could not see the HD. Thanks for your comments and tips.

Best regards,

 

[micker377]

Sometimes, on a board this old, "auto-detect" for the harddrives doesn't work. In BIOS, set the harddrive parameters according to the printout on the harddrive itself.