Cant detect devices on IDE2

[bujin]

Hi

I just bought an ABIT KT7A motherboard this morning and, while everything else seems to work fine, it refuses to detect any device attatched to IDE2. I've tried connecting my DVD Drive and second Hard drive to it, using different cables, but the BIOS doesn't detect anything and neither does Windows.

As far as I can tell, the BIOS options seem fine.

I have been back to the place I bought it from and replaced it, but the new motherboard is doing exactly the same thing. Both the HD and DVD drives work off IDE1.

Has anybody got any ideas what the problem might be?

Thanks

 

[JohnS9051]

Make sure you have the Bus Master IDE controller installed from the motherboard's CD and that both channels are enabled in Device Manager.

Hope this helps. Good luck.

John

 

[Guest_imported]

Not sure what BIOS it's got but... Do you have an IDE AUTO DETECTION option? If yes, then presumably actioning this with a hard disk attached to the Primary IDE i/face brings up the parameters for that drive. If this drive is moved to the Secondary IDE i/face, then are you saying it fails to find this drive? How many IDE i/face connections do you have on the mobo - two or four? If four, then two of them will be marked something like ATA100, and you will probably need to install a driver to use these.

ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[paparazi]

Quickest way to correct your bios setup would be to clear your CMOS which will take the bios settings back to default, this will enable both IDE channels and correct your detection problem. Martin

 

[osuman]

When i first built my computer I had exactly the same problem. If your problem is the same as mine was, then it's not an issue with Windows, as the BIOS itself doesn't recognize the drive on IDE2. Therefore, windows won't find it either. I couldn't figure it out and thought the board was bad. When I took it back in however, the dudes kept it for a few days and "changed some bios settings," since the board wasn't at fault. Unfortunately, I never bothered to ask them what it was. Now I wish I had. Anyone know what's up with this, as I'd like to know also? The thing with mine was that I thought I kept track of what I changed in the BIOS very well, and couldn't have screwed it up enough to cause it not to recognize an IDE channel. So I'd like to know if they come this way or what.

Is it an Award BIOS? Cause my board is an Abit KA7-100.

 

[tlcscousin]

http://www.viahardware.com/faq/kt7/kt7faq.htm

By default only the primary master disk is detected by the BIOS. To detect the other IDE disks go to the Standard CMOS Settings in the BIOS and hit Enter against entries for the primary slave, secondary master or secondary slave disks. This will select AUTO and your devices will now be seen. Don't worry if the CDROM device appears to remain as NONE - Windows will still find it
(An excerpt from the link above.)

 

[bujin]

Thanks for all of your replies.

JohnS9051: I've installed the driver software off the disk but I still get the problem.

G0AOZ: It's just the plain KT7A without the RAID option, so it's only got the two IDE ports. I run two HDDs off IDE1 and a DVD drive off IDE2 normally. I've so far tried two different cables and tried both the CD drive and second HDD on IDE2 but it's not being detected at all, even if I go through the BIOS and try auto-detecting it.

paparazi: I've tried resetting the CMOS (I had to do this a number of times because I tried setting the bus speed to 133MHz (*7.5 for my 1GHz processor) but it wouldn't boot up, so I had to drop it to 100MHz *10 to get it working. Clearing the CMOS was the only way I knew of to get it back.

osuman: yes, it has an Award BIOS on the KT7A mobo. I've looked through all of the options several times to see if I can find anything that might stop it from working, but everything looks fine. There are options to disable one or both of the IDE controllers but they're both enabled. If you work out what the problem was, I'd be very interested to know!

Shovel204: thanks for the link - it may be useful! I'm not sure that is going to help my problem though, because it seemed to detect both of my HDDs on IDE1 first time. But on my other computer, it always labels Secondary Master as CD ROM drive or similar, but I get "None" now. And I still don't get anything in Windows.

Thanks again for your responses. If anybody has any more ideas, I'd be extremely grateful for the assistance!

 

[Guest_imported]

Ok Bujin, you've mentioned that you've tried the SLAVE HDD on the secondary IDE i/face, but how about trying BOTH HDDs on this i/face. You know they work fine as a pair on IDE1 so try them as a pair on IDE2, and see if the BIOS's AUTODETECT will find the pair of 'em. Are both the ribbon cables you're using the same type? I.e. 40-wire or 80-wire? And, silly question here, presumbly all ribbon cable ends are keyed so there is no way they could be connected the wrong way round or one pin out all the way along...

With the DVD on IDE2, once the machine has booted up to either the command prompt or into Windows, can you open the DVD drive tray by pressing the eject button?

Incidentally, if the BIOS report screen doesn't show a drive on the IDE2 i/face, then there is no way that Windows will find it...

ROGER - GØAOZ.

 

[tlcscousin]

It would not be something simple like both jumpered as master?
I have seen behaviour like this when this has been done.

 

[bujin]

I noticed last night that my CD drive was set up as a slave on IDE2, so I changed it to master. Guess what. Still no response!

Both of the ribbon cables are the 80-wire cables, and they've got the missing pin blocked off so there's no way I could connect it the wrong way around. The drive tray does open, so there's definitely power to it. Come to think of it, when I tried the second HDD on it, I don't think I changed it to master, but given that it's refusing to detect the DVD drive, I'm not too optimistic about getting a response from the HDD!

I found the Abit forums and I've posted a message there too. In desperation, I looked through all 49 pages of the forum for the KT7 series of motherboards, and I found 9 other posts with VERY similar problems. I've emailed technical support - both the UK one and the head office, so now it's just a waiting game to see if they respond.

 

[jade1001]

Bujin,

I had this very same problem with a friend's computer. For some reason, upgrading to Windows 2000 fixed it. I'm not sure why because everything I tweaked in BIOS should have fixed it.

The solution was given to me by a friend running the same specs that had a similar problem and he posted his problem. Someone wrote him back and said something in reference to the boards IDE controller, the driver Windows assigns it, and how Windows manages that resource. He was told to upgrade to either Windows 2000 or ME.

My friend who isn't very PC literate didn't like Windows ME cause it froze up all the time. I tried downgrading to 98 SE. But I ran into this problem. So now she runs Windows 2000 and the problem went away on its own and never came back. This was a year ago.

I don't know if this is helpful at all but I thought I might share it.

jade>:O>

 

[bujin]

Thanks Jade.

I'm already running Windows Me on the computer. The drive isn't being detected at all by the BIOS - I've tried it with both a DVD drive AND my other HDD and I'm not getting any response from it at all.

I've got the motherboard boxed up again. I'm taking it into college tomorrow night for my A+ course to see if they can sort anything out, but if not, I'm going to send it back.

 

[Guest_imported]

ihad this problemm too, i playewd around and something fixed it, either installing hte via driversfrom the CD orloading the bios failsafe defaults

 

[Guest_imported]

make sure your jumper setting for the secondary slave is on slave and not on cable select.
I had this very problem and this was the solution that worked.

 

[Guest_imported]

I'm having a similar problem...i have to two single-ide channel cards hooked up...two hardrives (together they equal less than a gig of space)hooked up to one channel and am attempting to hook up a cdrom to the other...the reasonbeing that I have a copy of Linux BO on cd and would like to install it on an older computer as a terminal/firewall for my other computer...anyone ever do this or am I a fish just floundering around? Thanks for any help in advance... >=)