BIOS hanging after installing new hard drive

[heavyfeather]

Hi
I have recently upgraded a 10GB hard drive in my old computer to a brand new 200GB. After installing the new drive, the BIOS hangs for around 4 minutes on the same screen and then loads the operating system. I dont think the drive is faulty because it works fine in windows and as a slave on my other computer. The computer was originally purchased in late 2001.

 

[electronicsfreak]

Check all jumpers to ensure they are right as this sounds like a bad setup with jumpers. If you need to manually enter the drive information in the bios. Let us know if this helps.

 

[heavyfeather]

The jumper on the hard drive is on Master and is plugged in to the Master plug on the IDE channel. The old 10gb drive worked fine with the jumper on the same setting. Could it be that i need a bios update, but I cant see how - the computer isnt THAT old.
Thanks

 

[electronicsfreak]

If im reading this right you have both hard drives set as master. The main hard drive should be set to master and the secondary hard drive be set to jumper. Either that or set both to cable select but I reccomend the first way and a bios update would probally be good if they have one and doesnt matter how new or old the board is bios updates come out still lol.

 

[electronicsfreak]

I mean set to slave not jumper. Jumpers on the brain I swear

 

[heavyfeather]

For the purpose of the process of elimination, I disconnected the 10GB drive so at the moment i just have the one master drive. Jumper is set to master and I can boot to windows, I just have to wait a while (around 5 mins)

 

[electronicsfreak]

If its still taking that long id go into bios and manually setup the information and see if that speeds things up any. Also how old/new are these cables your using?

 

[heavyfeather]

Ive tried changing just about every possible setting in the bios and still it takes a long time to boot. The cables are as old as the computer, but I tried putting my 10GB back in as master and it works fine.

 

[heavyfeather]

Just as an extra note, the bios reads te maximum capacity of the drive as 131071 MB. Windows reads it as the correct amount. Could this be the cause of the problem?
I heard something about large disk support on older motherboards, is that related to this problem?

 

[dglienna]

Sounds like you haven't set them up correctly in BIOS. Most screens have an AUTO select option. When you hit ENTER on the AUTO field, the drive type is selected. Do this for each IDE connector, and see if anything changes.

-David
2006 Microsoft Valueable Professional (MVP)
2006 Dell Certified System Professional (CSP)

 

[edfair]

You haven't said anything about the IDE cables other than they are old. You might want to try 80 conductor cable. They have grounded conductors between the signal lines to cut down on noise (spurious voltage levels generated from crosstalk between wires). And if you do go with 80 conductor cable you might want to try cable select with the new drive on the end position and the old drive in the middle and the blue connector on the M/B. If you stay at master/slave on the 80 conductor the master needs to be on the end as the slave identifier is cut between the slave and master positions.


Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[jurgen36]

Also maybe your Bios does not correctly identify the new large drive, older mainboards usually can not use very large drives. Maybe a bios upgrade can fix it. Good luck


Jurgen

 

[mainegeek]

heavyfeather,
You also haven't mentioned as to what version of Windows you are running. This could be the problem with the drive limitation as well as the bios. You say it boots to Windows with the 10gig removed. Are you saying that the 200gig has an OS on it or are you booting from a CD or is there a third hard drive as well? How are your CD-Rom drives configured in this mix? What OS and version did you use to partition and format the 200gig drive with?

 

[cdogg]

Points to consider:

1) First and foremost, how was Windows installed on the new hard drive? If you didn't copy the partition from the old drive, then you should have performed a "clean" install of Windows.

2) Older motherboards/BIOS's are limited to 28-bit for the IDE controller. This means an upper limit of 137GB. Sometimes, a BIOS update will help, but not always. In those cases, you have to use a PCI IDE controller to get around the 137GB barrier. Also, the version of Windows you're using must support 48-bit LBA.

This site has more information:

http://www.48bitlba.com

3) As edfair mentioned, you should double-check that you're using an 80-wire conductor IDE cable. The older 40-wire cables only support speeds up to 33MB/sec which is the outdated ATA/33 interface. Just so you're aware, both the 40 and 80 wire cables have the same number of pins (40). The connectors look the same.

4) Check in your BIOS settings to make sure there isn't a setting for DMA or PIO. Everything for the hard drive should be set to AUTO. In Windows XP, you can go into Device Manager and select properties for the IDE controller -> Primary IDE channel (the one your hard drive is using). On the Advanced Settings tab, make sure "DMA if Available" is selected, and it should tell you the current mode that it's using.


I know this sounds like a lot to throw you're way - it is. If you post back with your motherboard's make/model, we can help further. If you're not sure, use a free utility like Everest Home Edition to find out the specs of your system.

~cdogg
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." - Albert Einstein
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