BIOS on Controller Sees Hard Drive, But Windows cannot

[multipleintell]

I am having trouble installing a ATA Controller Card on a 1999 machine with a new 40 GB WD hard drive. When I install the HD without the ATA Controller, I get 19 little mini partitions. I obviously need the Controller card.

The BIOS on the Controller card is seeing the hard drive, but I think I have the wrong boot sequence or something, because when I try to install windows, I get a message that I don't have a hard drive.

What can I do?

 

[comboy]

Hi
This may sound silly but have you checked to see if the ide cable is working and that any jumper settings on the Mboard are set correctly?

 

[multipleintell]

I am certain that the IDE Cable is in good shape! I have the drive, which is the only drive in the machine, jumpered as master. I've even tried to jumper it different ways. I jumpered it as standard and the other jumper setting for master.

 

[multipleintell]

Wait, you meant jumpers on the motherboard? How do I do this?

 

[garlanj]

Have you run fdisk and formatted the drive before trying to install Windows?

 

[multipleintell]

I used the utility that comes with the drive to "write zeros" to the drive and then I used that same utility to "install" the drive.

 

[multipleintell]

When I "installed" the hard drive and partitioned it with the WD Utility program, I got the following message:

"This drive is attached to a Plug & Play controller, but the BIOS is not properly controlling the drive. You may continue to set up the drive, but you must connect the drive to a different controller or correct the BIOS problem before the drive can be accessed."

I believe it is a simple BIOS setting change rather than a problem with the controller. The controller recognizes the drive, allowed me to format and partition the drive, and the BIOS on the controller is showing at startup. It recognizes my other drives (floppy and cd-rom). I doubt that would occur if the motherboard PCI slot was bum or if the MoBo wasn't accepting the card all together.

 

[G0AOZ]

I'd make a few points here...

(1) Your add-in card may have it's own on-board BIOS which will detect the disk.

(2) Your main mobo BIOS may need to be set to boot from either "SCSI" or "OTHER DEVICE", rather than the conventional "IDE0" "IDE1" etc.

(3) Depending upon which version of Windows you're installing, you may need to insert the driver disk for this card before you can proceed with the installation of the operating system, i.e. <F6> after post etc...


ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[edfair]

All IDE devices on this controller? All IDE devices on M/B disabled?

Ed Fair
Any advice I give is my best judgement based on my interpretation of the facts you supply. Help increase my knowledge by providing some feedback, good or bad, on any advice I have given.

 

[multipleintell]

I had to enable Plug & Play in the BIOS to allow the card to see the hard drive. It works and I am smiling again!