Motherboard not recognizing any HDDs....

[ZER0SKAT3R]

(I'm running Windows XP)
I recently purchased a Maxtor Diamond Max 9 Ultra 200gb Hard drive (8mb cache and 7,200 RPM) that came with an ATA/133 pci controller made by promise technology. I decided that i'd try it out because the box says that its faster than most have built into their mother boards. After copying my files to my new HDD i booted it up and i was very dissapointed with the performance. My music would "Stutter" (it would repeat the same song part for a few seconds) when there was Hard Drive activity and same with video files. I've read and also heard that PCI ATA controllers aren't very fast so I tried plugging it into my motherboard but I keep getting this error, "A disk read error occurred -- Press ctrl+alt+del to restart" This error occurs right after you can access your BIOS by pressing f10 and its on a black background with white text. After that, i tried plugging in my old Hard drive into it and i get the same error. It keeps trying to load something on my floppy drive. I've tried changing boot orders but that didn't do me any good. I know that the hard drives work because they will load off of my promise ATA/133 controller but not my mobo anymore. If anyone can please help me out, I'd really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Jon

BTW: My computer specs are...
(compaq built)
1.5 GHZ p4
400 MHZ fsb
40gb seagate and 200gb maxtor
512MB PC 133 SDRAM
GeForce 4 ti4200 64MB
Some type of Intel Mobo

 

[wolluf]

Have you told whole story? Like, to get it to boot from new disk attached to PCI controller, didn't you change the boot sequence in the bios (usually to SCSI for PCI controller)? Will either drive still boot if attached to PCI controller? Have you removed PCI controller from machine when trying to use normal IDE controller?

 

[ZER0SKAT3R]

I never had to change the boot sequence to get it to run off of the PCI controller, I can boot both hard drives from the PCI ATA/133 card but it has very poor performance. I recently tried removing the PCI IDE controller and running my old drive off of it and I had no luck, same error occurred. Since my new hard drive was blank because I exchanged it for another (CompUSA said that many have been returned because they won't work properly)I tried to load windows on it, so I formatted the drive with the disc that came with it and it told me to restart and enter the OS discs. After rebooting, it wont read any discs anymore. It gives me this error at the screen after you can enter the BIOS, "NTLDR Error Occurred -- Press Ctrl+alt+del to restart" or something similar. I don't know what this means but I'm guessing that my IDE 1 port is fried on my motherboard...my IDE 2 controller works fine but 1 doesnt. Hope is clarifys a little more.

Thanks,
Jon

 

[wolluf]

NTLDR is part of NT/2k/XP boot loading - if its getting that far the disk is obviously recognised.

I still don't really understand quite what you've tried - eg, ' I recently tried removing the PCI IDE controller and running my old drive off of it' - does this mean you tried running old drive from the PCI controller or without it?

Compaq machines notoriously don't like being 'played with' - but don't know if that has any relevance here.

Only thing I can suggest is trying each hard drive on its own (ie, NO other IDE devices attached) connected to IDE1 & 2 controllers in turn (jumpered as master of course) & see if any of that works. If it doesn't, I'd suggest your motherboard/IDE controllers are damaged.

 

[ZER0SKAT3R]

I removed the PCI controller and tried running my old hard drive off of the mother board. Sorry for the poor grammer

 

[jlockley]

could mean your boot sequence is wrong or you left some partial dos boot program in a:, but it may mean that it is time for a new board. They eventually do blow, you know.

 

[2KEEN]

The problem might be that the motherboard will not support a harddrive of that size. I would check the manufactures sight of your mother board and see if there is a bios update that supports the use of a bigger drive. I read somewhere that there is a certain limit to how big a harddrive can be depending on the motherboard. But the article also stated that the fix was to use a PCI IDE contoller card instead of using the contollers on the motherboard. I will try to find that article.