System does not recognize hdd at all

[skarface06]

I took out a 6 gig hdd from my first comp and placed my 40 gig hdd from my second comp into it. But the system at first told me hard disk was not detected and to check the connection. The 40 gig hdd works fine because I placed it back into my second comp...and it still works fine. But my first comp does not recognize it. My CD-ROM which is on the secondary IDE as a master does not even read my WinXP disk so that I can reformat the drive. Nothing works!! Ive tried placing the hdd and CD-ROM both on the primary and also tried running only the hdd w/o the CD-ROM. Ive tried replacing IDE cables. Still nothing. If anyone has any good suggestions, it would be very much appreciated.

 

[m1ckG]

Firstly what mainboard are you using in first computer, its possible that board is too old to recognise a 40gb drive. You could try updating the BIOS. Try using 6 Gb drive in first computer to test to see if that will read the Windows XP disk.

Good Luck

 

[wpfaff]

Have you went into the bios setup and checked if the drive is recognized. I have had to reset the harddrive parameters to auto on some boards and on others I had to go to the User option and input the new drives cylinder, sectors and heads before the system would recognize the harddrive.

 

[skarface06]

Thanks for all your inputs. I think that you are right,
the motherboard/bios does not support the drive for it is old. Can someone tell me how to go about updating the bios?

Thanks again.

 

[wyqyd]

Flashing the bios will only work if the update caters for it. Asus is very vague (perhaps a language barrier??) regarding the problem and are very Microsoftesque regarding system problems..ie, have you flashed the bios??? I have a similar problem, resolved by the purchase of a new motherboard. See my thread....maybe someone can help. I really like my sp97v....

AWARD also seems reluctant to support legacy boards and pre-XP stuff.

Anybody out there have alternate suggestions?

regards,

Mark

 

[wpfaff]

There are 3 ways you may be able to go with.

1) Get an adapter card which contains its own bios. Maxter has an ultra ATA/133 PCI adapter card. Its made by Promise Technolgies. I have used this in Pentium 120mhz and higher.
You will have to go into your bios setup and show that HDD's are not installed. When you boot up the bios in the adapter will take over for the hard drives.

2) Go to the computer manufacturers website and see if a bios upgrade is available. Also

http://www.mrbios.com

offers upgrades.

3) Change your motherboard.

Hope this helps

 

[tbirdkid]

Hmmmmmmmm With MicroShit stating that Win XP was designed based on the P-4 instruction set, why would you even want to go beyond the Win 9x series?
Just a thought!!