Hard drive not recognized.

Check to make sure the Boot Order is set correctly, if that fails (and you have a backup" then run "FDISK" and reload.
If that fails take 2 shots of whiskey, smoke half a joint and recite 3x over:
There's no place like home............

Boot order is HDD first. I can't run FDISK or anything else because the HDD isn't being recognized. If it were, I'd just wipe it if I had problems, all important files were backed up before installation. this seems to be a common problem with this board, unfortunately, I can't find a solution to it anywhere on the net.

I will work on your problem some more, in between power naps.

Is this a SATA drive? If so you'll probably need to hit F6 during the Windows setup and install the drivers from a floppy.

The MSI SATA drivers usually come on the utility disk. You'll need another computer to get them. IIRC, you can also get them from the MSI website. Just make sure you save them to a floppy.

The drive is a Segate Barracuda Ultra ATA/100 hard drive.

Oops. My bad.

Not recognized.. what are the error messages?

You're using your old drive which has drivers and configuration for your old PC. Do a fresh install of your OS.

Could it be that the jumper on the back of the HD is not set correctly?

He said he tried that.... this isn't even a long thread. People are lazy 8O

There are no error messages present, it's not saying anything. When the Slave/Master lines appear at boot-up, it recognizes nothing on the IDE connection. I've entered the BIOS several times looking for and trying to auto detect the hard drive. It simply won't do it.

I hit F1 to continue all it did was cycle a little farther then reset itself.

Make sure none of your RAID functions (specifically for the JMicron JMB361 controller) are enabled in the BIOS. Then go back and see if it will auto-detect the HDD in the BIOS. You might want to try auto-detecting on all channels as well.

It was not long ago when booting up using SATA was a "kludge".
Now because Intel wants to scrap IDE, booting a hard drive using IDE is becoming the new "kludge".

From the HardwareZone MSI P965 review 7/21/06:
http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/view.php?cid=6&id=1987&pg=2
"The P965 Neo comes with a secondary JMicron SATA/IDE controller (JMB361) that provides the board with an extra SATA and IDE channel each.
The JMB361 is also compliant with AHCI standards and supports NCQ.
Because the ICH8 has no advanced performance features and coupled with the fact that Intel chose to remove IDE
support altogether, it is not surprising to find that MSI favors the JMicron controller as primary storage.
Of course, if you do intend to use the JMB361 with your main OS HDD, remember to get ready an AHCI driver disk for Windows installation."

If your system will POST, then you should get a message that it is waiting for something to boot from...
If so, then change your boot sequence in BIOS to your optical drive as 1st, HDD second, and see if you can boot up using a CD.

The owners manual for this board leads me to believe that the BIOS should recognize your IDE hard drive with no problems. Does it recognize an optical drive? Try to isolate the problem to:
A) JMicron controller
B) HDD

It won't recognize anything on the IDE connection. On initial start-up, I made sure IDE Primary Master/Slave were set to Auto Detect and the jumpers on the devices set to cable select. It won't recognize either of them. I removed and tried just one piece of hardware at a time on the cable, still nothing. Then tried a new cable, still nothing. Wierd thing is, before going into the JMicron screens, it shows the hardware that is connected to the cable. That leads to believe there's some option I'm not switching that needs to be switched, or there's just something funky with the BIOS/JMicron controller.

Try setting the HDD to master and set the CD-Rom to slave.

Now go into the Integrated Peripherals screen of the BIOS. Press Enter to access the "On-Chip ATA Devices". Make sure the "Primary/Secondary Master/Slave PIO is set to Auto. Make sure the "Primary/Secondary Master/Slave UDMA is set to Auto. Make sure the "On-Chip Secondary PCI IDE" is Enabled. Disable the IDE RAID function. This is probably all unnecessary as it is probably already setup like this.

Make sure you boot order is FDD, CD-Rom, HDD

EDIT: It may be likely that you'll have to search your motherboard driver CD and look for a utility that makes a driver disk for you to use while installing Windows. You'd make the disk. Boot the computer with the XP cd loaded, press F6 when asked during the Windows install, and load the appropriate drivers.

Good Post. I agree.  

Thanks, I will check this stuff out tomorrow evening and post back with the results.

Ok, no go on anything I've tried. Looked at and tried every option listed here, even some I found via Google. No luck, my buddy (whom the computer is for) called tech support, andof course they were no help. MB is being RMAed back to NewEgg and he's getting one of the 2 boards below.

Foxconn P9657AA-8KS2H recommened on Anandtech.

OR

ESC NFORCE 570 Because it has 2 PATA plugs so he can use both drives and his hard drive.

I'm sorry man. You've reached my limited knowledge in the area and I wish I could've helped out more. Are you sure it wasn't the HD in question and not the board itself? You said you were going to test another drive with it but we never heard back from you on it. It would've been well worth testing another drive, especially a SATA drive that could've been tesed on both the JMicron and Intel controllers.

Oh well. Out of those two boards, either should work if you don't plan to overclock (which I don't think was your intent). Get whichever one fits the bill the most.

Hi Keg,
I thought somebody figured this out, but no... close though.
It will not work! You cannot boot from the harddisk attached to the add-in IDE controller on P965 mobos.
Strangely, you can start Windows install from an optical drive on this controller (el torito), but not IDE HD. Windows will happily 'install' until it makes its first reboot - then it cannot find the IDE drive.
No amount of F6 drivers will help.
I made the decision to use the single IDE controller for a HD, and went out and bought a SATA DVD burner and a new 250GB/16MB IDE HD.
No go.
I have a Raptor for my OS anyway (I was trying to create a FAT system partition for multiboot on the IDE) so I just went ahead and installed OS directly on to the Raptor.
I never thought I would see the day when IDE drives needed F6 drivers, and then still don't work... meanwhile SATA HDs are detected like IDE used to, LoL. Kinda sad actually.
Anyway, grab a nice SATA drive (or two, they're inexpensive).
Note: I have 6 SATA on the ICH8R controller (Intel) that I can start from; the other 3 add-in controllers including the E-SATA cannot be used for boot drives either. Just like the IDE.
Also, my Plextor DVD sucks on the SATA interface - what I mean is ripping DVDs, heheh... the whole setup freaks out ripping software (like DVD Decrypter). So now I have a nice older Pioneer DVD-Rom on the good ol' IDE controller, and it rips bloody fast. So, found some use for it...
Regards