Now what did I do??

[noonin]

I know enough to get myself in trouble ;-)...I just took on a little project - an old Micron Millennia that my neighbor gave me for free. He had upgraded the MoBo to an Intel D850MV with a P4 2GHz and 1GB RAM. He builds computers and said it worked great (famous last words ;-) No HD though, so to get it up and running, I popped in an old one I dug out of someone else's curbside castaway a few years back. It has '98 loaded on it.

I plugged the HD into the Primary IDE connector and the optical drives into the Secondary. It booted up OK, but no sign of the DVD drives. Thought maybe I got the IDE plugs backward, so I swapped them. Powered up, but no Boot, so I had to turn it off at the power switch on the PSU. Switched the IDE cabling back, but now no Boot the first way either. The HD lets out a burst of activity, but windows doesn't load. Any suggestions? BTW, I made sure everything was completely off when I made and changes to wiring and grounded myself first.

 

[Wolfshadw]

Pull out your DVD drives and see if the system will boot with only the hard drive installed. If it does, check to make sure the jumper on the back of the hard drive is set to master and the jumpers on the back of the dvd drives set to either slave or cable select. Also go into BIOS and make sure your hard drive is set as the first boot device.

If your system does not completely boot up or errors out during boot time, you're probably looking at a format and reinstall of the OS.

-Wolf sends

 

[noonin]

Pull out your DVD drives and see if the system will boot with only the hard drive installed. If it does, check to make sure the jumper on the back of the hard drive is set to master and the jumpers on the back of the dvd drives set to either slave or cable select. Also go into BIOS and make sure your hard drive is set as the first boot device.

If your system does not completely boot up or errors out during boot time, you're probably looking at a format and reinstall of the OS.

-Wolf sends

HD is set to Master, not sure about the DVD drives...I'll try unhooking the opticals and go from there. I can't reformat without them ;-)

 

[Paperdoc]

Hold on! You say you have the HDD only on Primary IDE Port, and both optical drives on Secondary. Now, EACH IDE port MUST have a Master. So, the HDD on the Primary port MUST have its jumper set to Master. (On a few HDD's there is a difference between Master alone, and Master with Slave Present.) On the Secondary IDE port, ONE of the Opticals MUST be the Master, and the other MUST be the Slave. Set their jumpers accordingly.

Check your BIOS Setup screens to verify that BOTH IDE ports are Enabled. You should be able to "see" all three of those devices in the BIOS Setup screens. If they are not seen there, they do not exist as valid hardware devices, and no OS will "see" them, either.

Once you set those ports in BIOS Setup, also go to where you set the Boot Priority. You certainly want to boot from the HDD. But IF your optical units are being detected properly, you MIGHT want to have one of them as the first device tried in the boot sequence, and then the HDD second.

It is always advised that the Master device be connected to the Black connector at the END of the 80-conductor ribbon cable, and the Slave be on the Grey middle connector.

After you make any changes in BIOS Setup, don't forget to SAVE and EXIT to make those setting permanent and reboot.

 

[noonin]

Best answer selected by noonin.

 

[noonin]

Hold on! You say you have the HDD only on Primary IDE Port, and both optical drives on Secondary. Now, EACH IDE port MUST have a Master. So, the HDD on the Primary port MUST have its jumper set to Master. (On a few HDD's there is a difference between Master alone, and Master with Slave Present.) On the Secondary IDE port, ONE of the Opticals MUST be the Master, and the other MUST be the Slave. Set their jumpers accordingly.

Check your BIOS Setup screens to verify that BOTH IDE ports are Enabled. You should be able to "see" all three of those devices in the BIOS Setup screens. If they are not seen there, they do not exist as valid hardware devices, and no OS will "see" them, either.

Once you set those ports in BIOS Setup, also go to where you set the Boot Priority. You certainly want to boot from the HDD. But IF your optical units are being detected properly, you MIGHT want to have one of them as the first device tried in the boot sequence, and then the HDD second.

It is always advised that the Master device be connected to the Black connector at the END of the 80-conductor ribbon cable, and the Slave be on the Grey middle connector.

After you make any changes in BIOS Setup, don't forget to SAVE and EXIT to make those setting permanent and reboot.

Hi Paperdoc,
Somehow I didn't get an email that you had posted your answer...after trying to get things working using Cable Select, I set it up exactly as you suggested and it's working fine now. Reformatted and installed XP with no issues. In my learning process I realized the IDE cable I had laying around that I had used to hook up the HDD was a 40 pin, not the higher speed 80 pin type. Learned something new there too

 

[Paperdoc]

Glad it's working now!