We're having a problem with an office computer in that BIOS will not detect any IDE drives (CDROM, DVD or HDD).
Last week one of the salesman brought his desktop claiming he had a virus and he had tried to "Reinstall Windows". The system would hang at the initial Dell boot screen and then error saying "Alert! Failed at checkpoint [HDsk]". I was finally able to access BIOS after disconnecting the CDROM and DVDRW drives. The 3.5" floppy drive was shown, but all IDE devices were listed as "Uknown Devices". The only choice was OFF or AUTO for these devices.
I have tried the following:
-Swapped for a known working HHD
-Swapped CD/DVD drives
-Tried new IDE cables
-Tested HHD from secondary controller set to Master
-Reset BIOS defaults using instructions from here and Dell forums
-Removed the system battery to clear CMOS (no jumpers that I could see)
I also purchased the Rosewill ATA133 (non-raid) controller from Newegg. I installed it and it did recognize my drives (DVD and HDD). I was able to start Windows setup, but when setup finishes loading the initial setup files (before the License Agreement), I receive the following Blue Screen of Death:
Windows has shutdown to prevent damage. Please check your computer for viruses. Remove any new drives or drive controllers.
STOP*** 0x0000007B, 0xC0000034, 0x0000000, 0x0000000
This is a Dell Dimension 3000
Windows XP Home SP2
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Yes, it I believe it does have its own BIOS. When installed, the Rosewill card does recognize the DVD drive and the Hard disk drive correctly. It will allow me to boot from the XP setup CD, but I receive the BSOD's. I cannot boot from the hard drive because Windows was corrupted or uninstalled by the salesman.
When the hard drive is connected to the Rosewill card, the Maxtor drive shows up in the BIOS. The drive is listed in the boot sequence as well (I have tried using it as 1st, 2nd and 3rd boot priority). I connected my hard drive to the secondary connector on the Rosewill card and booted to Windows Setup from the installation CD. It errored again after saying "Loading Windows XP Setup".
The new Blue Screen of Death had this error: STOP*** 0xF898763C, 0xC0000034, 0x0000000, 0x0000000
Not sure if it matters, but the DVD drive will not boot from a lot of CD's such as the Maxtor Utility, Dell Home XP SP2, etc.
It will only boot/load setup from Windows XP Professional SP1 or Dell Home XP SP1?
When I try booting from the motherboard (regardless of using the old CD/DVD drives or my new Sony DVD) the system hangs at the Dell POST/boot screen (Dell logo). After a couple minutes it errors saying no drives were found. If _any_ drive is connected, regardless of how it's jumpered or the cables, to the onboard IDE controllers it simply hangs. If I am able to make it into BIOS, none of the drives are detected.
Run the diagnostic program found at www.memtest.org - please keep in mind that it's not guaranteed to detect bad RAM. If the test fails, you know that you have bad RAM, but if it passes, there is a small chance that it is still bad.
Thanks for the link. I am running the test above, but thus far it has not errored. Also, I was finally able to boot into Dell's Diagnostic Utility on the hard disk. Not sure how good it is at detecting problems, but I ran checks on the following...
- mainboard
- processor
- memory
- hard disk drive (check disk)
- cdrom/ide drives
- cables
- BIOS
And a few of the other tests they have available. All of them passed without errors.
I have good, but strange news. After re-reading through everything I tried a combination of previous steps I had taken along with the other recommendations. I removed all add-on cards, disconnected all IDE drives, and cleaned the system out using a brush and air dust.
With the drives disconnected I booted up to BIOS and enabled only Secondary Master. Turned system off, put in a new DVD-RW drive with a new IDE cable that arrived today. I set the jumpers to Master even though Dell recommends using CS. After rebooting, the Dell BIOS recognized the drive correctly. I then enabled Primary Master in BIOS and then installed the hard drive using a new IDE cable (jumpers set to Master rather then default CS).
The system booted up, both drives were shown correctly in the Dell BIOS. I have now successfully installed Windows XP Home SP2 and am working on installing the drivers now. This has been a very perplexing issue for me, especially since these steps had not worked before?
Thanks very much for your help!
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by: CallandorPosted on 2006-10-12 at 09:04:27ID: 17716560
Does the Rosewill controller that you bought have its own BIOS? Without one, the system will not boot from this controller. You can check the posting from newegg.