Bonita Clare
asked on
Bios not recognizing 40GB HD
Rebuilding a new system from my old components which include
733 MHz Celeron with ASUS P3V4X Motherboard. We added a Seagate 40 GB hard drive. All went well but the BIOS is not recognizing the hard drive. I tried entering the paramaters by changing the setting from Auto to User Defined. On reboot it would not go into Windows 98SE. Went back and reset it to default and boot up was successful. Windows is reporting the hard drive as 7.85 GB.
Here is the information I see when booting up:
Award Medallion BIOS ver. 6.0
ASUS P3V4X ACPI BIOS Revision 1005
Award Plug & Play BIOS Extension v 1.0A
I then get another message which I remember when using this system but can't recall how I got rid of the message.
Bios update data incorrect. CPUID=00000686. Update not loaded.
I went to ASUS's site to check for any newer updates but got a message saying the server was unavailable and to try another site. Clicking on that took me right back to where I was.
Can someone help me out here?
733 MHz Celeron with ASUS P3V4X Motherboard. We added a Seagate 40 GB hard drive. All went well but the BIOS is not recognizing the hard drive. I tried entering the paramaters by changing the setting from Auto to User Defined. On reboot it would not go into Windows 98SE. Went back and reset it to default and boot up was successful. Windows is reporting the hard drive as 7.85 GB.
Here is the information I see when booting up:
Award Medallion BIOS ver. 6.0
ASUS P3V4X ACPI BIOS Revision 1005
Award Plug & Play BIOS Extension v 1.0A
I then get another message which I remember when using this system but can't recall how I got rid of the message.
Bios update data incorrect. CPUID=00000686. Update not loaded.
I went to ASUS's site to check for any newer updates but got a message saying the server was unavailable and to try another site. Clicking on that took me right back to where I was.
Can someone help me out here?
Be sure only to use the Beta Bios if you know how to get back to your old one in case of a failure!!
If your BIOS does not support the hard drive the only other way to get it to work is to buy a seperate ATA-66 card and install it and install the hard drive to that. These cards have their own onboard BIOS to recognize the drive.
briancassin, take a look at the second link I gave.
Someone correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you can use the larger hard disk in Windows 2K/XP (or Linux, I know for sure) regardless of what the BIOS says, since it uses it's own drivers. It could be worth attempting a win2k or winxp installation on that box to see what happens, since it is well within the Microsoft requirements.
good luck
good luck
>Someone correct me if I am wrong
Ok, I will, you're wrong, the BIOS will have to recognize it before windows can ;-)
Ok, I will, you're wrong, the BIOS will have to recognize it before windows can ;-)
I'll bet it would work as a secondary drive. have you ever tried it? I'm a Linux user and my 200 gig works though my board only recognizes it as an 8gig. Yet even with windows you can technically hot-swap IDE drives, though it is highly not recommended. If you use external power and plug in the ide cable, go to computer management, device manager and refresh, it will recognize just fine. That has absolutely nothing to do with the bios!! I think it would work.
I don't know anything about how Linux handles drives, but I had the same problem with my win2k installation... Don't know if that's solved with winXP
Linux doesn't need the BIOS to handle the drive.
I can't comment on Windows but it does need the BIOS to start up. Hot swapping IDE drives under Windows! Interesting.
I can't comment on Windows but it does need the BIOS to start up. Hot swapping IDE drives under Windows! Interesting.
ASKER
This is a Christmas gift for one of my daughters and although I love her very much I can't afford to buy XP right now. That is what I am running. All of the other comments are confusing me. I don't want to use it as a secondary drive. I am going to download some software from the Seagate site later this morning. It claims that it can overcome many size barriers, although I may be expecting too much. I may end up having to get a controller card. Also is the ATA66 card the same thing?
Try the Seagate software. It will probably do the trick.
Yep, the ATA66 card and controller card are the same thing.
Yep, the ATA66 card and controller card are the same thing.
ASKER
Thanks. I am getting ready for a doctor's appt. so will have to wait until later. Will let you know the results.
For speeding up things, you should look for an ATA100 or ATA133 card, so your drive will run at the maximum.
Seagate has a nice drive overlay also for recognizing these kind of drives.
Good luck,
LucF
Seagate has a nice drive overlay also for recognizing these kind of drives.
Good luck,
LucF
ASKER
I downloaded Seagate's Disc Wizard Starter Edition. It was very simple to use and took only a few minutes. When I booted up from the A: drive I was disappointed to see that the BIOS information had not changed. It was still not seeing the 40 gigs. I went ahead and installed Windows again anyway and the first thing I did was to check the drive properties. Windows is reporting the drive as 38.2 GB.!! Should I just ignore the BIOS and take Windows' word for it. My daughter doesn't have much computer knowledge at all and wouldn't really notice what it was reporting on boot up. Any other reason I should update it? I would just like to get on with installing all the software and downloading updates and current browser version.
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ASKER
Thanks to everyone for their comments but LucF won the big points because he led me to a link that inspired me to visit Seagate's site where I read about their program. Sure was simple. Everything is going well. This is a great site. Haven't paid a visit for some time. I switched to XP and just haven't had any problems. (knock on wood!)Bye for now and Merry Christmas to you all.
LucF,
Sorry I do not make it a point to follow other questions that are PAQ's from previous questions. That is really not a good practice it can confuse users and also makes it difficult to follow/read.
Sorry I do not make it a point to follow other questions that are PAQ's from previous questions. That is really not a good practice it can confuse users and also makes it difficult to follow/read.
Glad to help Bonita Clare ;-)
briancassin, normally I try to avoid pointing to other questions, but the Question I linked to had a lot of information about three options available: Bios upgrade, drive overlay, PCI IDE controller so this is really a worthfull PAQ'd question to link to.
briancassin, normally I try to avoid pointing to other questions, but the Question I linked to had a lot of information about three options available: Bios upgrade, drive overlay, PCI IDE controller so this is really a worthfull PAQ'd question to link to.
I understand but maybe a copy and paste would be better I dunno. I just know that whenever I have tried to do that it has confused the questioneer terribly and resulted in them trying to post to the existing PAQ and then thinking their question was deleted etc...
Take a look at that question, it's a really long one, and the usefull information is all over the question. I don't think I could make a copy paste of that question, that's why I linked. Normally I do copy paste usefull information, but in this case it was not an option. I do understand your concern...
But I suggest you first take a look here: http:Q_20781630.html to a lot of information about the possibilities to get this harddisk recognized.
Greetings,
LucF