mattashton
asked on
bios no longer seeing cdrom or HD???
bought a megaRUM II motherboard with 2xPIII600s/Gig of SDRAM/IDE CDROM and Floppy, all cased/fanned and PSUed up. Booted up w/o any HD, went into bios, saw that cd drive was being detected on secondary master then shutdown. Attached an old 4GB drive i pulled out of an old g3 mac, booted into bios, HD go auto detected on primary master. shutdown machine. stuck a multi processor version of NT4 into cd drive and proceded to install OS. went through to the first screen, proceded through the process in normal fashion (something i have done about 20 times), chose to format as FAT32, sent it on its way. 15 minutes into the install it gave me a blue screen...being a common site, i didnt take note of any of the error messages and instinctively performed a reset. tried to start the install again but the bios could no longer detect either my HD or CD??? Gone thru all the obvious ie bios flash, ide lead direction check, HD/CD test elsewhere, CMOS drain, removal of IDE devices and reboot - then attach and bootup again, but nothing seems to bring back my dissappearing IDE devices. I am not very PC literate (this is my first PC, i've always used macs up to last week), so please can any instructions be explained in laymans terms. Thanks for being interested enough to take the time to read this long post, but i thought it better to disclose everthing now rather than trickle the information gradually. Good Luck, ive been told by a friend who deals with this calibre of mainboard for a job that it is a tricky one!!
ASKER
okay, my technical talk may not be up to scratch, but most PC people ive spoken to so far seem to get the jist of what im talking about, what im saying that when in NT install you get to the second or third screen it asks you how u want to format your drive, either NTFS or FAT/FAT32 or whatever, i chose not to format NTFS, whether it was FAT or FAT32 i don't recall, but i'm sure you now know what i mean.
It must have been FAT, since that's the only other option...
BTW, if "...most PC people ive spoken to so far seem to get the jist of what im talking about..." why is your problem still unresolved?
Either the "PC people" are not knowledgeable or you're being unclear.
Based on what little you've said, it sure sounds like a dead IDE controller on your MB. That assumes, of course, that you have done as you claim and have reset the BIOS settings and checked that the IDE channel is enabled and configured.
It's very important for you to be clear in your descriptions. All we have to diagnose your problem is what you say. If you are misleading, your send us down a bad path.
BTW, if "...most PC people ive spoken to so far seem to get the jist of what im talking about..." why is your problem still unresolved?
Either the "PC people" are not knowledgeable or you're being unclear.
Based on what little you've said, it sure sounds like a dead IDE controller on your MB. That assumes, of course, that you have done as you claim and have reset the BIOS settings and checked that the IDE channel is enabled and configured.
It's very important for you to be clear in your descriptions. All we have to diagnose your problem is what you say. If you are misleading, your send us down a bad path.
ASKER
however knowledgeable my friends are, they are never going to be able to circumvent a blown motherboard/ide controller however clever they are, which is exactly what they suggested the problem may be. but what they all suggested was to post on this site exactly what i did before the problem arose, in as much detail as i can, as none of them could see any reason why anything i have done could have blown the ide controller. posting on this site is my last resort before parting with any cash for a new board
>none of them could see any reason why anything i have done could have blown the ide controlle
Sometimes parts just fainl spontaneously. It's relatively rare but it happens. Were you careless about static discharge? I'm not always are careful as I should but and 99% of the time it's OK, but I have zapped components due to that. It happens!
Sometimes parts just fainl spontaneously. It's relatively rare but it happens. Were you careless about static discharge? I'm not always are careful as I should but and 99% of the time it's OK, but I have zapped components due to that. It happens!
ASKER
that is a definite possibility, and with human intervention being the primary reason why most things break, i am almost certain that is what happened. however, i did where the wristband and gounded myself etc in the appropriate way, so i'm slightly reluctant to take it on board just yet. I'm just hoping someone has had a similar problem b4, and managed to sort it out. there is a posting on the megatrends site with refernece to the megaRUM I, and a disappearing cdrom after bios flash, but the site very briefly says 'turn on the IDE ports', which is a bit confusing because i wasn't aware of any way of turning them off, or perhaps they mean auto detect on that channel?
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ASKER
in the words on homer simpson 'dohh' followed by 'waaahooo', thank you very much sir, and thanks for your patience. i was told that its sometimes the simple things that are at fault, but it does surprise me that when setting the bios to default optimal settings the IDE controller is disabled??? as mad as a bag of snakes!! god bless and good luck, you thoroughly deserve all my introductory points.
bye
bye
Glad to be of assistance.
1) "...stuck a multi processor version of NT4 into cd drive and proceded to install OS..."
2) "...chose to format as FAT32, sent it on its way..."
NT4 DOES NOT support FAT32. Never has, never will!
I now question anything else you're saying in this question since you're not on the up-and-up on this matter.