[altazakin]

I'm having a tough time getting my hard drive recognized in the bios and also getting it to stop booting into safe mode (bios version, not windows version).

I'm setting up my first system, here are the specs -- all components brand new:

ASUS A7N8X-E Deluxe
AMD Athlon 2800
Maxtor 250 gig SATA/150 HDD
Plextor CDRW
Pioneer DVDRW
Radeon 9600 pro
512 mb ram
floppy drive

When I first booted up the system, I went into the bios to try to detect the SATA HDD. The bios detected the cd and dvd drives on the secondary IDE fine. There's nothing on the primary IDE. However, it won't detect the SATA drive. It's plugged in to SATA RAID 1 on the mobo (RAID 2 is the only other choice). Once I tried detecting the SATA drive and it failed, I checked to see if there was anything in the bios related to SATA or RAID, and there isn't. This is an Award/Phoenix BIOS, rev 1008. I set my boot sequence to CD, floppy and then HDD-0.

After choosing Exit/Save changes, the system does not reboot -- the monitor goes to black and the LED on the monitor flashed on and off as if there is no longer a signal. The PC itself stays powered up and doesn't cycle or anything, although the keyboard lights do flash once.

After a cold reboot, my system now says, after POST, that it detected an improper shutdown and is in safe mode, and to press del to enter bios and set cpu speed (the speed is set fine, it's at 166 mhz, which I think is correct for my 333FSB chip).

So, no matter if I try to boot with the windows xp home cd in the cd drive or the boot floppy disks I made from microsoft's site, I cannot get past the bios screens to actually start my system booting from the CD.

also...

I did try booting without CD and DVD connected, no change.

Tried booting without HDD connected, instead connected a very old (1995) WD 1 gig drive to primary master, with jumper on master and also with jumper off, did not work. Same shutdown/safe mode message. (this HDD does work, but may be too old for the mobo)

Tried reseating the mobo power supply connector and the ram. Checked all cables/pwr cords and video card.

Tried reset buttons and ctrl-alt-del but those either lead to the bios, a black screen with white cursor, or nothing (total black screen).

Also tried using a different SATA cable on the HDD. HDD does spin up (gets warm to the touch).

Any suggestions?

 

[dai]

try resetting the cmos by the jumpers or pulling the battery

 

[altazakin]

Thanks for the tip -- but I'm not sure why that would work exactly -- it just sets the board back to defaults, right? I've already loaded the factory defaults in the bios, which didn't change anything -- the bios still can't autodetect the sata drive. Is there something else it does that would help my situation? I'm new at this so I could be missing the point of resetting the cmos.

I tried entering it manually, I went to Maxtor's site for the drive specs, but they don't (yet) list the 250. The largest drive they have on there is the 200.

 

[dai]

i have the ami bios so i don't know how relevent this is to your award bios.
in ami you have to set it to enhanced mode for it to recognise sata drive

 

[Triple6]

The SATA drive does not appear under the IDE hard drive detection or at all in the regular BIOS; it has its own BIOS that loads after the intial motherboard BIOS. Also, you have to have change your boot order to include SCSI instead of IDE,

I would also recommend using the Clear CMOS jumper, making sure its on the right pins for normal operation, and checking that you don't have CPU_FSB jumper set to FSB200 instead of 266/333/400 which it should be on.

 

[altazakin]

>> The SATA drive does not appear under the IDE hard drive detection or at all in the regular BIOS; it has its own BIOS that loads after the intial motherboard BIOS.

So this should automatically load after I exit the mobo's BIOS? I will try adding SCSI to the boot order and see if that launches the SATA BIOS.

I did check the FBS jumper, by factory default it's on the 266/333/400, and yes, it is on that setting.

 

[altazakin]

Unfortunately, after two hours on the phone with ASUS tech support, the PC no longer even posts

It goes straight into boot block, which is a problem I had with the first ASUS mobo I tried.

When it gets there, nothing can be done -- clearing the cmos doesn't work and neither does attempting to flash the bios.

I've had it with this mobo. This is the second go around and it doesn't appear that anything works with it.

Everything had been set up correctly, as far as I know, but after exiting the mobo's BIOS the SATA BIOS never appeared.

I bit the bullet and bought a different mobo and an IDE drive from newegg. I bought an ABIT NF7-S and a 40 Seagate IDE drive, and will try to set that up before I bother with the Maxtor SATA. Hopefully I can get Windows XP installed on the new Seagate, and then add the SATA after it's up and running.

I really hope I didn't make a bad decision -- this is my first time and I feel totally helpless at this point. I feel like I bought a gigantic, expensive paperweight

Do you have recommendations to avoid problems when my new abit mobo arrives with the Seagate IDE drive? I really don't want to experience this again.

 

[Triple6]

If you had this problem with two ASUS boards then its likely not the boards but something else in the computer.

Its best to start with basics and build up. You may want to setup the motherboard surface like a table and build the computer up before installing it into the case. On the table its easy to go through all the jumpers and to install the CPU and RAM. To begin, install only the CPU with fan, one stick of RAM, and Video card. That is enough for the computer to boot up. At this point you can setup some BIOS settings, like Time and Date and load Optimal BIOS settings. The computer should go to to a Boot Failure or Missing Operating System error. Then you can add one piece at a time until all the parts are connected. Finally put it in the case. This avoids short circuits, and its so much easier to assemble and diagnose a problem.

What powersupply are you using, how many Watts and what brand?

 

[altazakin]

The power supply is a 400 W ATX from Allied.

I'll keep your tips in mind about setting it up outside the case when I add this new board I do hope it's not another piece of my hard ware that's giving me trouble -- although I did buy another HDD so I can test that when I get it.

I am so new to this that I don't have a good stock of old parts to swap around, just an ancient comp from '95 and this current HP that's my main computer right now, about 3 years old. I really don't want to dismantle this one, because if I damage anything I won't have any PC to use for help.