HELP. Trouble building first machine

[JohnnyT]

Everything connected and Bios seems set up correctly, but doesn't seem to access Floppy or CDRW. I have XP in the CDRW and a bootable disk in the floppy drive. I've tried all sorts of boot orders, cable selects, master/slave settings, power connector combos.

Drives are identified in Bios (HD identified incorrectly as WD 1200BB), but just boots to blinking cursor and code 'Ed' in the LCD diagnostic on the MB. CDROM lcd blinks a few times during the post, and allows me to eject the tray. No life from the floppy at all.

Can anyone help?

 

[xeno2060]

Check all ribbon cable connections, make sure the bios has cdrom as first boot device! goodluck

 

[JohnnyT]

Anything in particular I should check with the cables? I mean they are connected. The bios recognizes the drives, so I would think that's a good sign.

However the bios did not detect the floppy, I had to enter it manually. Boot order is currently Floppy, CD, HDD, but aas I said, nothing happening.

Any other thoughts?

 

[acidhaze]

1st: Is your cdrom drive identified during post?

2nd: Put the cdrom and hard drive on seperate IDE channels each as master

3rd: Make sure you are using the correct IDE cables (80 wire / 40 wire i believe)

4th: Does your floppy cable have a twist in it? It should.

5th: Disconnect the floppy drive, windows XP cd is bootable... this will take one problem out of the equation.

6th: Leave the bios drive settings on auto.

7th: If you are still having trouble double check the jumper settings on the manufacturer websites, sometimes the labels are very obscure.

 

[xeno2060]

Originally posted by: JohnnyT
Anything in particular I should check with the cables? I mean they are connected. The bios recognizes the drives, so I would think that's a good sign.

However the bios did not detect the floppy, I had to enter it manually. Boot order is currently Floppy, CD, HDD, but aas I said, nothing happening.

Any other thoughts?

Check the cables to make sure they are not attached backwards(with the newer ide cables this usually not a problem), then double check the jumper settings on both HDDs and your CDR & CDRW, boot from CDR not your
floppy drive.

 

[JohnnyT]

OK, I disconnected the floppy altogether. During this, I accidenally left the power to the HD disconnected and system booted right into the CDRW, of course the XP load fails because no Hard Drive is recognized. Then I shut down, and reconnected the power to the HD, I'm back to the original problem, Bios recognized a WD 1200BB (actual drive is WD 600JB) and it hangs at IDE detection for about 20 seconds then goes to blinking cursor on blank screen.

Then I tried disconnecting the CD and setting up the floppy and HD, hoping to run a WD HD util that would 'prep' my drive in some way to make it recognizable (correctly) to the bios. However, can't get anything from the floppy.

Thoughts?

 

[xeno2060]

Could be a bad floppy drive or floppy cable, oh yeah make sure when you connect the floppy cable that the twist in the cable is the end you connect to drive itself. Do you a normal cd/dvd rom drive or just the CDRW?

 

[AJPatel]

Sounds like your boot order is set to HDD first. You have to change that in your BIOS to have it boot from your CD drive first.

 

[mechBgon]

Press ESC at POST and the 8RDA+ will offer you a boot menu after it completes POST, too. This saves the trouble of going into the BIOS.

 

[JohnnyT]

cleared CMOS and starting from scratch (again). Floppy reads for fraction of second, but then goes to blank screen, with cursor blinking.

I'm really wondering if it's the Hard Drive. Everything seems to work when it's disconnected, and when it is deteced, it's only detected as an 8GB (which is why I want to boot to floppy because it has the HD diagnostic stuff.

Very frustrated.

 

[MARMADUKE]

blinking curser is most likely bad HD

 

[DAPUNISHER]

the WD drive comes "parked" that's the correct config for it WD jumper settings as a single master on the cable so for now just to be certain, remove the jumper from the drive completely and attach the drive to the end of the ribbon cable alone on the primary IDE slot. Then make certain the XP CD drive is the primary boot device and power on. The system should boot to the XP setup from where you can format&install XP on the drive.

 

[JohnnyT]

Should, but doesn't. Picked up a Maxtor today. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[JohnnyT]

Plopped in a Maxtor DiamondMax Plus and fixed the problem. Not sure if it was just a bad WD drive, or if there is some inherent incapability. Either way, I'm a Maxtor fan now.

Now, if I could just get past the XP blue screens of death....:disgust: