Hey everyone, As some of you may know, I'm building a new computer. The computer itself is going fine; Im having a very strange issue with my CD/DVD drive though. When I bootup the machine, the BIOS recognizes the drive just fine. However, as soon as I restart it, the BIOS does NOT recognize it anymore. It always works just fine the first time--Under any new jumper settings. However, any other time, it failles to work under the setting. I tried it both connected as slave (and master) with a hard drive on the same EIDE channel, and (right now) is just this CD/DVD drive on the EIDE cable, set as Primary Master jumper setting. I know/hope the EIDE cable is fine, as it works the first time just fine. I know the drive is good as a) I just bought it, and b) This is my second drive, as I could not get the other drive to work either. That problem might not be related though. I'm perplexed. :-/ What is going on here? Yet it does not end there. It seems after shutting down for about 5 minutes always manages to fix the problem (so the BIOS can recognize it)...Until a restart, anyways. This is a problem as, I could set to "Boot from this CD/DVD drive" in the BIOS Setup, however this requires a restart--In which this cycle starts again (The BIOS does not recognize it.) I decided to post here as this is a great community[smile], and this is hardware related so I hope posting this in this forum will be okay. I understand this is "Tech support" related. I am posting here in hopes that some of the members here have any ideas o suggestions that I may have overlooked. Anything is appreciated. Thank you[smile]

It's an electrical problem, most likely a power supply issue but possibly an issue with the drive itself or even the motherboard (that last one is unlikely).

Thanks for the quick response![smile]

I actually never considered the PSU being the problem... I am going to look further into that, and see if I can find anything.

Any more possible suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks[smile]

Hm... I used a completely different power connector (and insured each connector was completely in) and it seems now it works. :/

I'm going to give updates here to let everyone knows what happens.[smile]

Hello again,

Windows Setup ran just fine. Yet, I run into yet another problem. I tried every combination (I was desperate) in setting the jumper settings trying to get my BIOS to boot from the hard drive. It all failed.

I followed both the motherboard and hard drive manuals, and have followed everything just fine. However, everything that I try, the hard drive failes to boot.

I am starting to suspect that this IDE controller on the motherboard does not support a primary HDD on its EIDE connector.

HERE is the motherboard.

It uses the Intel PE3 chipset with 1 EIDE connector. The motherboard is mostly for SATA and RAID. I suspect that the primary hard drive must be connected via the first SATA connector.

If this is the case, it would explain why I cannot boot from the hard drive (The manual does not say anything on this). It does not answer my CD/DVD drive problem though...

Quote: Original post by Crypter
I am starting to suspect that this IDE controller on the motherboard does not support a primary HDD on its EIDE connector.

That sounds reeeeeeally unlikely. Does the hard drive show up in the BIOS boot order? What message does it give you when it fails to boot?

Quote:
Does the hard drive show up in the BIOS boot order? What message does it give you when it fails to boot?

The HDD does not show up.

Heres the error message I always get:

Quote:
Reboot and Select proper Boot Device
or Insert Boot Media in selected Boot device and press a key

It does not seem to matter how the HDD is configured, the BIOS does not recognize it, and I always get the above message.

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At the moment, these are the current problems:

CD/DVD Drive
The machine will only boot from the CD/DVD drive after every 3/4 minutes. It almost always works. This allowed me to install XP. This makes me suspicious as what the problem might be. The actual drive seems to work just fine (Which is why I do not think the PSU is at fault); it just failes to boot with the error shown above.

EIDE HDD
No matter what configuration I set this to, weather it is the only device connected to the EIDE cable or not, I just cannot boot from this.

Windows Setup recognized the HDD, which allowed me to install XP. However, the BIOS just does not recognize it no matter what I do.

Thanks for any suggestions[smile]

*edit:

I should add that I have flashed the BIOS to the latest version (in thinking it might be the BIOS at fault); but to no avail--same problem happens.

It really, really sounds like the power supply is FUBARed. It isn't getting enough power to the IDE devices for them to respond on startup.

Hello again,

I decided to go all sata, and got a new sata CD/DVD drive and HDD, and everything seems to be going pretty good so far. I'm currently posting this from my new pc! [smile]

I still am a little worried about the temps (The cpu idols at 52deg C mobo at 43deg C), but it seems it is pretty common for the cpu to run hot.

I will keep the PSU in mind, as I will need to change it anyways when I upgrade the video card.

Thank you so much for your suggestions! r++ for your effort and time[smile]