Computer not posting after hardware changes

[wiseant]

Hi All,

I have an AMD duo-core with MSI MB
I have Vista on one SATA drive and XP on another SATA drive and an ATA DVD RW drive

The MB only has one IDE connector - with the DVD as the 1st Master drive - the pin is set for CableSelect

Everything has been running fine. Today I decided to hook-up an old IDE hard disk as a slave and experiment with various Bootable CD/DVD programs. In order for the IDE hard disk to work I have to go to the older type cable - so I hooked my DVD as the Master (Cable Select) and the IDE hard disk as the slave. I booted from the Ultimate Boot CD for Windows - at first my hard disk was recognized by the CMOS but when I got to the XP shell this drive was not available [not mounted] - anyway I decide to abort this test and go back to my old setup.

I hooked up everything as before with the two different SATA drives and the DVD RW drive but I decided to keep the old cable instead of hooking up the one I usually use. Well, the computer would not post - so I disconnected the DVD - and this time was able to boot - I was able run Vista and on the next boot I was able to boot into XP. So I decided to hook-up the DVD - again no go - no post at all. So I removed the DVD and tried booting - no go - the monitor goes off just as the machine is about to post.

What the heck is happening here? Is Vista or XP writing info to the CMOS/Bios just because I changed cables? or just because I tried to hook-up another hard disk? and thus preventing me from booting my computer?

This has happened before when I installed more RAM and also when I tried to hook up a floppy - it seems that any hardware change causes this problem. In the past I have had to disconenct the CMOS battery [sometimes overnight] and then it will boot-up and I have to update the BIOS settings.

Why does the monitor not work when I make a hardware change? I have on-board video but even when I tried using a PCI graphics card I still got the same problem.

Any suggestions are appreciated

TIA

[zoobie]

unplug the whole shabang from the wall socket
hook up the proper cable again
give it another go

[gll99]

Trying to understand what you did but anyway...

Both the DVD drive and the hdd should be set to cable select (cs) if you use this feature and not have one as cs and the other as slave. I haven't used this in a while but I believe that with the 80 wire ribbon, the middle connector would be hooked to the device 1 (slave) and the end connector to the device 0 (master). This may be reversed on an older 40 pin cable. Either way, if you mix the jumpers on the drives (one as cs and the other as slave) you end up with hit and miss bootups.

When there is only one device on the cable it is generally not recommended to use cable select.

[Krispy Kritter]

It could be as simple as something loose inside your case. For troubleshooting purposes, ignore any previous issues that you may have had. Most newer DVD drives require a 80 conductor IDE cable, the old style 40 conductor cables often cause issues or simply don't work. Cable use (40 pin or 80 pin) shouldn't affect the HDD. The most likely problem would be jumper settings or hardware conflicts. There are some older HDD's and DVD drives that only work properly when they are set as Master. I don't recall if CS (Cable Select) works with those units or not.

[wiseant]

Thanks for the replies,

Tried it again this morning - just won't boot regardless of the combination that I try

[aedipuss]

unplug from wall. set it up with an ide 80pin cable with the device on the end of the cable as master. middle is slave. pull the battery from the motherboard for a couple minutes. replace, plug in and boot into bios. select safe settings from the main menu. make sure the sata is set to ide mode not raid. then set your boot drive.

[gll99]

Some of those old 40 wire ribbons weren't keyed or had all the holes punched through (19th pin) so it was possible to connect them backwards which causes symptoms similar to yours.

Again if I remember correctly, on the mb, the stripe goes to pin 1 and on the hdd/dvd it commonly is on the side closest to the power connector.

Personally I would avoid using cable select (cs) because if you are unsure of the cable itself it can cause issues. Best to set the drive jumpers as desired one as master and the other as slave. if you set the drives yourself there is no reason why you need to use an older style 40 wire ribbon as the 80 wire ones are backwards compatible and much better quality.

[wiseant]

Hi again

Well I was able to fix the problem - as it turns out removing the battery to clear the CMOS did not work [even overnight] but when I used the MB jumper to reset it - I was able to get it to post. I used the Vista hard drive first - had to start it in safe mode - chkdsk indicated "The Volume bitmap is incorrect" but on restart, Vista repaired the problem. Then I hooked up the XP hard disk - it did boot up but when I went to restart it gave me a Blue Screen - with the message BAD_POOL_CALLER - I rebooted, chkdsk ran and fixed whatever problem this was. Then finally I hooked up my DVD drive as Master with an 80 wire cable - everything is working now!

Again, thanks for the suggestions!