Hi, My first post in this forum!

I have an epox motherboard/ Athalon 64 3500+ processor/ 1 G RAM (pc 3200) / Lite on CD Drive / Samsung 120 G Hard drive system that I assembled myself.

The computer powers up, the bios utility comes up and everything checks out: RAM, Video Card, can see the CD drive. My problem is that the PC does not see the Hard Drive. When I try to boot from a Windows XP Professional sp2 CD, I get a "boot device error - try again" message.

Also, I swapped a known good hard drive with with the same OS on it, and still got the same error message.

Anybody else ever run into a problem like this?

TIA, Bryan

Hi Bryan, welcome to SAF

QUOTE

the bios utility comes up

??? you mean the POST screen, probably not the BIOS itself.

Enter BIOS and check if your hard drive is properly listed there as first boot device (IDE0). Also, are the other devices listed ?

Was it working before or is this the first attempt to make it work ? If so, the master/slave jumpers may not be correctly set.

Please post back with more details.

Chris

It is a CMOS utility by Phoenix.

"Enter BIOS and check if your hard drive is properly listed there as first boot device (IDE0). Also, are the other devices listed ?

Was it working before or is this the first attempt to make it work ? If so, the master/slave jumpers may not be correctly set.

Please post back with more details."

Hard drive is not listed at IDE0.

I can temporarily get the CD Drive to show up at IDE1 in the BIOS screen, but after I save and re-boot, the PC will not boot from the CD and BIOS shows no device at IDE0 or 1.

Hi Bryan,

Chris is right, did you check whether your hard drive is set to slave(Jumper)?, if its set on slave then you must set it on master or Cable select.

Ahmed

If there's nothing on your BIOS first boot device (IDE0), you'll never have it sorted. Set your BIOS first boot device to auto, check your HD jumpers for "Master" and check if it's listed on BIOS.

If not, it may be wired wrongly (cable inverted) or not powered.

If it's listed, it may be F-Disked and formatted before any OS recognize it.

Chris

Checked out drive jumpers > OK, set to Master
Data cables connected correctly

still HD does not show up. CD drive shows temporarily, but then disappears the next time I look.

So I Went through all the bios settings and manually set them to the defaults listed in the manual, rebooted, and things got worse!

Now the error message comes up "cannot detect Keyboard". Also the bios program does not come up any more, so I am effecively shut out from the computer.

My next step appears to be resetting the jumper on the logic board to "return Bios to default settings"

anyone have a better idea?

thanks, Bryan

QUOTE

So I Went through all the bios settings and manually set them to the defaults listed in the manual, rebooted, and things got worse!

You probably messed with the CPU/BUS clock and multipliers.

QUOTE

My next step appears to be resetting the jumper on the logic board to "return Bios to default settings"

It's the only way.

On next reboot, search BIOS utility for "Detect Hard Disk" option. If it's properly connected, jumpered and powered, there is no reason to not be listed on IDE0 and POST screen, assuming that it is not dead.

Chris

PS - To boot from the CD on IDE1, this device must be set on BIOS as "First boot device", otherwise, the Computer wil hang with a "non system disk or system disk error".