beginner needs help

[barry glisson]

system stats : soyo 6ba133;pc133 64 mb;westerndigital 13.6 hd ;tech media 144 flopie ;smart and friendly racer cdrw ;2meg pci video card .problem no video with a quantum raven 16 meg agp card reseated over adozen times next tried a trident 4mb 3dimage 9750 no luck next pci 2meg now i have video next problem after partitioning and formating i try to load windows i get an error message bad command or file name.i loaded drivers for the cd in dos and now when i reboot i get an error message floppy disk failure. if i change boot sequence to c a,cd rom same message. 10 emails to soyo in 10 days no answer 25 minute phone call to a non english speaking tech his advice remove mb and all periphials including the cpu and see if the hard drive will work. at least thats what i think he said. does this make sence? my hd spins up it just isnt recognized . thanks, shadow

[ENVY]

Is the light on the floppy drive on all the time? Make sure the cable is not backwards.

Is the floppy controller enabled in the bios?

Duoble check those cable connections. Are you installing 98? The bootdisk that comes with a new version of 98 does not have format on it. Only fdisk.

[barry glisson]

not even aflash of light on post it was working now nothing.on the first screen i get detecting ide primary,slave none;detecting secondary ide master and slave none next line floppy disk failure.thanks shadow

[Ed_S]

So, right now it stops on "floppy drive failure" message, right?

Since you were able to partition & format, I assume you used a boot disk so the FD had to be working at that time. Check the cable, one end is probably slightly loose.

When you tried to load windows & got the bad command error, at what point did this occur?
Is this W95, or W98?

You ended with saying the HD isn't recognized, you mean the bios doesn't find it now, or just that it won't boot?

[barry glisson]

i have changed the plugs on the mb and repluged numerous times i used a boot disk i down loaded from bootdisk.com kramers version. i got the error message imediately after formating.the bios cant find any ide devices now.95b thanks again shadow

[alien_from_io]

Did I miss the cpu speed there, it IS late here. If you're running 95 with a processor speed over 350mhz you got to get the amdk6upd.exe from www.microsoft.com (http://www.microsoft.com) lotsaluck; Take me to your leader.

[Ed_S]

alien_from_io - he's not up to that point yet, and it only applies to AMD chips anyway.
-------

Need to get it to post correctly before anything else matters.

OK, it sounds like a cable issue even though you've checked it.
Just in case, let's do the basics.
Red stripe to pin one at both ends of all cables.
On the floppy cable, the connection before the twist is the "B" drive & after is the "A" drive.

In the bios, make sure floppy controller & both HD controllers are enabled.
Make sure "swap floppy drives" is disabled.
All 4 IDE's set to "auto"

How do you have the drives set up? With a single HD and a CDRW, I'd set the HD as primary master, and the CDRW as secondary master.

Drives jumpered correct?

-------
Before you say it, I KNOW you've checked this stuff, but we've all had one drive us nuts because of a missed detail or a bios setting that mysteriously changed. Or a jumper fell off, or whatever!

If all these are definately correct, then there's likely a bad part involved. Next step will be working out what it is.

Ed

[This message has been edited by Ed_S (edited 02-07-2000).]

[pickel]

Barry: You couldn't be in better hands than
Ed_S, I know. Hope you get your computer going, all I can offer is moral support, a wish and a prayer, Good Luck!!

the pickel

[barry glisson]

the last thing i did before loosing the a drive was to load a cd driver to dos for my cdrw.could that have wiped out eide? if so how can i fix that little manuver? would shorting out the cmos as per the manual do it or do i have to replace the hard drive until i can reformat it? thanks, shadow

[Ed_S]

Thanks, pickel! Really DO appreciate the confidence! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif
---------
No, can't see any way loading a driver would keep the bios from detecting drives. Remember, anything that's been loaded to the HD doesn't matter until after the drive is recognized!

What you've got so far is either a hardware problem or a bios setup problem. Did you double-check all those things? If so & all is OK, next step is to start checking things one at a time.

You could clear the bios as you describe, but be careful if you do. Before going that route, try the "load setup defaults" option first.

[barry glisson]

i changed all ribbon cables double checked pin 1 . no change so i set everything to default. shorted cmos for 5 seconds reset time & date set every thing to default . checked ide hdd auto detection all readings 0. still no change .thanks for all the time an effort you are spending with me shadow

[Ed_S]

Starting to sound like a problem on the board. CPU, RAM, & video are still OK, right?

Do you have a different comp. available where you can check the drives?


-------
Anybody got other suggestions? Any basics I've missed?

[deep_sky]

yep make sure that everything is seated, and I mean SEATED. some things take quite a bit of doing to get correctly seated. sometimes i have even had to put a little wrath on my ide cabling to get going right. also make sure that you do do not have both the hd and the cdrw both set to master on the same cable. confuses the computer to no end when that happens. another thing, is the red cable on the right hand side as you face the back of the drives....

[barry glisson]

i still have video, ram is displayed cpu seems to be ok. i used an inspection mirror to check the sockets on the cables they are flush with the shoulder on the plugs. i have substituted the floppy and cd from the computer im using now with no change in status. just tried reboot it now have black screen no beep fans work green light on mobo.i think my mobo has finally craped out. im going to email this thread to soyo and see if i get any responce. thanks guys shadow

[blade_146]

Are you using it on the ata66 port or the regular ide? If your using ata 66 make sure your using a compliant cable. Try switching between the 66 & 33 and see if that helps. But make sure you change cables. Don't know if this helps or not but I wanted to try. Good luck.



[This message has been edited by blade_146 (edited 02-09-2000).]

[barry glisson]

i just replaced the slotket now i have video again but still no a drive. the only thing i havent replaced is the cpu,ram,motherboard. shadow

[Ed_S]

Hard telling how long it'll take Soyo to respond. What about the vendor you bought it from? They have a responsibility here, too!

Actually, the few times I've needed a warranty replacement on ANY comp parts I had to deal with the vendor.
(Major exception to that is hard drives)

Ed

[barry glisson]

i pluged in a 1994 nec cdr and now it goes to an a prompt.when i enter d: i get invalid drive specification. i tried letters all the way through j .should i repartition and reformat? shadow

[Susan]

Sounds like your almost there, barry. Now need to use a boot disk to fdisk, format and then load in the CD Drive drivers at DOS to see D:

[Ed_S]

All you did was change CD drives & now the floppy & HD are recognized?? Hmmmm...

As Susan said, you now need a boot disk with CD support to get the CD drive going & load the OS.

[barry glisson]

looking for a dl site now i dont understand the connection cd to a drive .after i get the sys. up and running for a week ill go back and try to install the cdrw. i want to be sure the sys. doesnt have another problem first. shadow

[Susan]

Sometimes it just crazy how a system will behave. Just the other night I found a 12X CD Drive in an old case, so I tried it in my system.

I got a quick flash of light on the case LED's and then nothing. No power of any kind to the system. I tried a couple times more with the same results. Unplugged the Drive and the system boots as normal...

[barry glisson]

so far i have tried 8 diffrent boot disks all with cdrom support 7 of them give invalid disk error and one gives bad command error. shadow

[Mattyb]

Have you tried using your Nec CDR as the Master on your secondary channel, and your HD as the master on the Primary channel. The cable for 66 ultra dma is a different cable, so make sure your HD is or isnt 66 UDMA and that you have used the appropriate cable. Once you were able to get to the A: prompt with the NEC in (did you have your HD hooked up?) did you try and use the program that came with the HD. For instance Maxblast for a Maxtor HD, or EZ-Drive for Western Digital? These programs will help to format and partition your HD. If you were able to boot to A: prompt your boot disks should work. Have you been creating bootdisks from the computer you are using to read BBS. If not, go into your control panel and pick add remove programs and create a startup disk (its one of the three tabs). Try using this startup disk instead of the other 7 you have. Have you the current Bios for your MOBO. Is this bios udma 66 compatible.
Good luck.

Mattyb

[Ed_S]

The floppy is set up correct now, right?

Will it boot with ANY boot disk, regardless of the CD?

That many boot disks with errors also makes me wonder - these are all downloaded disks, right? What about the machine you're using to download them? Possible that it has a floppy problem, itself.
I've got one old drive that works perfect, until you take something it saved & try to read it elsewhere.
Try those disks in another machine, and in the one they originated from.

[barry glisson]

my son brought me a boot disk he made in w98 and now i have win95 loaded and RUNNING!!! thanks again to everyone who spent so much time trying to help me.

[Ed_S]

DP (sorta?)

<edit>
Weird thing, posted here once & when I hit submit I got a 404. hit <back>, got another 404. Could not reopen this topic until I exited & reentered Sysopt. Then came back to this & my post did not appear. Reentered post, then both messages show up!! Weren't identical, so it was two posts instead of a DP.


[This message has been edited by Ed_S (edited 02-18-2000).]

[Ed_S]

Glad to hear it's working, finally! http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif http://www.sysopt.com/forum/biggrin.gif

[socalgal]

Ed_S, I know that when we were having the glitches on the previous ver UBB, the Submit would go thru with one hit, even with the 404s... It appears it still does with this ver. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/smile.gif

Hopefully it was just another random etherglitch. http://www.sysopt.com/forum/wink.gif