Reformatted PC - BIOS wont detect hard drive

[MUDfiles]

Hey I got a small problem. I recently had to reformat my pc so I fdisk'd, partitioned, and formatted it. Now when I had rebooted my BIOS (AwardBIOS) is not recognizing the hard drive (I can see it when I boot thru dos though). I had reset the Master and Slave to auto but it just keep selecting my CD-rom as Master and my CD-RW as Slave. Even when I put in my Windows 2000 pro disk in.. it does not see the hard drive. I didnt do any hardware changes (ie I didnt open up the PC.. or hit it, or moved it.. it remained in the same spot since forever) so I dont think a loose connection is the problem. Can anybody please help?

[tranka32]

hello mudfiles,, and welcome to sysopt,,
Are you sure you did the partitioning the right way??? was it your first time..???? maybe you can read,this partitioning and figure it out.
Sometimes you need to go into the bios and set the Hdd to lba mode for older hard drives under win 95 I think especially,, post your system specs. I.E. motherboard
processor
bios string (lower lft. corner on boot)
and I'm sure someone can get it straightened out!!!!

"did you say windows 2000 pro, I think that needs to be under NTFS,, but not sure, what do your partitions look like, and how big is the drv.

[paramufay]

what boot disk did you use to fdisk. partition, and format with?

[Midknyte]

did you use ezbios? you have to boot to ezbios first, then do a fdisk and format. run fdisk again. if you see a non-dos partition, it could be NTFS or an ezbios partition.

[MUDfiles]

I just want to say first, thank you all for you quick reply =)

Im pretty sure I partitioned it correctly. I have partitioned and reformatted other pc's before, but this is the only time I had trouble with the hard drive being recognized. As for the specs.. hmm.. well my cousin put this thing together so Ill mention the things I do know *blush*... 800 Mhz Athlon processor, the boot string is VIA-KT133-<A7V>... I fdisk'd using Windows 98 fdisk and format.

I tried to manually set the master to almost everything imaginable in the options for the master (including lba).. but if it is anything but auto (which only detects the cd rom) it says Master failed. I tried the user defined setting but not sure what to set the values to.

I hope this info can help you guys help me with this problem..

Thanks ahead of time!

[AllGamer]

if both of them are on the same IDE channel you have to set MASTER for the HDD and SLAVE for the CD ROM

that sounds more like the problem why the HDD is not being recognized

[Greg Harper]

I assume that you have a hdd , a cd, and a cdrw on this machine.
Depending on what your trying if the hard drive is on a cable by itself put it in ide 1 and the cdrw on ide2 with selects on master on the hd with the cd rom on cable 2 ,select on slaveand cdrw on master. If the cdrom or cdrw are on the ide1 cable with the hd they must be on the center cable hookup with the hd at the end of the cable and jumpered as slave cd and master-hd , otherwise the cable can't pickup the hd as the master.

[MUDfiles]

I had tried before to set the CD Rom option to primary slave, but when I try to set the master to auto it still is picking out the CD Rom drive.. so for master it says my CD Rom drive name and for slave it says just CD Rom (no specific name.. just 'CD Rom')..

yes, it has hdd, CD, and a CD-RW.. but I really dont know how its hooked up inside cable-wise (my cousin put this thing together).. and I havent hooked up a drive before (only thing so far hardware wise is put in new memory and install cards (network, modem, etc..) It was working before I tried to partition and reformat, so I was hoping the pc didnt need opening up.

I partitioned the drive under FAT32, but I am installing Windows2000 (NTFS).. I thought at first that might matter but I had done the same thing with my other pc (repartition under FAT32 and install win2k) and it worked.. but in this case it doesnt =(.. neither bios nor windows 2k installer doesnt recognize the hdd.. but under dos, I can see the drive..

Thank you all for all your help..

[Greg Harper]

if you put bios on auto on all options and have the cables connected right it should auto detect all your drives and in the right sequence. If the bios does not see your hd then you won't be able to do anything with the hd

[wkr]

I know this is probably basic, but if I had the same problem, I would eliminate components, by disconecting the other drives. That would allow you to visually confirm your settings. I have had problems with the CD being configured which were solved by letting the setup find the hd first, and then adding the other components.

Hope this might be of some value. You can add back one component at a time and track your progress.

[wings]

WKR, that's a great answer. Why? Well for one things because in work in the computer industry for almost 20 years and this is exactly the right way to approach a problem. Of course, we all start with a bit of checking here and there, but after 10 min or so the step by step approach is the way to solve problems like these. By ruling things out you will ALWAYS find your problem, instead of just guess work. Those who work in the computer industry know that there isn't time for guesswork. Just imagine trying to solve one problem with one PC during a whole working day when you have hundreds of other users.