PC wont POST. Im lost

[vaiovenom]

Where do I begin. I had lots of hardware issues with this pc and after lots of talk with lots of people I decided to start from scratch again on my new build.
I used Dariks Boot and Nuke and wiped the harddrives (twice). I took out the pCIe graphics card, unplugged the pc, removed the battery, removed the jumper and flashed the bios with a recovery update.
With all of that being said, here is where I am. I want to reload a fresh install of Win XP Pro X64. I reinstalled the jumper, put in the cd but it did not read it. I restarted and went into the bios. The boot order is saying to boot from the CD but it didnt. I then noticed that is said no harddrives are installed. I set it for optimal defaults and exited. It still didnt look for the cd and said to insert boot disk. I restarted to check out the bios boot order again but it did not go that far and I couldnt get into the bios. If i leave it sit in this state, it finally comes up with text about the matrix storage manager but goes nowhere from there.
If I removed the battery and flashed the bios, are the harddrives still set up as raid 0? Everytime I boot I look for the Control I screen so I can check but I have yet to see it. Any help would be great. Thanks

[flanzig1]

If the CD drive is an IDE and you have an 80 wire data cable(blue/gray black connectors), set the jumper on the drive to CS. Blue connector to the mobo/black connector to the first drive(master postion) and a second drive to the gray connector(slave postion).
Should start with an out of case build with minimum parts.

[vaiovenom]

Not sure if I quite followed that, but my harddrives are SATA. The cd-rom is on its own (ribbon?) iDE cable and is set to master. Same with the floppy, on its own ribbon cable.

[flanzig1]

If the ribs on the CD drive are smaller than the floppy drive ribbon cable, then you have an 80 wire IDE. Set the jumper to CS(cable select) on the CD and plug it in on the end connector(black).
SATA HD have no jumpers to set,plug the data cable into the SATA socket labeled SATA 0.

[vaiovenom]

Ok, the DVD rom had a larger (wider) ribbon cable than the floppy cable. I went ahead and disconnected the floppy drive altogether and tried the dvd rom on both cs and ms. I was able to get into the bios and it is not recognizing the harddrives. Originally, I had the HDD's plugged into sata 1 and sata 2 ports. I tried just plugging one drive into SATA 0 but nothing happened, wouldnt even get me to the bios. I then left one HDD plugged into SATA 0 and plugged the second into SATA 1. I was able to get into bios where is says I dont have and hard drives. after I browsed around the bios looking for something to help it recognize th harddrives (which I didnt find), I exited and it came to a screen that said
Intel Boot Agent GE V.1.2.28
Intel Boot Agent PXE Base Code (PXE 2.1 build 084)
PXE-E61 Media test failure
Insert boot disk.

Any suggestions?

[flanzig1]

If you are trying to do a RAID 0 set-up, the 2 HDs need to be plugged into the RAID SATA jacks(check the motherboard manual for RAID set-up. Boot with XP cd in the drive. May need to load the RAID drivers when XP shows a screen to push F6 to load mass storage devices.

[vaiovenom]

I had previously set this up as RAID 0 and didnt run into issues with the SATA jacks. I have been booting the computer with my XP disk in the DVD rom but it is not picking it up and the Bios is not recognizing the HDD's. I havent gotten anywhere near the part where I push F6. Actually, I cant wait til I get to that point, at least I will be loading the OS but for now it is not even getting that far.

[flanzig1]

With the drives connected the way you want, try one more time and clear the BIOS by pulling the battery for 5 minutes(make sure AC power is unplugged). If you can get into the BIOS after restart,set the date and time aand check for detection of the drives.

[vaiovenom]

Ok, I will try it as soon as I get home from work and let you know. Thanks for all of your advice.

[vaiovenom]

Ok Mr. Flanzig, we are making some progress. I removed the battery for 10 minutes and turned it back on. I entered the bios and set the time and date. It was still showing no harddrives detected. I saved the settings and exited bios. Win XP actually started loading which is much further than Ive gotten previously. I loaded the RAID driver with the F6 and S during setup. Once all of the generic and Raid drivers were loaded it got to a point where it said "No harddrives detected" and prompted me to F3 to exit and/or reboot. That is where I am at this point.

[flanzig1]

OK, I'm almost out of ideas. Now we know that the BIOS doesn't see the HDs. That could mean that something in the BIOS isn't set correctly or the HDs aren't connected in the right spot or the SATA cables are bad. Only thing I can suggest is try different cables and reread the section of the motherboard manual on the SATA drives/BIOS settings/RAID set-up. There may be something you missed.

[vaiovenom]

Ouch, not what I wanted to hear. I have queried the Intel support site. Maybe they can point me in the right direction. I think that I will try one HDD in the SATA 0 slot. Im pretty much grasping at straws now. earlier in the thread I mentioned that I wiped the harddrives. I used Dariks Boot and Nuke which I have had very good results with when I reload older pc's for resale. Hoping I didnt corrupt them when I did this. I am determined to not take this into a Tech. I really want to figure this out, mainly for the experience.

[LeftyAce]

Corruption wouldn't prevent the BIOS from even seeing them. So do try one drive at a time; if it's not detected, you've got a setting messed up somewhere.

[borax56]

check in bios for an option marked IDE function setup or something similar to that. It sounds like the machine is trying to boot via IDE instead of raid.that could be the problem

[vaiovenom]

I want to thank everyone for their help (Especially Mr Flanzig). After all of this, I contacted Intel and told them that something was screwy with this board. The agreed since all of the BIOS settings were set to RAID but still no harddrives are showing. I recieved an RMA and will start fresh. Thanks again!