Computer Won't Boot

[Terragen]

So randomly my computer decides to stop working when I reboot yesterday.

I have a 20 gig drive (primary master)
60 gig maxtor drive (primary slave)

yamaha cd rw (secondary slave)

and a maxtor 160 gig drive hooked into its own controller card

what happens is that my bios detects the 3 drives (not 160 gig)
then it loads the card's bios which detects the 160 gig drive
then the computer boots normally

whats happening now is once the 160 gig drive is detected, the computer halts. It will not even boot from a floppy.

Now if I unplug the 20 gig drive (where my OS is)
all other drives are detected, and I can boot from a disk (although not from the HD as theres no OS installed on the other drives)

If I plug the 20 gig drive in at all it is detected fine, but then the computer will not boot from any device. (it just hangs instead of even trying)

This just randomly happened, I was not doing anything to the PC.

I'd think my 20 gig randomly fried itself but the BIOS still detects it so it must be at least partially working.

I'm running XP but I don't think that caused this.. seems to just have happened by itself. Anyone ever had a problem remotely like this?

Any suggestions are appreciated.. as even if I hook the 20 gig up to be a slave drive (so i can reformat it) the system hangs.. so theres no way I can even access that disk.

TIA

[KHT]

Possibly the controller card for the 160 G Max may be causing a conflict. Have you tried booting by only removing the card? ?

Also, and this most likely isn`t causing a prob, you state that your CD\RW is a secondary slave. What is the secondary master?

I`m assuming the card you have is an IDE controller. why not try the 160 G Max as secondary master and the CD\RW on the controller card or even as a secondary slave to the Max? It`s not considered a good practice to slave a CD to a HD but i have done it as long as it`s not on a boot drive without any probs.

Have you run the repair option on XP?

[Terragen]

I don't think its the controller card as I've been using the drive for about 6 months with no problems.
I can't hook the 160 gig drive to the regular IDE channels because I think 120 gigs is the max unless you have the controller card (which is why even after 6 months I still haven't seen a 160 gig drive in stores)

I had another CD-drive as the secondary master but i took the power out as it was working really funny (I believe that there wasn't enough power from the power supply for the 3 hard drives and 2 cd-roms

I can't boot into XP because XP is on the 20 gig drive (the one that isn't working)

I'd think the drive just went bad because it wont work at all, except for the fact that the BIOS detects it.. so I'm not sure what the problem is. :/

[RenegadeKing]

Try the 20 gb in another computer and see if you can access it after it boots the OS (assuming it boots). Also, try booting with the controller card removed. See what that does.

[Markoman01027]

You may need to flash your BIOS to the latest revision for the 160GB Hard drive to work properly.

Try what the forum members have suggested though.

Good luck!

[Terragen]

I have tried booting with the controller card removed and its still the same problem.

I know there's something wrong with the 20 gig drive but I can't figure out what. As soon as i unplug the 20 gig drive I can boot the system with a floppy and both the 60 gig and 160 gig work.

I haven't installed anything recently, the 60 gig drive is about 2 or more years old and the 160 gig drive is at least 6 months old and i haven't had any problems.

I will try the 20 gig in another computer (although the only other one i have available is an amd 100mhz.. although hopefully it will work.

I have pretty much narrowed it down to the 20 gig drive though because even if i switch it to a different cable or to a slave instead of a master or whatever.. the computer will not boot from any device as long as the 20 gig is plugged in (even if the pci card is removed)

the bios comes up and detects it as being there when its plugged in.. so it must be somewhat functional.. but as soon as its supposed to proceed to the boot sequence it freezes... even if the boot order is A: CDROM C: it will not boot from any device.

So I'm thinking its a problem with the 20 gig (i will try it in the amd but i don't hold out much hope) but i can't imagine its "fried" as the bios can tell me the drive thats there
:/

[Cricket]

Hi Terragen,

I've seen something similar to this...if the hard drive has developed bad clusters in the boot section, the hard drive won't be able to boot to Windows. I don't recall if the system gave me an error message about no boot device found or if it just sat there doing nothing.

But since you can't even boot to a floppy (is the floppy the first boot device in BIOS?), then I'm guessing the 20GB hard drive is causing the system to just hang.

Replace the 20GB hard drive. Try to retrieve any data from the 20GB HDD once the OS is installed on another hard drive...slave the 20GB HDD to the system and see if you can access it.

Cricket

[Terragen]

Maybe it is a problem with the MBR - I have managed to get the drive running as a slave on the AMD (although it still hung the system as a master)

i'm not sure if there is physically a bad sector ( ) or if its something i can correct.. i know fdisk /mbr isn't always "safe", and doesn't it just clear the MBR on the master disk and not the slave?

is there any way i can clear the MBR of the slave disk so i can once again (even temporarily) use it as a master?

thanks for all your help guys

[KHT]

I think I would at least try booting off the XP installation CD with the 20 G drive as primary master and try the repair option.

[Terragen]

The problem is that if the 20 gig drive is a master the system hangs and I cannot boot from any device (CD, floppy, harddrive)

but if the drive is a slave then the system will boot (although not from harddrive as I don't have an OS on any other drive)

will the repair option work on the slave drive?

[mike breck]

Hi Terragen,

Which PCI controller card do you have?

I would run a full up-to-date virus scan on the 20Gb drive.

If you made an Anti-Virus Recovery floppy set, then it may give you an option to restore a backup of the MBR - I know that Norton does. This should work if you are using FAT32; however, I'm not even sure you can use the floppy recovery method with NTFS.

Also download the diagnostic software from your HD manufacturer and run it on the HD. That should tell you how healthy the HD is and possibly correct any errors.

I would tend to put all three HDs on my controller card and leave the onboard mobo channels for optical devices. Most good PCI controller cards, like Promise, have the ability to run HD of different ATA modes at maximum performance.

HTH