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Bios setup screen freezes when hardisk is plugged in

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14 replies

by bpepa

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Components:

p5n-em hdmi asus
ide western digital hd 600
sata cdrom lite on
intel dual core 3ghz
psu is 500w

New parts
I can access the bios menu when the HDD has no power and even run the cd rom with windows xp install cd. As soon as I connect the HDD to the psu the whole thing freezes. It hangs at the command screen for bios but if I unplug the HDD from the psu with everything running The bios loads.

I think its because its and ide drive and I should just go get a sata hdd and solve my problem but I don't see why I shouldn't be able to format from a regular ide hard drive

14 replies

by thechas

First off NEVER EVER plug or unplug power from devices while the computer is running. You can cause serious damage to both the device and the rest of the computer.

Now for nearly all Western Digital IDE drives, the BIOS will lock up if the jumpers are set wrong.

If my memory serves me well, the correct jumper setting for a single Western Digital drive is none. If the drive has the jumper set as master and a slave drive is not connected, the drive will lock up the POST process.

Chas

by bpepa

I have tried just about every config with the jumpers including using a another seagate hdd as a slave with the correct jumper config.

by thechas

If it's not the jumpers and we presume that the WD drive is good, then it almost has to be in the cables.

Start with a different IDE cable. If the drive connectors are marked master and slave, make sure that the WD is set to cable select mode, and that the Master plug from the cable goes to the WD.

Next, check your drive power connectors.
From the outside the wire colors should be yellow, black, black, red.

If you have a volt meter, yellow to black should be 12 volts, red to black should be 5.

You had mentioned that you were considering switching to a SATA hard drive. If your on-board SATA controller is SATA 2, then you will see better performance with a SATA drive over an IDE drive.

Chas

by rob miners

set your DVD Drive on Sata4 or Sata3. Seems to be less confusion with the BIOS.

by bpepa

It has been on sata3 the whole time

by rob miners

of your Motherboard user Manual. It will give you information on how to set it manually. Have you tried it in another PC.

by oh smeg

Have you tried using a different HDD to the WD unit?

Did this M'Board work correctly with the Seagate Drive that you mentioned?

If it didn't what do you have as a Power Supply as that sounds suspiciously like it's no longer working correctly if the HDD has tested as Good in another system.

But as there is only 1 IDE Connector shown on this M'Board I would make doubly sure that the HDD and Optical Drive are correctly jumpered as what you are describing is a classic both Drives on the one Data Lead being set to the same Drive Position. There are 3 Possible settings Master, Slave and Cable Select also sometimes called CS. The IDE and Optical Drives should both be set to CS or Cable Select here with the WD HDD plugged into the Middle Connector of the IDE Lead supplied with the M'Board that has 3 Connectors on it labeled M'Board, Master and Slave with the Master being the Middle one and the Slave being the end one away from the M'Board.

Col

by bpepa

mm that seems like I can do it from there but how do I find the CHS or the DEC number

Both of these hard drives worked in a previous pc.

by rob miners

on the Drive. If you have the Drive Model Number you could try the manufacturers site.

by bpepa

Ok thanks for all the help by the way.

Yea I found the specs online but when I go into the menu the prompt wont let me manually enter an actual number but asks for a DEC number. And sometimes when I press the up or down arrows it selects numbers randomly.

by rob miners

numbers that it selects a reference to anything on the Hard Drive.

by bpepa

no the only thing written on my hd is an LBA number which is not what seems to be correct. I tried some CHS numbers

Cylinders= 16383
heads= 16
sectors= 63

but it doesn't seem to do anything, as soon as I put any power to the HDD the bios freezes up and can't get past the prompt screen even if I make the cdrom the primary boot source first. I don't understand at all I think I'm just going to go buy a brand new sata drive to go along with all the other new components.

thanks anyways you are very helpful

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