BIOS not showing HDD

[General Mailbox]

Greetings.
I have a home built system given to me. It has:
American Megatrends (AMIBIOS) but I cannot update the bios because it has a
serial number on it that Megatrends says was built in the U.S. but it's not
one of theirs (meaning the motherboard I guess). But getting an update for
the bios was just something I was looking into because of an error that came
up in windows stating about a partition drive letter cannot be recognized.
I changed out the floppy A drive so that error is taken care of. My issue
is that I had a 30GB HDD working on it just a few short times containg the
WinXP OS, enough so just to finish testing the Floppy A and CD/DVD drives. I
removed the IEEE1394 card and replaced it with a USB2.0 card. I wiped the
OS HDD clean to start fresh feeling comfortable all the hardware would work,
but bios suddenly is not showing that there is a local disk. It only shows
the sec master (CDRW) and sec slave (DVDRW). Using only one HDD as local
disk, I tried several times under varying configurations of the HDD jumper
and placement along the ribbon cable. I even changed out the ribbon and
removed the USB2.0 circuit board, but to no avail. I don't know what
changed now. Only other thing I can think of is the battery on the
motherboard. I don't know what symptoms a computer has when the battery
goes bad.
Any suggestions to have bios recognize the local disk? Much appreciated!
B.rgds,
Kevin

 

[Malke]

Greetings.
I have a home built system given to me. It has:
American Megatrends (AMIBIOS) but I cannot update the bios because it has a
serial number on it that Megatrends says was built in the U.S. but it's not
one of theirs (meaning the motherboard I guess). But getting an update for
the bios was just something I was looking into because of an error that came
up in windows stating about a partition drive letter cannot be recognized.
I changed out the floppy A drive so that error is taken care of. My issue
is that I had a 30GB HDD working on it just a few short times containg the
WinXP OS, enough so just to finish testing the Floppy A and CD/DVD drives. I
removed the IEEE1394 card and replaced it with a USB2.0 card. I wiped the
OS HDD clean to start fresh feeling comfortable all the hardware would work,
but bios suddenly is not showing that there is a local disk. It only shows
the sec master (CDRW) and sec slave (DVDRW). Using only one HDD as local
disk, I tried several times under varying configurations of the HDD jumper
and placement along the ribbon cable. I even changed out the ribbon and
removed the USB2.0 circuit board, but to no avail. I don't know what
changed now. Only other thing I can think of is the battery on the
motherboard. I don't know what symptoms a computer has when the battery
goes bad.
Any suggestions to have bios recognize the local disk? Much appreciated!

The battery has nothing to do with this. If the computer doesn't
recognize the hard drive at the BIOS level then either the hard drive is
bad or the motherboard IDE0 connector is bad or both. To test, try the
drive in a different computer. If it's fine, you know your motherboard
is bad and should be replaced. If the drive isn't seen in the testbed
computer, the drive is toast. The fact that the drive is only 30GB tells
me that it is elderly. Replace it. Put a known-good hard drive in your
original computer jumpered to master on IDE0. If it isn't seen, then the
motherboard is definitely bad.

Testing this way will tell you two important pieces of information: 1)
the state of the hard drive; 2) the state of the motherboard.


Malke

 

[Ghostrider]

Greetings.
I have a home built system given to me. It has:
American Megatrends (AMIBIOS) but I cannot update the bios because it has a
serial number on it that Megatrends says was built in the U.S. but it's not
one of theirs (meaning the motherboard I guess). But getting an update for
the bios was just something I was looking into because of an error that came
up in windows stating about a partition drive letter cannot be recognized.
I changed out the floppy A drive so that error is taken care of. My issue
is that I had a 30GB HDD working on it just a few short times containg the
WinXP OS, enough so just to finish testing the Floppy A and CD/DVD drives. I
removed the IEEE1394 card and replaced it with a USB2.0 card. I wiped the
OS HDD clean to start fresh feeling comfortable all the hardware would work,
but bios suddenly is not showing that there is a local disk. It only shows
the sec master (CDRW) and sec slave (DVDRW). Using only one HDD as local
disk, I tried several times under varying configurations of the HDD jumper
and placement along the ribbon cable. I even changed out the ribbon and
removed the USB2.0 circuit board, but to no avail. I don't know what
changed now. Only other thing I can think of is the battery on the
motherboard. I don't know what symptoms a computer has when the battery
goes bad.
Any suggestions to have bios recognize the local disk? Much appreciated!
B.rgds,
Kevin

Couple of things to do. First, the bios upgrade should be obtained by going
to the website of the motherboard manufacturer and not AMIBIOS.

Second, replacing the CMOS battery should not be a difficult thing to do.
Most modern motherboards use the CR2032 3V Lithium battery and it is easy
to replace. Having the motherboard/bios memory is important for setting up
the motherboard and peripherals but if not available, then exiting bios
setup with the default settings may be OK.

As for the hard drive, consider the possibilities that the hard drive or
the hard drive controller on the motherboard has failed. Some easy things
to do is to actually replace the ribbon cable, which do break down with
age and manipulation. Also test with the diagnostic programs from the maker
of the hard drive.

 

[Paul]

Greetings.
I have a home built system given to me. It has:
American Megatrends (AMIBIOS) but I cannot update the bios because it has a
serial number on it that Megatrends says was built in the U.S. but it's not
one of theirs (meaning the motherboard I guess). But getting an update for
the bios was just something I was looking into because of an error that came
up in windows stating about a partition drive letter cannot be recognized.
I changed out the floppy A drive so that error is taken care of. My issue
is that I had a 30GB HDD working on it just a few short times containg the
WinXP OS, enough so just to finish testing the Floppy A and CD/DVD drives. I
removed the IEEE1394 card and replaced it with a USB2.0 card. I wiped the
OS HDD clean to start fresh feeling comfortable all the hardware would work,
but bios suddenly is not showing that there is a local disk. It only shows
the sec master (CDRW) and sec slave (DVDRW). Using only one HDD as local
disk, I tried several times under varying configurations of the HDD jumper
and placement along the ribbon cable. I even changed out the ribbon and
removed the USB2.0 circuit board, but to no avail. I don't know what
changed now. Only other thing I can think of is the battery on the
motherboard. I don't know what symptoms a computer has when the battery
goes bad.
Any suggestions to have bios recognize the local disk? Much appreciated!
B.rgds,
Kevin

Since the secondary master and slave work, you know that the secondary
connector on the motherboard is functional. Disconnect the CDRW and DVD,
then test just your hard drive plugged to the secondary connector. If it works,
at least you know the hard drive is still functional. If it doesn't work,
and you've tried fresh cables (changing both power and data going to the
hard drive), verified jumper settings etc, then suspect a hard drive failure.

If a connector on a motherboard fails, you can always replace it with
an add-in card. On one of my machines, I use one of these, because
this card happens to support faster transfer modes than the Southbridge
does. (Note - read the customer reviews for this item, to see all the
conditions for which the card is not suited.)

PROMISE ULTRA133 TX2 PCI IDE 66M PCI Controller Card $34
(Works in ordinary PCI slots. Needs F6 driver install when installing Windows.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102007

There are also PCI cards that support SATA for similar prices.

You can also check the connector on the motherboard for bent pins.
Maybe while plugging and unplugging cables, a pin got bent over.

Paul

 

[LVTravel]

Since the secondary master and slave work, you know that the secondary
connector on the motherboard is functional. Disconnect the CDRW and DVD,
then test just your hard drive plugged to the secondary connector. If it
works,
at least you know the hard drive is still functional. If it doesn't work,
and you've tried fresh cables (changing both power and data going to the
hard drive), verified jumper settings etc, then suspect a hard drive
failure.

If a connector on a motherboard fails, you can always replace it with
an add-in card. On one of my machines, I use one of these, because
this card happens to support faster transfer modes than the Southbridge
does. (Note - read the customer reviews for this item, to see all the
conditions for which the card is not suited.)

PROMISE ULTRA133 TX2 PCI IDE 66M PCI Controller Card $34
(Works in ordinary PCI slots. Needs F6 driver install when installing
Windows.)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816102007

There are also PCI cards that support SATA for similar prices.

You can also check the connector on the motherboard for bent pins.
Maybe while plugging and unplugging cables, a pin got bent over.

Paul

And also check the pins on the hard drive. Many times when connecting and
disconnecting them one will bend or break. There should only be one missing
pin in the middle of one of the lines of 20 X 20 pins. Any other bent or
missing pins, discard the drive.

 

[General Mailbox]

Malke, Ghostrider, Paul, and LVTravel,

I wish to thank all of you for your help, which has good information to keep
in my archive.
For the record, it ended up not being the ribbon cable or IDE0 connector or
HDD.
For some reason, the CMOS setting reset itself to show that Primary Master &
Slave were not installed. The Secondary Primary & Slave were set to CDROM.
I changed it back to AUTO detect for both Primary. Seems that once it
thinks that there's nothing installed, it doesn't check anymore. How it got
changed, I don't know.
Best regards to you and yours!
Kevin

 

[Paul]

Malke, Ghostrider, Paul, and LVTravel,

I wish to thank all of you for your help, which has good information to keep
in my archive.
For the record, it ended up not being the ribbon cable or IDE0 connector or
HDD.
For some reason, the CMOS setting reset itself to show that Primary Master &
Slave were not installed. The Secondary Primary & Slave were set to CDROM.
I changed it back to AUTO detect for both Primary. Seems that once it
thinks that there's nothing installed, it doesn't check anymore. How it got
changed, I don't know.
Best regards to you and yours!
Kevin

If it happens again, check the CMOS battery voltage. Brand new, the CMOS
battery registers around 3V or a little more. As long as the +5VSB is
present in the computer (i.e. computer is sleeping in suspend to RAM
for example), no juice is drawn from the battery. Then the battery could
last for 10 years, or its rated shelf life. The battery gets used, when
you switch off the computer at the back, or switch off the
power strip feeding the computer.

The battery will approach end of life, at around a measured value of
2.4V or so. You can use a multimeter to measure the voltage. CR2032
batteries are readily available just about everywhere and pretty cheap.

Much older computers, and computers like Apple Mac, do things a bit
different, in which case the battery could be something other than a
CR2032.

If you unplug the average PC and put it in a closet, it will run
down the CMOS battery in 3 years or less (based on me losing two
batteries here so far, on my unused PCs).

Paul

 

[Lil' Dave]

Malke, Ghostrider, Paul, and LVTravel,

I wish to thank all of you for your help, which has good information to
keep in my archive.
For the record, it ended up not being the ribbon cable or IDE0 connector
or HDD.
For some reason, the CMOS setting reset itself to show that Primary Master
& Slave were not installed. The Secondary Primary & Slave were set to
CDROM. I changed it back to AUTO detect for both Primary. Seems that once
it thinks that there's nothing installed, it doesn't check anymore. How it
got changed, I don't know.
Best regards to you and yours!
Kevin

Retrospect, if I had to guess, would think the switch from 1394 to USB card
did the trick to the bios configuration. That particular part, ide0 hard
drives setting, got hosed along the way.
Dave