Hard Drives undetected by BIOS after crashes

[Len]

My Win2k(SP4) crashes at regular intervals but rarely with the same error
message (I'm guilty of sometimes tinkering). On trying to recover I
frequently find that one or other or both of the two IDE drives are not
detected by the BIOS (Amibios v1.5). The 'IDE HDD AUTO Detection' feature
of the BIOS SetUp Utility will then often re-detect one drive but to have it
detect both I need to unplug/re-plug the ribbon cable to the undetected HD.
I cannot manually type HD data to the BIOS.
Today's crash for example(KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR), the first after a
clean re-install of 8 weeks ago, left the first HDD unrecognised and
required the re-plug treatment. How do I make the BIOS recognise both HDDs
(2 x IBM 60GB Deskstars) without the tedious job of taking the lid off each
time? Any suggestions about where I am going wrong would be much
appreciated.
I have dual boot with Partitions 1 & 2 on HDD1 holding WinME and Win2K
respectively. The remainder of both HDDs hold applets, backups and data in
various FAT32 & NTFS partitions.

Granddad

 

[Bob I]

You don't suppose there is a hardware problem with your IDE controller?

 

[Gary Chanson]

My Win2k(SP4) crashes at regular intervals but rarely with the same error
message (I'm guilty of sometimes tinkering). On trying to recover I
frequently find that one or other or both of the two IDE drives are not
detected by the BIOS (Amibios v1.5). The 'IDE HDD AUTO Detection' feature
of the BIOS SetUp Utility will then often re-detect one drive but to have it
detect both I need to unplug/re-plug the ribbon cable to the undetected HD.
I cannot manually type HD data to the BIOS.
Today's crash for example(KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR), the first after a
clean re-install of 8 weeks ago, left the first HDD unrecognised and
required the re-plug treatment. How do I make the BIOS recognise both HDDs
(2 x IBM 60GB Deskstars) without the tedious job of taking the lid off each
time? Any suggestions about where I am going wrong would be much
appreciated.
I have dual boot with Partitions 1 & 2 on HDD1 holding WinME and Win2K
respectively. The remainder of both HDDs hold applets, backups and data in
various FAT32 & NTFS partitions.

It sounds like you have one or more bad drives. The late IBM Deskstar
drives were very unreliable. It's also possible that you have a bad cable.
High speed parallel IDE cables are quite critical and minor damage (even
substantial kinking) can cause the type of symptoms you describe.

Go to
http://www.hgst.com/portal/site/hgst/?epi_menuItemID=4cdc4c67158f7f8d5f5a530
560e4f0a0&epi_menuID=22f0deefa8f3967dafa0466460e4f0a0&epi_baseMenuID=22f0dee
fa8f3967dafa0466460e4f0a0
and download their Drive Fitness Test (DFT) program (Hitachi took over the
Deskstar line from IBM) and run it.

 

[Len]

Many thanks for the suggestion, Bob I. I'm sure you're right - I should
have thought more clearly. Lid off again! Ouch!
Granddad.

 

[Guest]

My Win2k(SP4) crashes at regular intervals but rarely with the same error
message (I'm guilty of sometimes tinkering). On trying to recover I
frequently find that one or other or both of the two IDE drives are not
detected by the BIOS (Amibios v1.5). The 'IDE HDD AUTO Detection' feature
of the BIOS SetUp Utility will then often re-detect one drive but to have it
detect both I need to unplug/re-plug the ribbon cable to the undetected HD.
I cannot manually type HD data to the BIOS.
Today's crash for example(KERNEL_STACK_INPAGE_ERROR), the first after a
clean re-install of 8 weeks ago, left the first HDD unrecognised and
required the re-plug treatment. How do I make the BIOS recognise both HDDs
(2 x IBM 60GB Deskstars) without the tedious job of taking the lid off each
time? Any suggestions about where I am going wrong would be much
appreciated.
I have dual boot with Partitions 1 & 2 on HDD1 holding WinME and Win2K
respectively. The remainder of both HDDs hold applets, backups and data in
various FAT32 & NTFS partitions.

Granddad