IDE Controller failed? Guidance sought

[km]

I helped a friend test his PC which was dead. Used a PSU from a
standby machine of mine but no improvement. I then took out his
motherboard and connected to my working PC again no result.

Proir to this the standby machine booted up perfectly. When putting
back together the Hard Drive and 2 CDRom/DVD Roms were not recognised
in the BIOS. I also noted that the date had reverted to the creation
date ie 2002.

I changed the battery and still no HD or CDs in the BIOS. All BIOS
settings had gone back to factory settings.

I cannot see anything in BIOS which needs to be set for IDE controller
to function so am concerned that they have failed. As it is a standby
system there is no need to solve immediately but guess I will need to
buy a PCI IDE Controller.

Before doing that I hope someone may be able to give help on what to
check to be sure of cause of problem,

Motherboard - ABIT KV8 Pro

km

 

[philo]

I helped a friend test his PC which was dead. Used a PSU from a
standby machine of mine but no improvement. I then took out his
motherboard and connected to my working PC again no result.

Proir to this the standby machine booted up perfectly. When putting
back together the Hard Drive and 2 CDRom/DVD Roms were not recognised
in the BIOS. I also noted that the date had reverted to the creation
date ie 2002.

I changed the battery and still no HD or CDs in the BIOS. All BIOS
settings had gone back to factory settings.

I cannot see anything in BIOS which needs to be set for IDE controller
to function so am concerned that they have failed. As it is a standby
system there is no need to solve immediately but guess I will need to
buy a PCI IDE Controller.

Before doing that I hope someone may be able to give help on what to
check to be sure of cause of problem,

Motherboard - ABIT KV8 Pro

km

Remove the harddrive . cdrom and Dvd and test them one at a time in
another machine.

One failed device could possibly be causing IDE detection problems.

If the IDE controller is in-fact bad, though you could probably just add a
PCI controller,
there might be other problems with the board.
I'd probably just replace the entire mobo if that's the case

 

[km]

Remove the harddrive . cdrom and Dvd and test them one at a time in
another machine.

One failed device could possibly be causing IDE detection problems.

If the IDE controller is in-fact bad, though you could probably just add a
PCI controller,
there might be other problems with the board.
I'd probably just replace the entire mobo if that's the case

Thanks for the reply.

The HD and CDRoms are OK, having removed them and also tried proven
drives in their place.

km

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

Thanks for the reply.

The HD and CDRoms are OK, having removed them and also tried proven
drives in their place.

km

Check your BIOS and see if there is an option to reset it to default
settings, or fail-safe settings. A BIOS might be corrupted but not show
anything wrong on the displays.

I have fixed a couple of machines by doing this after they became trashed
due to static or got partially confused after a battery failure. Just
removing/replacing the battery or moving the bios power jumper did not
always fix the problem.

 

[philo]

Check your BIOS and see if there is an option to reset it to default
settings, or fail-safe settings. A BIOS might be corrupted but not show
anything wrong on the displays.

I have fixed a couple of machines by doing this after they became trashed
due to static or got partially confused after a battery failure. Just
removing/replacing the battery or moving the bios power jumper did not
always fix the problem.

Yep...good advice. I agree.
try resetting the bios

 

[km]

Check your BIOS and see if there is an option to reset it to default
settings, or fail-safe settings. A BIOS might be corrupted but not show
anything wrong on the displays.

I have fixed a couple of machines by doing this after they became trashed
due to static or got partially confused after a battery failure. Just
removing/replacing the battery or moving the bios power jumper did not
always fix the problem.

IDE Controller is enabled.

The HD is not recognised nor can I manually enter any parameters - I
seem to recall that these could be entered on older motherboards even
when Auto detect couldn't pick up the drive. Maybe this is another
indication that the IDE Controller is not working.


When the battery was replaced I assumed that the BIOS had defaulted to
factory presets. I also reset them from within the BIOS to Load Fail
Safe Defaults. Will go back in and have another go at that.

km

 

[GlowingBlueMist]

IDE Controller is enabled.

The HD is not recognised nor can I manually enter any parameters - I
seem to recall that these could be entered on older motherboards even
when Auto detect couldn't pick up the drive. Maybe this is another
indication that the IDE Controller is not working.


When the battery was replaced I assumed that the BIOS had defaulted to
factory presets. I also reset them from within the BIOS to Load Fail
Safe Defaults. Will go back in and have another go at that.

km

I may have missed you trying this it in your messages but it's possible for
a ribbon cable to go bad or find a bent pin on the motherboard connector.
Give another cable a try and see if that helps?

I don't know how many times I've had a connector become slightly loose at
the motherboard as well while doing other work on a PC.

 

[km]

I may have missed you trying this it in your messages but it's possible for
a ribbon cable to go bad or find a bent pin on the motherboard connector.
Give another cable a try and see if that helps?

I don't know how many times I've had a connector become slightly loose at
the motherboard as well while doing other work on a PC.

Thanks but I have tried that. Both IDE1 & 2 are not identifying
attached drives.

km

 

[km]

I helped a friend test his PC which was dead. Used a PSU from a
standby machine of mine but no improvement. I then took out his
motherboard and connected to my working PC again no result.

Proir to this the standby machine booted up perfectly. When putting
back together the Hard Drive and 2 CDRom/DVD Roms were not recognised
in the BIOS. I also noted that the date had reverted to the creation
date ie 2002.

I changed the battery and still no HD or CDs in the BIOS. All BIOS
settings had gone back to factory settings.

I cannot see anything in BIOS which needs to be set for IDE controller
to function so am concerned that they have failed. As it is a standby
system there is no need to solve immediately but guess I will need to
buy a PCI IDE Controller.

Before doing that I hope someone may be able to give help on what to
check to be sure of cause of problem,

Motherboard - ABIT KV8 Pro

km

Just an update to everyone who helped, incuding "flasherly" on another
group.

I upgraded the BIOS with no benefit although the POST screens went
through faster. Took out the motherboard from the case to avoid
possible shorting - no benefit.

Having previously unplugged the optical drives (at the drive end) with
no benefit I now took out the cable from the motherboard IDE2 slot as
well as removing power connectors. The Hard Drive was immediately
recognised.

Will now put everything back together and see if I can get the optical
drives recognised.

Thanks to everyone.

km

 

[GT]

Just an update to everyone who helped, incuding "flasherly" on another
group.

I upgraded the BIOS with no benefit although the POST screens went
through faster. Took out the motherboard from the case to avoid
possible shorting - no benefit.

Having previously unplugged the optical drives (at the drive end) with
no benefit I now took out the cable from the motherboard IDE2 slot as
well as removing power connectors. The Hard Drive was immediately
recognised.

Will now put everything back together and see if I can get the optical
drives recognised.

Thanks to everyone.

km

I wonder if you damaged the PSU when you tried it in the other machine? Have
you tried a different PSU in this backup machine?

 

[km]

I wonder if you damaged the PSU when you tried it in the other machine? Have
you tried a different PSU in this backup machine?

That crossed my mind but the end result seems to be that the IDE cable
for the optical drives was the cause of the problem.

Everything was working prior to the removal of the power supply. I can
only assume that the cable was damaged during removal of PSU or, as
the only other thing done during the check was to look at the other
machines Hard Drive the damage may have happened by putting it on the
IDE cable for the Optical Disks (IDE2) on my machine. Even at that
point everything worked.

Only when I reconnected the Optical Drives to IDE2 did the BIOS fail
to recognise anything. During checking I disconnected the CD and DVD
drives but significantly only took out the cables from the drives it
was still in the motherboard. That alone seemed to still prevent the
Hard Drive on IDE1 from being seen.

It is just another lesson learned.

Thanks for your interest.

km