"Setup did not find any hard drives@ error message

[A 'Tuin]

Hi

On replacing a failed hard drive in my old Multivision Athlon 2400, I get the above message when re-installing XP on the new WD Caviar drive.

Have looked this up on various forums, and it appears I need to download drivers for the new drive, then press F6 at the "Setup is inspecting...@ stage, then insert a disk with the drivers on. Trouble is, it expects a floppy in the A drive, whereas the drivers from WD are too big and have to be burned on to a CD.

Any thoughts anyone?

 

[muckshifter]

If this is an IDE drive, you do not need any drivers ... check the "jumper" on the drive is set to Master and is on the correct connector of the ribbon cable.


If this is a SATA drive, you should not need any drivers.

If this a drive connected to a RAID controller, and you are NOT going to use RAID, disable RAID in the BIOS if you can. You will need drivers to set RAID up.

 

[A 'Tuin]

Hi

Thanks for that - it is IDE and the jumper is set to master and the master connector on the cable is used. Not sure about if it's connected to a RAID controller -just an ultra IDE I think - but will check and disable it anyway. The WD website said to replace with the new downloaded driver if no operating system present ( as it now is) -also the old drive was a samsung.

Will let you know how I get on.

Cheers

 

[muckshifter]

Ignore any drivers for the moment ... do not attempt to load any "drive overlay" ... can you tell me more on the spec of the PC, especially the motherboard.


If this is an "older" MB and a "new" largish HD then you may need to alter the BIOS defaults. Your system may not be able to "see" the HD at all. Does the BIOS see the HD ?

 

[A 'Tuin]

Hi and thanks for the further help. I think ( because obviously I can't boot up to check) the motherboard is an ATI A3 - there's also the ref. M153JD on booting up. It also says Phoenix Award BIOS V6.00PG. The drive is a new WD Caviar 160GB 7200rpm. The BIOS does see it and it's also recognised as HDD 0 on boot up.

 

[muckshifter]

The only manufacturer I know that used the ATI A3 chipset was FIC ... it was a pretty bad MB.

Sorry, Phoenix BIOS is not that accommodating in giving any info as to who made the MB. Award, before Phoenix bought them, and AMI were a little easier with their descriptions. Did you see anything like ... Award BIOS id: 2A59IZ1DC-00 ...

OK, what I'm looking for is to see if this M'board is 48bit LBA compliant BIOS. Pop back into the BIOS and look at the alternatives to the HD if set to Auto ... can you change it to LBA mode or Large disk ?

oh, and ignore any ref to SATA or RAID, if I am right, you do not have this.

 

[A 'Tuin]

Hi thanks.


The full description which comes up is ATI A3/M153JD-6A660PRA6-00.

Checked BIOS and under Access Modes it was set to CHS. Have changed to Large Disk - LBA also an option. Will let you know how I get on. By the way, the previous HD was a 160GB also.

Tks again for help.

 

[A 'Tuin]

Hi again


Have tried with BIOS set to Auto, plus large disk, then LBA - still get the same error message.

 

[PotGuy]

Sorry to interupt as this isn't really helpful, but I just pulled this off of google about an A3 FIC mb...

"ATI's Radeon IGP 320 combined with the FIC AT-31 motherboard, to put it nicely, is a terrible platform. We haven't had so many problems with a motherboard crashing and giving us strange scores in years, which certainly makes our job interesting, but at the same time, makes us feel sorry for those out there who pick up this platform"

 

[muckshifter]

Hi again


Have tried with BIOS set to Auto, plus large disk, then LBA - still get the same error message.

Hmmm, possibility you have a faulty drive ... can you try it in another PC ?

What was wrong with the other 160 ?

 

[A 'Tuin]

The old drive failed and the PC wouldn't boot up - and got strange interference patterns ( think the Matrix opening sequence) which still persist on starting up, then clear. The drive is brand new from a local pc shop who also looked at the PC and diagnosed the faulty drive. They're coming in to sort my wireless network next week ( which is another story...!), so I suppose I can ask them then anyway if nothing else has worked. Perhaps the fault also screwed up the motherboard somewhere - especially if it's not a good one (thanks PotGuy for that by the way) ...

 

[muckshifter]

Well, I hate to say this, but, it's a posibility the the MB may be failing.

Supports AMD Athlon XP processors 1500+ ~ 2100+, AMD Athlon processors 700MHz ~ 1.4GHz and AMD Duron processors 600MHz ~ 1.2GHz, ATi IGP320 chipset, 2.0GB PC2100/PC1600 DDR memory supported over 2 DIMMS, 1 AGP (4x) and 3 PCI expansion slots, Dual channel ATA 100/66 IDE controller, ATI IGP 320 embedded RADEON VGA controller, Onboard 10/100 LAN and AC'97 audio controllers, micro-ATX form factor.

Hmmm, yes, well err, not my cup of tea.

This is the sort of "problem PC" I could tell you more about, if I had the thing in front of me ... not worth shipping it though.

Not much more I can suggest, sorry.

 

[A 'Tuin]

Thanks for all the help anyway - I'll see what the bloke says on Thursday. I suppose that's why it was only 180 quid a few years ago from Carrera . Probably not worth spending much more on it, although I had upgraded to a separate geforce Fx 5200 video card and to 768 MB Ram. So as a networked PC ( not needed for my sons' power hungry games) perhaps I could find a cheap ( equivalent but better) motherboard - hopefully I could still use the processor?


Any thoughts ?

 

[muckshifter]

Well, that is really up to you, but yes, you can still get a "decent" MB to take all the other bits you have.

 

[A 'Tuin]

Well .. the man came in, and the problem was - twofold really, which hadn't helped matters. Firstly, the booting problem was apparently because I had previously upgraded from Win 98 to XP. What needed to be done ( although how you would ever find this out, I don't know) was firstly to insert the W98 system disk, then it asked for the XP installation disk, and it followed as normal from there.

The weird graphics "matrix" effect was, apparently, a problem with the Geforce FX5200 card I had installed ( previously onboard graphics only were installed). The card was taken out and onboard graphics reinstalled, and hey presto - no problem, just back to slow graphics. PC now works fine as a network station for accessing network files, e-mail and internet, just not good enough to run the boys' World of Warcraft, etc - the Cyberpower Duo 6400 plus Geforce 7600 GT takes care of all that.

It looks like the problem with the old FX5200 card is some sort of fault with it - I tried replacing it, but before installing drivers, got the graphics effect again - random coloured pixels and then blue and green vertical stripes, then nothing readable. Any ideas before I bin it ( or flog for spares on e-bay) ?

 

[muckshifter]

ah, the 'whole' story now comes to light ...

... nevermind, it is 'fixed' and that's what counts.

as for the 'faulty' card, I would bin it ... I don't eBay.