Anyone here good at computers?

[/Dev]

Sounds to me like you've probably tried every combination of cable and drive settings... your comment "I have tried to boot from both drives with no luck. It usually says something (since I can't remember the text right now) along the lines of no CD found, strike F1 to retry, F2 to enter setup" suggests that maybe there is a problem with your actual Windows XP install CD (e.g. is it genuine / undamaged / bootable from another PC)?

 

Might be worth trying to boot the PC from another bootable CD/DVD - I quite like Knoppix (http://www.knoppix.org/), but any other bootable CD will do. Also, if you put your old harddisk back, you may find with Knopppix that you can browse the filestructure on the old disk and recover some of the files.

[birdy]

There are two ribbon cables going into the Motherboard - one from the HDD to the primary slot, and one from the CD drive going to the secondry slot. The DVD drive then has a cable going to the cd drive, but not directly to the motherboard.

 

Dev, would a Windows Vista reboot DVD work, considering that it would need to be put into the secondry slave (DVD) drive?

[Ian W]

If you have a seperate cable going from the second slot on the motherboard, then the CD & DVD should show up as Secondary Master and Secondary Slave.  Try unplugging the ribbon cable from one of the CD or DVD drives and then go into the bios again and see if the system can recognise the remaining Secondary drive.  If it then shows a drive other than the HDD try loading XP from that CD/DVD drive.

[birdy]

Ok, but not this evening - I have some maths mocks to be revising for tomorrow...

[Allan Bowker]

I agree with what Ian W suggested, it's time to start unplugging things to make your PC configuration a bit simpler.

 

Primary Cable - HDD - Set to Master

Secondary Cable - DVD Drive - Set to Master

 

Unplug the ribbon cable from the CD drive.

See what the BIOS now says, should have changed and you may have better luck with this config.

 

I would happily meet up with you but you are in Kent and I'm in the West Midlands.

[Ian W]

Good luck with the Mocks birdy.

 

Like Allan, I would be happy to look at the pc for you, but im also up in Midlands .  Im sure you'll get there in the end though, its now just a case of trying different configerations.

[/Dev]

IMHO, I would confirm the XP install CD is bootable in another PC before unplugging things and reconfiguring the h/w since it was presumably working in this configuration before? Obviously, don't actually run the install on the second PC, just check that the disk is bootable - many PCs don't come with an original install CD and you have to burn your own from an image on the harddisk... depending what you use to burn the image, you may not end up with a bootable CD!! 

 

(To answer the question about the Vista boot DVD, no, I'm not sure it will boot from the secondary slave device in your existing configuration... but you can try it. If it does boot from this DVD, don't install Vista - you're just trying to check that you can boot from the CD/DVD drive!)

 

The next thing I would check is that the boot order in the BIOS is correct - it should be CDROM, FDD, HDD (you basically want it to check if there is a bootable disk in the CD drive first, before trying to boot from the harddisk).

 

If all that still fails, then I would go with one of the solutions above regarding reconfiguring / unplugging the CD/DVD drives. Personally, I would probably set the HDD as primary master and the DVD as primary slave off one IDE ribbon cable (cable goes to HDD first and then to DVD). You also need to make sure the jumper settings on the DVD drive is correct if you start moving the ribbon cables around!

 

Hope the mocks go OK for you today! I love exams.

[birdy]

I hate exams.

 

Jumper settings? What are these?

[Bob Moore]

I had a similar problem with my pc just before Xmas.  It refused to boot and said it couldn't find the operating system.   I tried XP repair, and then reinstalling XP but even though it appeared to be installing ok and ran through set up, when it re booted it still wouldn't find the OS.  (I have 3 hard drives so I had taken out the other two.  And made sure the jumper was set to master.  Jumpers are small pull off things at the rear of the hard drive with which you either select 'master, slave, or cable select. 

If you have one hard drive and one DVD RW I suspect they are on the same ribbon, with the hard drive set as master, and the DVD as slave. (There is a jumper on the back of the dvd too.)    The drives have to be connected in right place on the ribbon. 

 

Installing drives on the ribbon.

 

Have you tried unplugging all other drives, setting the hard drive to master and firing up?

 

I suspected the BIOS or the drive was brokenon mine.  (The BIOS failed on my last motherboard.)  Next thing I did was pull the C hard drive out and plug it in via a xspecial USB cable into my laptop to see if it was OK.  You can buy a suitable lead with adapter from Maplin etc.  Well worth having.

 

The drive was ok, so I retrieved any files I wanted to save.  (Most of the stuff was backed up already) and bit the bullet, deleted the partion , etc, re formatted and re installed XP.

 

If you pull the drive out and retrieve files, a reinstall may be the best way for you to go?

 

I have since (using Nero Back it up, ) backed up my C drive to another drive, so that if it has a terminal crash I should be able to restore the whole OS and all my millions of programmes.

 

 

Good luck with it.

 

Blooming computers, can't live with them, can't live without them.  Just like women

Edited By Bob Moore on 12/01/2010 18:22:44

Edited By Bob Moore on 12/01/2010 18:28:20

Edited By Timbo - Administrator on 12/01/2010 18:32:52

[/Dev]

Here is a link which explains it all... assuming it is using an IDE controller? Newer PCs have SATA controllers which use different cabling, but the principle is pretty much the same. If you do resort to unplugging things, make sure to note down the current positions of things before moving anything!

[Bob Moore]

Oh alright then, your link does have better pictures, and as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words!

[birdy]

Thanks for the link...

 

1 question though: With the ribbon cable, it goes from motherboard to 1 drive, then from that drive to the next. Does it matter if it is the master drive directly connected to the motherboard or can it be going though the slave? 

[birdy]

Having read the links and had a fiddle, I have discovered that I may have got the master and slave drive mixed up; the former link says that the master is usually on the end with the slave in the middle, so enless mine is an exception, that means I have been thinking the slave is the master and vica versa. Alas no luck putting it in the DVD (Master?) drive. To reply to an earlier question, there was a flashey green light when I put it in originally, but once the drive had "settled in" and was at a steady rpm it didn't flash even if I pressed F1 to retry boot.

[Allan Bowker]

It shouldn't matter where the drives are plugged in on the cable (unless marked on the cable) as long as the jumper settings are correct on the drives.

 

Make sure that the red side of the ribbon cable is plugged into pin-1 (usually the red side plugs in nearest to the power socket).

 

The link from /Dev was a good example of setting jumpers.

Edited By Allan Bowker on 13/01/2010 00:21:27

[birdy]

I thismorning I have taken out the dvd drive, intending to change it from slave to master, but I have found something suprising - both drives are on Cable Select, with the DVD on "drive 0" (presumably master?) and the CD RW on "drive 1" (presumably slave.) Does this effect the way I should continue?

Also, before I started the "brain surgery" as my relitive put it, I tried the vista dvd, and it got no response if anyone is interested.

 

Thanks,

 

birdy

 

PS. Why must it rain at the weekends?

 

 

Edited By birdy on 16/01/2010 13:13:30

[Ian W]

If it was me doing the job birdy, I would use the KISS principle and keep things as simple as possible.

 

I would just have 1 HDD set as Master from the main EIDE slot on the motherboard

and then just one DVD drive set as slave on the same ribbon cable.  HDD is usually nearest the motherboard and the DVD at the end of the ribbon cable.  Try that and see if the DVD is recognised in the bios after rebooting.

 

Cheers, Ian

[Tim Mackey]

Strange that, I was "taught" that the main drive ( set as master ) should be at the end of the cable, and the slave ( CD etc ) connects to the midway connector. I doubt in principle it makes a whole difference with the performance of the drives these days, as long as the drives are correctly jumpered -

If youre using CS (cable select ) option, then this should apply to all drives on that port, and you need to check the legend for which jumper bridging to use - some require it to be left off.

[Ian W]

I agree with what you were taught Timbo.  In reality though, most manufacturers these days install the shortest ribbon cables they can (to save cost I should imagine) and this can make it very difficult to fit the master & slave as you stated.  Using the KISS principle, I was trying not to complecate matters any further than they already have been.  As for CS or Cable Select, I have plenty of experience of that option causing problems and wouldnt recommend using that method if at all possible.

 

Cheers, Ian.

[Allan Bowker]

I agree CS (cable select) causes problems in some cases, especially when 2 devices are set as CS on the same cable.

 

It shouldn't matter which device is on which part of the cable as long as one is set to master and the other to slave. Ensure that the red side of the cable is on pin-1.

 

Pin-1 is usually marked on the device and is usually next to the power socket.

 

Footnote:

Timbo is right about what he was "taught" but is a throw back from old XT ribbon cable configurations where the slave and master were set by a twist/crossover in the cable.

This shouldn't be the case today unless your ribbon cable is very old.

[Tim Mackey]

Oh gosh, showing my age again

So does this mean punch cards are no longer used either

On the twisted ribbon, I always assumed this was only with  the old floppy drives? Lost count of the number of peeps who used to say to me " 'ere this FDD cable you gave me is duff ...its all twisted! "

[birdy]

Ok, so far here is the situation:

 

With the BIOS accepting that my DVD is the secondry master, and the HDD "OFF", and the bios set to boot from the DVD drive, with the XP disk in the drive, it turns on and says that the secondry master is not found. Press F1 to retry F2 for setup.

 

What now?

[Allan Bowker]

I would have expected the HDD to be the primary master and the DVD as being either the primary slave or the secondary master. Looks like your posting above states that the BIOS is only seeing the DVD drive and cannot see the HDD).

 

eg (HDD master & DVD slave on primary)

 

Primary Master drive:             Hard Drive : Auto

                                                                         160Gb

Primary slave drive:       CD-Rom device : Auto

                                                                          N/A

Secondry Master drive:                  NONE : DISABLED

                                                                          N/A

Secondry slave drive:                     NONE: DISABLED

                                                                          N/A

OR (HDD master on primary & DVD master on secondary)

 

Primary Master drive:             Hard Drive : Auto

                                                                         160Gb

Primary slave drive:                       NONE : DISABLED

                                                                          N/A

Secondry Master drive: CD-Rom device : Auto

                                                                          N/A

Secondry slave drive:                     NONE: DISABLED

                                                                          N/A

Is this not the configuration that you see?

Can you disable the channels that you are not using as shown above?

Edited By Allan Bowker on 16/01/2010 17:18:52

[birdy]

I turned the HDD to off to try and KISS.

[Ian W]

You would need the HDD on so that it can be seen by the bios as available for loading data when you install XP birdy.  You should really see:

 

 

eg (HDD master & DVD slave on primary)

 

Primary Master drive:             Hard Drive : Auto

                                                                         160Gb

Primary slave drive:       CD or DVD device : Auto

                                                                          N/A

 

As quoted by Allan earlier.

 

 

[birdy]

OK

Will try.