Drives not being recognized...

[slug420]

I have been having all sorts of problems with this PC, but right now it appears to be donig kind of well.

I will say right off the bat that I think I have bad memory. My PC shuts off randomly (everything sounds like it is still on IE power supply, fans...i dunno about HDs...but the screen immediatly goes blank and all audio stops) and when it recovers windows' critical error usually comes back to being bad RAM. That being said unless it is shuttingo ff on me it seems to work fine....



one issue that remains is i have a PCI IDe controller ATA-66 (old one) from SIIG I think. I have had this working in all my other windows XP PCs but when I install the drivers this time on this install of XP Home and it says "Drivers are not signed!" and I click continue, my computer will not boot into windows until I remove the card...when I boot and it loads the IDE controller bios it detects the drive(s) and everything looks ok but as the windows logo fades in as windows is booting, it just freezes and never fades more than 15% in.

Another issue is that I cannot get anything to be recognized through my primary onboard IDE controller. Right now I am trying to hook up a dvd/cd drive and a hard drive, I have tried them both in cable select, one as master the other as slave, vice versa and tried the cable every which way and even tried a new cable. When I boot up the bios doesnt detect the HD no matter what drive i put in and when it detects the DVD/CD drive it detects it as "RICOHEOF#OIRML#RM2RK@LD@NR" or something different each time with all sorts of special characters mixed in. When I get into windows the HD obviously isnt seen and the DVD/CD drive while seen, doesnt work.


I dont know why the IDE controller doesnt work when it worked fine on my last install but aside from that does my second problem sound like a bad mobo (dead IDE controller)?

 

[Hawkeye22]

If the drivers are not signed, XP will not load them during an install. It may appear like it accepts them, but it will replace them with microsoft drivers. I'm not sure how you got them installed during previous XP installs unless you were using different drivers and they were signed.

Sometimes a defective device on an IDE channel will cause problems with other devices on the channel. Have you tried running each device on the IDE separately?

 

[doolittle]

have you tried changing the slot for the SIIG (maybe a IRQ conflict?) or maybe enabling PCI bus mastering in BIOS...

for the on-board have you tried to disconnect all other devices (power included) and try letting the hdd try to get detected properly? maybe try swapping out the power connector, or get a safty pin or small screwdriver to tighten up the molex 4-pin female connector (I try the strangest things in desperation)

 

[sturm]

Remove the pci ide card and try installing windows without it in. Also remove any other unneeded cards and do a bare bones install with 1 hd, 1 cd/dvd rom, and 1 stick of memory.
Once windows is going and after all the onboard drivers are loaded, try adding in the pci ide card. Windows should still load the uncertified drivers. The message is just a caution letting you know they havent been "totally approved" by Microsoft to work correctly with xp. Might check online for updated drivers.

Try the pci ide card in slot 2 ot 3 as some boards use the same irq for the agp slot, if you have one, and pci 1 slot.

 

[slug420]

thanks for the feedback, I guess i misspoke in my original post.

Windows XP is now installed, I tried installing the PCI IDE card after windows was running and not during the install process. I have tried the card in multiple slots.

Windows is now isntalled on like my secondary master....maybe i shoudl try putting that cable into the primary IDE controller and see if it still sees that drive...