I killed it

[lymponus]

Please forgive me if I don't make much sense, drove 230 miles today to work on my brothers computer, and have to go back today in 7 hours.

Have gotten him a new Western Digital WD800JB hard drive for his computer. Went down today to install it, he's got a DFI computer/motherboard that's a few years old now (P2XBL REV D2, has a PIII/500) Installed the new hard drive as the master, his old one as the slave.

First post screen showed that the computer recognized both hard drives (once I enabled them in bios), got to the second screen (shows table of found hardware) and the computer got hung up on the new hard drive. Prints out a line of info to 82, and then the cursor just sits there and blinks. Couldn't shut the computer off, had to basically unplug it to turn it off.

Attempted to switch hard drives around, old one as master, got hung up basically at the same spot. Went into Bios, had set the primary ide to auto, thought maybe to set it to user (originally old hd was set at user, second primary was set at none). Bios attempted to find new hd, bios locked up. Only way to get out was to ctrl/alt/del. Now, the computer doesn't recognize any hard drives at all.

Guys, am I totally SOL? If I clear the Cmos, will that get me back to an operational computer. It has an Award bios (v4.51PG), so found a bios update (award M1410_bios_4.51pg.exe). Supposedly, it has large disk support. Am concerned about running it. DFI has no useful information on my brother's motherboard, so question is is the Award update used for all Award Bios, or did DFI have their own?

Other option, I bought a Promise controller card for my computer, I can probably install it and bypass the onboard IDE controllers.

Hope you can give me some ideas guys, have never run into this problem before. I would have thought the 80Gb HD would have shown up as a 34 if the bios didn't support it.

Oh, and does anybody still make motherboards for PIII/500 SEC chips?

Thanks.

Lymponus

"All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope." - Sir Winston Churchill

 

[RCPilot]

I'd be looking at the PSU. Sounds to me like you didn't have enough PSU & hurt it loading the new drive on it. Need a good 300 w mim. like Antec or Enermax. I run 430 w Antec True Power PSU's myself.

Your going to have to clear CMOS. I don't get what concerns you about that.

If it ain't broke, take it apart & see why not!

 

[o1die]

I would use the promise card, as your old mobo is probably running any hardrive at ata 33 speed. The new controller will run it at ata 100 or 133. After you clear the cmos using the jumper, or by removing the battery, if the board posts ok, your brother can take it from there. Maxtor has a program called maxblast (free download) that will permit you to make an exact copy of the old hardrive files over to the new drive. All you need for the controller card is an empty pci slot. I would install the old drive to the controller card first, and load the promise driver when prompted. Set the old drive as master, and the new drive as slave, and use the maxblast program to make an exact copy. Then reverse the settings after the files have been copied to the new drive, and put the drives on separate ports. Most controller cards have 2 ports available that will run 2 hardrives each. If you run them on the same port, the new drive may run at the slower speed.
<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1><EM>Edited by o1die on 05/13/03 07:28 PM.</EM></FONT></P>