New Motherboard WON'T recognize drives! - Any Ideas?

[ocfun]

I have a new Asus PK5-e Wifi motherboard and parts. With no drives hooked up, I first went into BIOS and had no problems. Then I hooked up a IDE DVD rom and it powerd up but wasn't recognized. Booting from a CD won't work either. So thinking there was a problem with the CD drive, I disconnected it and tried an IDE Hard Drive. It was spinning, but it also could not be found. Thinking it was the cable, I changed it to the ASUS IDE cable in my box and nothing.

Next I disconnected all IDE devices and decided to try a SATA Hard drive. I hooked it up, started the system and it finds nothing. BIOS says it sees nothing when I go into it. I've built lots of systems before, but I can't think of what could be wrong. Unless there is some setting wrong in BIOS, I'm starting to think the motherboard is defective. Does it sound like it's defective, or did I miss something important? From what I understand, the BIOS should be configured to automatically just find new drives. Does this sound abnormal or am I missing something?

System: Asus pk5-e bios v0806 board v2.58 , tuniq tower, Q6600 G0 at stock 2.4ghz, ocz 2x2048 pc6400 (checks out fine), 8000GT card. -- Drives tested: Western Digital 500GB IDE and 500GB SATA, and Sony DRU-840A IDE DVD burner.


edit: Here are 3 Screen shots from the Asus BIOS, to show what I see -


MAIN BIOS page:
http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/2507/56874838gr8.jpg

After selecting SATA1:
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/8869/34786263so8.jpg

After selecting SATA Configuration:
http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/4130/15104121vn0.jpg




However, it may be going the wrong path since these drives should be automatically detected. At least I thought so.

 

[chookman]

the p5k-e uses a seperate chip for the IDE connector, this can be disabled in the bios (probably the case) can be easily enabled refer to manual if you cannot find the setting.

As for the SATA this is a little stranger, but you may have to just enable IDE setting on SATA instead of RAID or AHCI

 

[roadrunner197069]

Try resetting CMOS.

I hope you didnt plug in the drives with the power on.

 

[ocfun]

the p5k-e uses a seperate chip for the IDE connector, this can be disabled in the bios (probably the case) can be easily enabled refer to manual if you cannot find the setting.

As for the SATA this is a little stranger, but you may have to just enable IDE setting on SATA instead of RAID or AHCI

I checked in bios and it lists 6 SATA devices 1-6 all saying "Not Detected". On the right it says
"While entering setup BIOS auto detects the presence of IDE devices. This displays the status of auto detection of IDE devices". I'm looking through the menus but nothing jumps out at me. Also it seems to favor SATA but ignores SATA drives as well.

 

[ocfun]

Try resetting CMOS.

I hope you didnt plug in the drives with the power on.

I turned off the switch to the power supply in the back and wait for the green light on the mother board to go out before even attempting a hardware change.

 

[ocfun]

Here are 3 Screen shots from the Asus BIOS, to show what I see -


http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/2507/56874838gr8.jpg

http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/8869/34786263so8.jpg

http://img392.imageshack.us/img392/4130/15104121vn0.jpg

 

[roadrunner197069]

Try changing enhanced to compatible.

Heres a dumb question but I must ask it.
Do you have the HDDS plugged into the sata ports on the mobo and do you have them plugged into power from the PSU?

 

[ocfun]

I don't mind the question, thanks for suggestions.. also I can try the cmos thing. I just tried it and it still won't detect the SATA drive unfortunately. The sata cable goes into the sata port on the motherboard and it's also connected to power. I tried 2 sata cables as well. For IDE, the IDE cable went to the only IDE port available on the pk5-e and it also had power. I could feel it spinning in my hand.

 

[roadrunner197069]

Id say you got a junk board. That is wierd.

 

[rockbyter]

for the sata, try a different power connector. i've had a couple of the adapters and one power supply with a loose wire where if not seated correctly, the drive would spin up, but nothing would actually happen with it. As far as PATA port, check your jumpers, cable select and on the end of the cable. Something has to work.

 

[rockbyter]

When in windows, it is entirely possible to change out sata AND pata drives that are not primary with this board, as well as others. go to device manager - remove the drive you want to remove. Wait for it to stop using it, then remove the power, followed by data cable. Plug in the new drive's data cable, then power, and click search for new devices. Any drive will come to life for usage without rebooting. Convenient when you need it, but not something to do on a regular basis.

 

[roadrunner197069]

When in windows, it is entirely possible to change out sata AND pata drives that are not primary with this board, as well as others. go to device manager - remove the drive you want to remove. Wait for it to stop using it, then remove the power, followed by data cable. Plug in the new drive's data cable, then power, and click search for new devices. Any drive will come to life for usage without rebooting. Convenient when you need it, but not something to do on a regular basis.

Hard to get into Windows when you cant install it because your drive doesnt show up at all on a "new board"

 

[antas]

Hard to get into Windows when you cant install it because your drive doesnt show up at all on a "new board"

Except if you were Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible He can do everything ..

@op Seems to me that you did all necessary things properly, I think I would say the same with roadrunner, you got the bad mobo ..

 

[coldneutron]

@op. Does the led on the cd drive light up at all? Is it a new psu? maybe the 5V lines to the molex connectors have a bad connection in the psu, in which case the drive motors could spin up but the drive would not be detected because the drive controllers are powered off 5V. can u test the 5V lines at the molex with a mm? one psu i used had a bad internal connection on the 12V lines to the molex and no drives on that line were detected because the motors didn't spin up. i opened the psu (voids your warranty) and resoldered the connection and it worked fine for years after that.

 

[ocfun]

Thanks for the reply. Yes, the cd light does come on, but I have better news. I found the problem. It turned out that by updating my bios it recognized ALL drives. What I find really strange is that the BIOS from the factory is a recent update. It goes up to like November 1st, 2007.. Or maybe 10/31. So it didn't seem logical that I would need an update just to recognize Sata and IDE drives when the concept has existed for a long time and so has the board. I think the reason is that the Q6600 wasn't fully supported. So it caused some problems. It doesn't seem that related, but if the cpu isn't functioning correctly that could do funky things. However, I'm not really sure why it helped. Unless maybe the bios was messed up and by me flashing it, it reset it somehow. Also the temperatures were badly messed up. But after the update they were fixed. Whatever it was, it's gone thankfully. I've had some other weird issues with the motherboard software crashing, but hopefully it's just bugs. -- LOL at Antas post and Tom Cruise. Also thanks to everyone for trying to help.

 

[antas]

Gee, that was strange, perhaps your BIOS got messed up from the factory ... Anyway it's good to know it's working ... One more problem solving knowledge to stack up into my tiny brain ...

 

[Cynikill]

One thing you might try:

I have the P5K MB, and I originally had a 200GB WD SATA drive as a secondary drive - it started get write-delay errors, so I thought the drive was biting it so I went out and bought a new 500GB WD SATA drive.

Although my ASUS MB detected the drive, it wouldn't complete the XP install - it kept crashing at the end. Additionally, it would only detect the drive if I set the jumper to limit it to 1.5GB transfer rate. Looking through the forums, people were commenting on how WD drives don't work well with the MB. I replaced the WD drive with a Seagates, and all appears to be well*.

Try going to another brand of HD - WD does not seem to work well with the board.

Cyn

 

[Yozitaki]

I am having a similar problem with an ASUS P5QL mobo, however updating the bios did not work. My first problem was the computer being stuck in sleep, and the only way I got it out was the remove the battery on the mobo. (I had tried to turn it off, take out power, even replace my gpu thinking that was the problem... it was stuck like that for a long time) After I did that I had two successful boots and then turned off for the night. The next day I turned on my computer and it did not read any SATA ports. I have checked the power and even changed the sata cable... after another day of this I will just bring it to some shop to be fixed... any suggestions? Thanks

 

[conca666]

i've got a similar problem with my p5b board it been working lovely now it wont recognize my ide drives, it also won't let me reset bios. i've tried the turn off power, take cable & battery out, leave for 30 mins( more like overnight), but my bios still stays at 2101