Pri Slave Drive - ATAPI Incompatible Error Msg

[black_jamm]

Long story short:

- took harddrive out (20 GB, win XP) and put new one in
- new drive (8 GB, win 2000) wont boot up, as i have now discovered after consulting with those of finer computing knowledge
-put new drive back in, and get Pri Slave Drive - ATAPI Incompatible error msg, and automatically tries to boot from floppy, whether or not it is even installed
-compounding my frustration, i CANNOT push del to enter setup, as this seems to be a foreign concept to this american megatrends (or whatever it is spelled) motherboard
-after 6 hours of hooking up multiple IDE cables in every fanthomable possible imaginable acrobatic way concievable, frustrations really have come to a boil
-no, no jumper settings have been changed.


HELP!!!!!!!!!!

 

[elpresidente2075]

What motherboard/CPU are you using? Why are you swapping around old hard drives? Are you using a USB keyboard?

HAVE YOU RESET YOUR BIOS? You may want to do that, just to rule it out.

 

[black_jamm]

It is a Celeron 1.3 Gig, coupled with an American Mega Trends Motherboard... unsure the specifics right now, as I would have to shut this computer down and hook the other one up to check - I will get that information for next post if need be....

I was swapping around harddrives because I thought (in error) that I could slave both the 20 gig drive with xp on it as well as an empty 160 gig drive to an 8 gig drive with win 2000 on it, and then just copy and paste the contents of the 20 gig drive to the 160 gig drive in order to get xp onto the larger drive (reinstalling xp fresh on the new drive IS an option... however, my copy of xp isnt with me and it will be at least a few days before I get it back)

now that I know that i need an imaging program to do this properly, does anyone know a good imaging program I can download?

keyboard is ps/2, however I do have a new keyboard that is usb that I could use..... would this make a difference?

How do I reset the BIOS? I suspect that that could work....

 

[elpresidente2075]

There should be markings on the motherboard itself that tell you the make/model of the board. The fact that it is kind of old might be a factor in this issue.

The reason I ask about the keyboard is that a lot of older boards won't recognize a USB keyboard unless you specifically tell it to look for it. This is not your problem in this case, as you are using a standard PS/2 interface. You may want to try pressing other buttons as well, as its booting. If there's just a big picture saying American Megatrends or something, hit escape and you should see all the post stuff going on. The key to press to get into the BIOS could be something other than del. I've seen ins, f2, f10, and several others. If it's going too fast hit the pause/break button and it should stop it so that you can see which button to press. Press pause/break again to get it going again.

To reset the bios, there should be a jumper next to the battery that has three pins and a jumper over two of them. It will be isolated from any other jumper block. You'll need to unplug the system, then switch the jumper to be on the second two pins, rather than the first two pins. Leave it there for a minute or two, then switch them back. Plug it back in, and you have successfully reset the bios (hopefully). The way you can tell is that it should stop and say something about the cmos checksum error, press (whatever key) to enter setup. If it isn't reset, do the same thing, just let it sit longer.

If there is no jumper block, you'll have to unplug the system then pull the battery out of the motherboard. As with the jumper, let it sit for a while then put it all back together. Continue on as above.

Now that we have that out of the way, I need you to explain to me exactly how you have all these hard drives are hooked up. It may just be how you have it configured.

Downloadable imaging program? I don't know of any free ones, but SourceForge.net would definitely help you in that regard. Search for one there. As far as pay-for programs, Norton Ghost, along with others do the job quite well, and most with guarantees and such. IMO though, its better just to have a fresh install of XP. You'll spend more time trying to get the imaging program to work right than I'm sure its worth, especially with an open source one. Not to mention, its good for your computer to have a fresh install once in a while, just to clean the cobwebs out of its filesystems.

 

[black_jamm]

I got the drive working!!!!!

Thanks for all the help - I managed to get into the BIOS and disable the quick boot. It was F2....

And the drive? This is where I sheepishly smile and say that it was the jumpers after all. I quick visit to Maxtors website determined the correct settings. All I have left to do is set up the new drive.

Thanks Again!

 

[elpresidente2075]

Well, there you go. Lesson learned: READ THE MANUAL! Its designed to fix these problems before they escalate...