Cannot Get Past Detecting IDE Drives


Recommended Posts

:cry:

Okay, Today I sleeved my power supply with some cable sleeving and heat-shrinks I bought from frozen cpu (i know right away why would I do that? well i am a neat freak and wanted to case as clean as possible).

Anyway after spending 6+ hours sleeving the cables on the psu (just the ones I needed mind you not all of them) I put together my comp, it started up right away, and then the BIOS was just stuck on "Detecting IDE Drives." It will not get past that part. My BIOS reads the memory fine, so I am pretty sure it is not my MOBO itself. Also I did wear a static guard wrist band while I set everything back up.

So okay I took cables from my power Supply I did not sleeve, and used them to Power up my 2 hard drives and floppy drive on my Primary IDE channel. SAME DEAL. Still cannot get past Detecting IDE Drives.

I have pretty much tried every combination of not hooked up and hooked up IDE drives that I could, all mostly with cables I did not sleeve (undortuantely I sleeved a good amount of them so I have to use them in some form or fashion if I want to try and get my 2 hard drives, floppy drive, 1 cdrw, and 1 dvd rw + graphics card all hooked up at once).

I also tested out the cables I sleeved with fans to make sure they were supplying power, and each and everyone of them work. i also switch out my IDE cables themselves. Still no luck.

Also I cannot hit delete to actually get into my BIOS, although the option is there it just simply will not work (im assuming probably because there is no IDE drives to see in the BIOS)

So I am just wondering does anyone have any idea of what it could possibly be?

Im willing to guy and buy a new power supply tomorrow and see if it just is that I screwed up somewhere, but I really am thinking (and hoping) that is not the case. It was damn cut and dry, and as I said I did also try using the cables I did not sleeve as well. Which leads me to fear the worse like possibly I fried one or both of my hard drives...

Please someone tell me it is something terribly stupid like I have to reset my CMOS or something along those lines.

I really am at a loss... for now I am back to try different combinations of connected and not connected with the IDE drives.

Many thanks in advance to anyone that answers, and I honestly wish I never decided to do this dumb ass cable sleeving.

Dirty Larry

Link to comment
https://www.neowin.net/forum/topic/147556-cannot-get-past-detecting-ide-drives/
Share on other sites

slight little update...

I have unhooked absolutely everything except my hard drive with my OS on it. I am also using a cable to power that Drive that i didnt even get around to sleeving so for all practical purposes that cable is untouched

What is even stranger is every cable I did sleeve, I plugged in a fan to test out every connection and you guessed it, the fan lights up and spins every damn time. Also something I should note is my CD and DVD Drives upon start up would let me open and close them, so obviously they were getting the correct power they needed.

I really am at a loss to what it could be.

Only thing I can think of is somehow, someway i fried either my hard drives, fried my IDE connections, which if it is either of those scenarios that is not good.

If i cant get it working by tonights end I am going to go and buy another PSU and see if for some strange reason that is it. If the PSu is the culprit, it is strange how it is powering the fan and how the CD and DVD Roms had power as well.

Damn this sucks, I had my case looking sweet as could be too.

  dreamz said:
does everything power up properly? is everything connected correctly? have you tried other cables?

it sounds like you did everything right, so i don't know what the problem is.

everything powers up, everything is connected correctly, i am about to try other IDE cables... although i am not sure why my current ones would all of a sudden decided to stop working...that is right now the only thing I can think of... it really is crazy everything is powered just fine... i did a google search and did read something about CMOS, however i have never played around with that, but does anyone out there think if perhaps i reset my CMOS (what happens when you do that anyway???) that could perhaps fix the problem???

  dreamz said:
resetting cmos just sets the bios to the factory default.  take out the battery for 5 mins., then put it back in, and you can start all over again.  you might as well give it a shot, as you have nothing to lose.

it's such a weird problem, though.

your telling me dreamz your telling me... i had to do some work for a client but now im back on trying to figure out what the hell it is... im going to try and reset the bios to factory default with the CMOS... as you said right now i have nothing to lose thats for damn sure.... thanks for your help... oh and by the way changed the IDE cables as well... nothing at all still the same problem... im going to go out and get a power supply tomorrow and hopefully that will do it... although i can say I don't know why all of my cables are able to power the fan i test it but nothing else... aaargh its been a long, long day, and it aint over yet....

EDIT:// resetting the CMOS didn't do jack, but honestly I did not think it would anyway.

So I think I have the following possibilities...

1) I properly screwed up sleeving the power supply. Then again it is quite strange how everything is getting power- from my fans, to my hard drives, the my dvd and cd drives...

2) I somehow fried my hard drives. Which if this is the case then it sucks, and while not the worse monetary scenario (honestly though they are all bad since im unemployed) perhaps the worse case scenario i could imagine because i have not backed up in quite some time.

3) I somehow fried my IDE connection on my motherboard. If this is the case, it looks like I might be going 64 bit sooner than I expected, which I really wanted to hold off.

damn, damn, damn

Edited by DirtyLarry

man, that's really unfortunate. i have no idea how sleeving can destroy your hardware. perhaps you misconnected something and it fried, but that's about all i can think of right now.

i'd check all the parts again and test them in another pc to make sure that they're truly non-functional.

also see if you can get replacement parts from the manufacturers.

i hope you figure out what the problem is, though.

You mentioned before that you could not get into the bios with your hard drives installed. Try removing your hard drives, powering up, and see if you can enter bios. If you can enter bios without hdd's then you can probably rule out a mb/cpu problem (my first thought was that your cpu was overheating and causing your comp to freeze while detecting hdd's.)

Also, this may sound kind of obvious and you most likely have tried it already, but are your ide cables plugged in the right way for the jumber settings on your drives (just setting each drive to cable select will solve this problem). And finnally are you using 80-wire cables or 40-wire cables, the older 40-wire cables caused huge hdd detection time increases during bootup on my system before i replaced them.

  dreamz said:
man, that's really unfortunate. i have no idea how sleeving can destroy your hardware. perhaps you misconnected something and it fried, but that's about all i can think of right now.

i'd check all the parts again and test them in another pc to make sure that they're truly non-functional.

also see if you can get replacement parts from the manufacturers.

i hope you figure out what the problem is, though.

thanks much dreamz (Y)

i must say you are always positive and always do try and help out whoever and whenever you can and you always are supportive, that is truly a admirable quality and i respect it 110%

im going to try a new power supply tomorrow. i mean logic says i sleeved the power supply so perhaps somewhere somehow i screwed up. although in the back of my head i know that it would have really took some effort to screw up, it really was easy as can be and i was even labeling individual wires as i went along, but im trying to remain optimistic and hoping it is the power supply. im just going to get it at best buy and if that is not the solution ill return it, since best buy is really easy to return things as they just don't know any better... "i got the wrong thing" is all yu have to say...

i really am starting to think though it might be my hard drive themselves and something happened to them, or at least my primary drive. i tried hooking up literally nothing but my primary drive, no fans, nothing, with some psu cable i did not even touch, so that is not the greatest sign to me.

i wish i had an extra comp lying around but i don't, so im going to have to wait until the weekend to troubleshoot everything else if the power supply is not the solution. wish me luck, and i am really hoping this is just truly a case of an id1ot error on my behalf.

  12Iceman said:
You mentioned before that you could not get into the bios with your hard drives installed. Try removing your hard drives, powering up, and see if you can enter bios. If you can enter bios without hdd's then you can probably rule out a mb/cpu problem (my first thought was that your cpu was overheating and causing your comp to freeze while detecting hdd's.)

Also, this may sound kind of obvious and you most likely have tried it already, but are your ide cables plugged in the right way for the jumber settings on your drives (just setting each drive to cable select will solve this problem). And finnally are you using 80-wire cables or 40-wire cables, the older 40-wire cables caused huge hdd detection time increases during bootup on my system before i replaced them.

okay good suggestions for sure.

im able to get into my bios no problems at all with all drives disconnected. so okay good we know its not the mobo itself, but does that completely rule out the ide connection on the motherboard as well? i am afreadi maybe that is what is not working you know?

and my jumpers are untouched since my last set up, and i definitely have the ata cables connected to the right drives themselves. i did not try cable select though so i will give that a whirl right now thats also worth a shot...

and i am using the 80 wire ide cables.

good suggestions though, let me see if changing the jumpers to cs on both drives does anything at all (Y)

so with everything i have said above, do the experts here at neowin think it could it in reality be the PSU that is giving me my problems or is it more likely it was a combination of the psu and then in turn i fried my drives...

im off to sleep now (which knowing me i wont get any sleep because ill be thinking about how my computer does not work and all of these games are coming out early next week), but hopefully someone can post by the time i wake up with some expert opinion and advice and im sure ill get more than one post saying what a dumb ass i am becasue this time i know i deserve it....

keep in mind as far as i can see the power supply cables i sleeved do indeed work enough to the point that each and every individual one is able to power a vantec led fan... but then again if i did fry my ATA drive, it had to be a direct result of poor wiring on the psu i would imagine...

i do think either way i am off to buy a power supply because i simply just don't trust this one now no matter what i cant help it contributed and also possibly a new ata drive just in case it is indeed the drive itself..

to enigma... i didnt dare touch the atx cable, i at least knew better than that.. :D

tp psy... regular old ps2 port keyboard, not usb...

okay is everyone ready for this??? A BRAND NEW POWER SUPPLY and i am still having the same problem...stuck on Detecting IDE Drives... so basically it looks like i fried either my hard drive or the Motherboards ide connections...

this is great just absolutely great...

thanks for the compliments, but aww man, sorry to hear about all this. i had this sinking feeling your psu was fine (it's bad because it means something else is wrong). i mean, it's highly unlikely that you damaged it by sleeving it.

if everything else is working fine, it's probably the drive or the ide connector. what happens when the drive is plugged in? do the drives power up? do the connectors look fine (no burn, etc.)? if you have a spare drive, i'd try it out.

  dreamz said:
thanks for the compliments, but aww man, sorry to hear about all this. i had this sinking feeling your psu was fine (it's bad because it means something else is wrong). i mean, it's highly unlikely that you damaged it by sleeving it.

if everything else is working fine, it's probably the drive or the ide connector. what happens when the drive is plugged in? do the drives power up? do the connectors look fine (no burn, etc.)? if you have a spare drive, i'd try it out.

well unfortunately i now know exactly what it is...

it is my ATA drives themselves. Somehow i fried them out.

The reason i know this is i am able to hook up both IDE connections on my motherboard to my 2 CD drives, and not only does my Bios see them fine, i am also able to boot off of them and get my windows installation cd working, which is then unable to see either of my ata drives when trying to install, so it looks like both of my drives are fried and gone...

so the good news is, my mobo is fine and everything attached to it also appears fine through the bios, the bad news is, my 2 drives with my OS and every file i have gathered is gone for good it looks like... funny thing is i did not get a 64 bit processor last weekend from a comp show because i decided i did not want to go through the hassle of reinstalling everything and starting from scratch. now i just might do that, and see what i can get for my processor and mobo on ebay since i have to start from scratch anyway...

well lesson learned, and honestly it had to do with incorrect cable sleeving somewhere, because the drives were working just fine before hand and they are for all practical purposes dead. im going to see if perhaps western digital has some kind of drive repair utility on their site or something along those lines, but that is just me being very optimistic...

Sounds to me sleeving your PSU has nothing to do with your problem, it is providing power to your hardware... thats all it does.

You may have fried something in the process or you hooked something up wrong...

I can also say that some cheap rounded IDE cables tend to break when you move them around or arent careful when you unplug them

Try using the old Ribbon cables if you have any and let us know. Are your harddrives spinning?

Also, use the IDE cable from your cd drives to test your HD's and be sure to let us know.

Western Digital does have testing sofware but it will not work if it cannot communicate with your HD's, so you will need to check the cable first.

Edited by PCKing

if it's physically damaged, no program will be able to fix it, but western digital does have some good utilities. i used the drive copy one and it worked well. i think they're pretty good about rma's as well, so you might want to try that (i might rma an old drive too).

it's odd that your drives are completely dead. i'm just hoping you can attach them as secondary drives and pull your data off, but if that's not possible, then you did lose your data. :(

good luck with new drives and getting everything back up. :)

  PCKing said:
Sounds to me sleeving your PSU has nothing to do with your problem, it is providing power to your hardware... thats all it does.

You may have fried something in the process or you hooked something up wrong...

I can also say that some cheap rounded IDE cables tend to break when you move them around or arent careful when you unplug them

Try using the old Ribbon cables if you have any and let us know. Are your harddrives spinning?

Also, use the IDE cable from your cd drives to test your HD's and be sure to let us know.

Western Digital does have testing sofware but it will not work if it cannot communicate with your HD's, so you will need to check the cable first.

Well the reason I think I sleeved something incorrectly is this... I never disconnected my working IDE cables from my ATA drives at all. I left the cables as was, connected to the Motherboard and to the right drive, and I just disconnected the power supply cables from them (and yes my power was completely off and i was grounded), so technically I never touched my IDE cables at all and left them as they were when working... hence why I cant help but believe it had something to do with the sleeving and a wrong wire hooked up (or perhaps even cut or torn?) somewhere connecting to the ATA drives.

As far as trying to use old Ribbon Cables I also did that, everyone I had for that matter (which was about 6).

I tried hooking up my 2 drives together, 1 at a time as the primary, 1 at a time as the secondary, vice versa so on and so forth...

When either both or just 1 of my ATA drives is plugged in, I simply cannot get into my BIOS at all. Pressing delete just gives me a clicking sound. Its almost as if they are trying to find the data and just get hung up on it.

Well tonight I am going to my friends house and bringing my drives with me. i will plug them into his comp and see if they are recognized, and then I should have my answer right there.

thanks PCKing, and again dreamz thanks, and thanks to everyone who has tried to help me out in this ordeal of mine.

I'm probably going out on a limb but I had a similar problem once and it turned out that my master hard disk had little jumpers at the back. The sticker on the drive showed which pins to short to make the drive master but whenever I did this the BIOS froze at detecting IDE drives. When I removed the jumper completely it worked fine, as the master.

Just a thought.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.