CMOS Clear-Bios settings

Hi all: What bios settings might get Windows XP Home to boot from motherboard IDE drive 0 channel 1 when I have a drive plugged into a PCI IDE Controller card.

With no drive plugged in to IDE Controller card, XP boots from MOB IDE channel. Plug a drive into PCI IDE Controller card and all drives are recognized, XP splash screen with progress bar running and running and running, let run 2 hrs, still no boot.

I had already posted this problem as PCI IDE Controller Card??
but after 20 views and no response, I thought I'd try a different approach.

Bios is set to boot from drive "O "

Also, my MOB manual says CMOS may contain the wrong information and to clear the CMOS. I'm reluctant to do that w/o some advice from this board.

Anybody got any advice on any of this???

 

Hi martinr121,
Clearing the CMOS should let the BIOS get a fresh look at the system. All settings will return to default, so before you do, look through BIOS setup and compare it to the motherboard manual. Write down any settings that have been changed from default (there should not be very many, if any).
Follow the instructions carefully (you have to make sure that there is no power to the system).

The problem with the hard drive may be that Windows is having trouble accessing hardware from the different IDE location. Have a look at this, you may want to try it first:
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Matt

 

Hi Matt,

thanks a lot for the comeback on this, I'm so frustrated having already fried a 80GB drive, lost about 20GB of pix and video while trying to fix this, and unable to access 2nd 80gig drive as when it is plugged in the controller card, the system won't boot even though the drive is detected. AARRGH! I've been trying to figure it out for a week.

I followed all the links your post led me to and I think I understand all the +s & -s of doing a repair install. I'd rather do an upgrade install & take my chances of boot failure than try to enter all the DOS commands in the warning at: www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

Try reinstall OS first before CMOS clear?

The MOB manual does not have a list of default settings, just an option in the bios to reset to "fail safe defaults" or "optimized defaults" Would be nice if I could print the bios screens, then I could see what settings those options change.

I have never done a CMOS clear, I have the instructions, real simple, but it seems to me I remember reading a downside somewhere, something about a "checksum error" and boot failure. For now at least, I'm booting and don't want to make it worse. I'd sure feel more comfortable If I knew how to fix a "checksum error "

Is a "checksum error" an off the wall remote possibility or a likely result of CMOS clear? (Of course, working with Windows has made me into a gambling man, click that button and hold your breath) Is there a fix other than a new MOBO. (which I'm tempted to get anyhow, maybe this will make it a requirement?)



Sorry such a long post.

Martin

 

This is not something to be overly fearful of. And, once you've done it, you'll be asking yourself, "what's the big deal?" you can write down your settings, page by page and if you have the paience to wait 2 hours trying to boot, then you certainly have the patience to do this. Main points are to know what your memory timings are, multiplier and CPU Bus speed, AGP or PCI and any onboard stuff that you want to enable or disable. Your setup default will be very conservative and should get you to a clean boot, regardless. You will also find several auto settings are possible, making this an even safer first time experience.

In my book, the definative BIOS guide can be found here.
http://www.rojakpot.com/default.aspx?location=1

Should you run into any trouble, post back or go read from the above - it doesn't get any better than that.

As to your drive recognition, do you need specific mfg drivers for the PCI controller card you installed and do you have the most recent ones - I don't do a lot with PCI/ATA controllers, but do do a lot of RAID motherboards and getting the right drivers is most of the battle with eliminating IDE and RAID controller conflicts - in that case, drivers must match the RAID controller BIOS and usually must be installed first - troublesome task when upgrading or flashing to a newer BIOS. Have also had situations where standard IDE and RAID conflicts prohibited recognition of both at the same time until an OS was installed - meant that one or the other had to be disconnected and reconnected several times during OS installation.

Post back, but don't be scared about clearing CMOS - your caution however is good.

 

I think that when you change IDE location Windows may have trouble with the way it addresses hardware.
Before you throw up your hands and get another motherboard try formating and installing Windows when you have the hard drive in the place you want it (IDE #1).
If you get another motherboard Windows XP is going to have to be reinstalled anyway. (Athough you might get away with it if you installed EXACTLY the same motherboard, but then it will still have the same problem if you try putting it on IDE #1 and not the controller card).
Do the backing up of your data now while you have an operational system.

Matt
PS thanks for helping out Rockster2U

 

Rockster, I don't have that much patientce, I went to town and just let the #@*$ run while I was there. I got to say, I am learning some patientce and a whole lot of humility.

I went to the link you furnished & sure learned a lot about MOB settings, a lot of the settings I have looked at on this MOB were mysteries that I was afraid to mess with, now I have a clue or two. My MOB manual is useless as it has no info on settings and the in bios settings, except for the major ones, have no descriptions. There website is useless too, their only saving grace is free telephone support forever.

Matt: I did an upgrade install, no help. One other thing I learned, either the install or the updates wipe out all of Outlook Epress except the program itself. All my saved message, settings, addresses etc. are gone. I have it backed up so when I get ready I'll restore it, but it is good to know.

I'm sure glad you guys are there to hold my hand, I live in a rural community, only know one other person around here who has a computer.

I just hve one more question for now, how likely is clearing the CMOS to fix this boot problem? Its not that I'm so worried that I'm hesitating, its that the jumper is buried and I'm going to have to almost dissasemble the machine to get at it. I'd like to try it if you guys think it is worthwhile.

And, what Rocster said about the Controller Card drivers got me to thinking, so I'm going to remove and reinstall it just to see what happens. Like this: remove in device mgr. Shut down, remove card, re-start, shut down, replace card, restart. Maybe solve the problem.

 

matinr121,
Hope you're gaining more control over the situation.
There is another way to clear the CMOS and that is to remove the battery, if it is easier to access. Take it out for at least 15 minutes, longer if possible, it takes a while for the capacitors to run out. Same precautions apply as to removing the jumper.

Not sure as to how the system will react, it is always worth a try in my opinion. If you back-up your data you are just about ready for any eventuality and can change things around to your hearts content. Do some research on backing up. I just about have back-ups of backups, but haven't had to use them yet (touch wood).

You may well still have your emails there...try File>Import (if you want to back-up your email use File>Export). Also the people in the "Outlook" forum may help you find them.

Matt

 

Well Guys, You're not gonna believe this! Since Rockster was so kind as to give me the link to the bios setting explanation, I was mucking around in the bios, changing some settings per Rocksters site & opened the PNP section.

Guess What? Plug & Play setting in bios was set to for OS2 operating system!

Now, even though I am absentminded at times, I know for an absolute certainty the previous setting was for PNP and I never, never changed that setting to OS2!

When I saw that, the light bulb went on. Sure enough, when I reset for PNP, reset BIOS to look for new configs, shut down, plugged
HDDs into card, rebooted, system booted!!!! WITH drives plugged into PCI controller card!!!!

Got New Hardware Wizard on reboot!!! System asked for Card drivers! Drivers on CD unsigned. Did'nt install unsigned drivers, will start looking for signed drivers. Device manager has card with yellow flag. Propertes says device can't start. I just know it will when I get the right drivers.

Even though I've worked on this problem for weeks, and the solution turned out to be one simple simple bios setting, I don't feel so stupid like I usually do after finding a simple solution to a what seems to me to be a very complex problem because I learned a lot from this one. One thing is when having this kind of a problem, always check all the bios settings !!!!!

Thanks so much for all of your help, I never would have got this far without it. It is so great to know that if I can get the system to boot and go on line, there are people like you who care and are so willing to help.

I'll post back when I get that card working. (notice the confidence) I'm going driver shopping now.

Martin

 

Oh my !! The BIOS. The gremlins got in and did it. I usually keep mine set to no PNP OS. But I have had problems and found it back on PNP OS.

Drivers not being signed does not mean they are not suitable for use. I have not run into it yet with XP but in SE half of the so called signed drives would not work well as the unsigned ones.

When I first put XP in my neither my Audio or Video drivers were WHQL. I upgraded them to WHQL and I saw ABSOLUTELY NO difference. Other than DirectX saying they were now OK.

BillyBob

 

Not to fear - go with the unsigned drivers and I think your problems will soon be behind you. I know most of the newer Highpoint drivers that I use - V2.32 & V2.34 aren't aproved for win2000 or XP, but both operating systems like them a lot better than their own versions. In fact, with XP on some Motherboards, its the difference between HDD's on the RAID controller being recognized or not recognized.

 

Martin

A well deserved victory!


Matt

 

Unfortunately, a hollow victory!

Got the correct drivers from: www.siliconimage.com

Installed drivers

IDE Raid controller drivers installed correctly

Yellow caution gone from device manager

Rebooted

Boot up screen 1, IDE MOBO detects all IDE drives

Boot up screen 2, IDE Raid detects all attached drives

Windows Starts (this is progress?)

Open My Computer

Drives connnected to PCI raid controller card not there, not available for use.

AARGH!!

At the end of my rope!

 

Yes AAGH,

Did you remove the old drivers. I would suggest going into Safe Mode and remove any listings in Device Manager, then try again.


Matt

 

mattman with excellent advice there - and, its certainly not time to throw in the towel - don't even think about it! Once you've pulled all the drivers, you can try this a couple of ways. Try those drivers you searched all over for and if they don't work - safe mode it again, remove em all and try your original unsigned drivers. If that doesn't work, disconnect everything on the regular IDE headers and tell us what happens then ??

As mentioned earlier, I've been through something similar with an ABIT KG7 RAID MB which required connect - disconnect - connect - disconnect several times during an installation because the drives on the RAID disappeared whenever anything was on the regular IDE headers. Once I had an OS installed,everything became readable.

I feel your frustration but you are very close.

 

OK, I am tempted to throw in the towel, but since you guys think I should keep going, I'll have at it.

But no more today, I have been devoting almost full time to this for a couple of days, and I'm wore out as of now.

As they say, tomorrow is another day.

Many thanks for your encouragement.

Martin

 

Yes Martin, have a break from it if you're frustrated, let your head clear. You have seen some light at the tunnels end, now (like Rockster says) it's just a matter of time before you get there.

I always find a few new tactics when resuming a battle after a break.

Matt

 

Gentlemen: I surrender!

Without going into excruciating detail, a quick update:

I spent the whole day yesterday trying to get the machine to boot with "C" on the PCI card and have the drives on the MOBO IDE channel available.

At about 2:00 yesterday afternoon, I succeeded. everything up and running, I was so happy. I ran the machine like that for about half an hour, rebooting several times. It was time then to replace the 20GB drive on Channel one of the PCI Card with the new 80GB drive I bought to replace the one I fried earlier in this exercise.

I did

The machine refused to boot.

After repeating every step I had taken from the begining of this futile effort, time after time after time, and failing at every turn, at 12:30 AM this morning, I gave up., I unplugged "C" from the card plugged it into the MOBO, plugged the other drives into the PCI card.

Now, all up and running, new drive formatted. Machine A OK.

There is only one minor problem. (Oh yeah, minor, HA!) I will not be able to recover from a crash. If I boot from either one of my backup program's CDs, neither program (Acronis, Drive Image 7) can see the "C" drive. I guess because it is not on the MOBO.

Which is why I started wrestling with the machine in the first place.

If I had kept track, I could have made Guiness Book of Records, maximum number of computer reboots in any one 24 hour period!

So, there you have it. Windows XP wins!

Martin

 

Hehehe ..... Sorry to hear it, but you gotta step back and chuckle - these kind of problems are a frustrating, royal pain in the butt - however, once you solve them - ****, thats what keeps you coming back for more.

Not as familiar with XP as I should be, but is there an import foreign disk tool in Disk Management? Also, do you have any kind of control-H prompt during start-up so that you can access the PCI controller - you made need to mount or dismount volumes, re-detect a new drive, set parameters, create an array, repair an array - (just one place to look, probably a couple more that warrant attention too.)

Have you tried redetecting drives in the regular bios? Are you sure the drive is active?

 

Hey Rockster: I just got back from my wife's birthday lunch, a quick read of your post. Maybe I really haven't surrendered, it is kind of humorous, if only it was happening to somebody else!

A couple of your suggestions you made are intriguing, and I guess I just can't let Windows win.

After my nap, as I didn't get much sleep last night, I'm going to take a couple of more shots at the bios, CMOS, drive settings in Disk Management etc. What the heck, if we can beat this one, we should be able to do anything.

Martin

P.S. I just got my copy of Scientific American. Apple has a two page spread with a picture of the inside of their "fastest pc in the world" All that is visible is what appears to be the backs of some circuit boards. No Drives, No wires, No fans, no slots, no nothing.

What fun would that be?

 

Hi Martin

Still being a royal pain, is it?

Can you tell us more about what you want to achieve here. Are these the back-ups of your old HD?

I am wondering if the files on the CD can be copied to a hard drive and booted from there, but I am not sure what your goal is.

You cannot get those programs Acronis and Drive Image to "open" the back-up files?

Matt