Computer won't boot after new HD

[Rico]

Ok so I got a new SATA HD for christmas and today I go and unhook my old HD's (IDE 30 gig and 15 gigs) and then hook up the new SATA drive (Western Digital 320GB). This is where I start to have problems.

I start my computer and it posts... the it hangs. I try to enter bios, my keyboard stops working. I reboot and try again, it hangs while saying "entering setup" ( I hit delete to get into bios). I leave it for l ike 30 mins and it just doesn't enter setup.

I figure I had to reset the cmos because the pc is still trying to use IDE HDs, so I reset it and try again. Same Issue.

At this point I start to get frustrated and decide that if I can just get ino bios, I can change some settings there and maybe flash it. So, I hookup my old HDs and try to boot my PC... Same problem.

I am now stuck with a computer that won't get past the boot screen no matter what. I know everything was working perfectly before I tried to put in the SATA drive. I cannot get into bios now or even boot to windows from my old drives, so I could really use some help.

I tried unplugging my RAM and u sing a stick that I know works... still the same results. Now my keyboard isn't even being recognized and it's very frustrating.

Any help?

Specs: AMD 64 3700+
Mobo: Asus A8N5X
RAM: 2 gigs DDR 2100

 

[Asus]

When you were pulling stuff out of the PC was the power supply (PSU) in the back turned off? It is possible something got shorted. Could see if reseting the power helps by flipping the PSU's switch to off and wait 20 seconds (hear a small zap sound) and back on.

If the PSU was switched off, I'm not sure what could be wrong. No beeps? Just hangs? Maybe unplug all the cables and put them back in. Maybe something got bumped and isn't quite connected. And don't just have the IDE cable plugged into the board but with no hard drive. The board might not like that and get confused.

(Sometimes my USB keyboard doesn't like to work in bios and dos prompt screens. I usually pull out an old PS2 keyboard.)

 

[Rico]

Yeah the PSU was turned off when I do anything inside my PC (I also unplug the power cable). The computer posts just fine, A single beep indicating everything is OK. Right after that it hangs though, and I can't get into BIOS no matter how long I wait.

I got the keyboard to work but all it does now is just tell me "entering setup" until I get sick of looking at the screen and shut it down. It basically just hangs in the mobo's splash screen.

 

[Asus]

Try resetting cmos again.
Unplug power cord, remove battery, move cmos reset jumper to pins 2+3 for 10 seconds, move jumper back and then put the battery in again.

Tried going into bios without any hard drive? Might have to flash the bios although since it is hanging I'm wondering how much good it will do since it could be the ROM chip itself.

 

[Rico]

Ok I managed to get it to boot.. it seems it didn't like when I unplugged one of my cd drive for some reason. It's weird, first time I've seen that.

Anyways I stumbled onto another problem. Now I can boot to the new HD and I try to install XP Pro. Its fine and it starts loading all the different drivers and stuff but as soon as it loads them windows just gives me a blue screen with the error code 0x0000007B. I've now tried 2 different windows CDs only to get the same results. Any ideas?

 

[Asus]

SATA is newer than Windows XP. XP doesn't know what SATA is and has no drivers for them on the CD. I put a floppy drive in my PC temporally with drivers on the floppy disk to get my install started. Another way.
But I don't remember a BSoD when it came to the part to the OS on a drive it couldn't see. Maybe there is some other issue.

 

[Javert]

Try a Windows XP CD with SP2. Those recognize SATA's.

 

[Raziaar]

Just a silly question... did you change the boot order? You will NOT be able to get into setup oftentimes if you have a hard drive set to be the first boot device that doesn't have anything on it. For mine I have to always set my dvd drive to boot disk priority one when setting up a new windows installation.

 

[Barney Fife]

SATA drivers are included in SP2 like Javert said.
Also updating BIOS would sort out most installment issues.

 

[Rico]

I am about to update my bios.

As far as my boot order, I have my CD drive as 1st boot, then my SATA drive.

I don't have an SP2 WinXP cd handy, though I may be able to borrow one from work tomorrow.

Thanks a lot for the help so far... this HD has been quite a bit of a headache.

 

[Rico]

Hmm flashing didn't work. I flashed it to the latest bios and nothing changed.

I am working on slipstreaming an XP SP2 disk to see if it helps, but for some reason I feel like it might not.

We'll see I guess.

Also, I tried to get the SATA drivers from my mobo's CD but every time I put them in my floppy they give me problems. I didn't find any SATA drivers for my motherboard online, does anyone know where I could find some that work?

 

[Asus]

Try the chipset drivers under utilities. Should have a folder within for SATA drivers.

Also wondering, are there any jumpers on the board regarding SATA ports that you need to change?

 

[Rico]

Nope, no jumpers on the board regarding ATA. However, my HD is SATA 3.0 GB and my board supports only up to 1.5 GB. To solve that, the HD came with a jumper which I set to limit the transfer rate to 1.5GB precisely to make sure that wasn't a problem.

Thanks for the driver link, totally missed it for some reason I thought these drivers would only work from a windows environment.

 

[Rico]

I found a fix for my problem. Essentially, I unplugged all my optical drives and rewired everything. I got rid of my extra CD drive which I had set to slave and set my other DVD-RW drive as 2nd master. I then went ahead and got XP with SP2 and installed XP just fine.

I think the main problem was that XP was thinking that my optical drive was a Hard Disk, and then when it came time to install XP, it obviously failed because it was trying to install XP to a CD rom drive, not my SATA disk.

Many thanks for all the help!

 

[Barney Fife]

GJ Rico; solving the issue. Sometimes when you sit back and look, it'll all play before you.

Happy motoring.