BIOS doesn't show HD's properly.

[specopsx734]

Hey all hope this is an informative forum.... lets begin with the prob...

for the past couple of weeks ive been with a computer then without a computer and bck and forth so on.

The problem is my HD's. Basically theres been a bunch of diff things happening over the course of the past weeks that have all been temporarily fixed. just to come back again. i have 2 SATA HD's in my comp, a 200gig maxtor and a 320 gig seagate.... the maxtor has my OS on it (windows xp home edition). so the problems im experiencing r as followed:

1. BIOS doesn't show HD's .... at the moment its showing my 2nd master (the seagate) but not the 1st
2. rebooting hangs at device listing screen (symptom of boot priority error that im workin on without a prop)
3. When trying to repair and/or reinstall windows... no partitions r visible ( like the HD isnt even in the comp.... even though everything is in rite. this is a recent problem but a most annoying one so any help would be most appreciated and would keep me commming to this site

happy hunting all

Thread moved to the correct forum.

 

[Tmagic650]

Is your SATA controller properly configuered in the bios? How about the boot sequence? Did you change any bios settings or update the bios before you noticed this problem?

 

[specopsx734]

Is your SATA controller properly configuered in the bios? How about the boot sequence? Did you change any bios settings or update the bios before you noticed this problem?

I honestly am like 18 points above average when it comes to comps.... so i dont really knwo how to check or properly configure the SATA controller..... i havnt updated the bios but was told it mite be a good idea to do so to see if that might help.

as far as the boot sequence i had changed it becuz hard-disk wasnt the first priority then i changed the hard-disk configuration to make the one with the OS go before my storage one worked well for a nite then in the morning i woke up and the comp had crashed and the problems presisted again...that was this morning ( i like to leave my comp on sumtimes if i dont get much sleep becuz i have a alarm clock on it) now i do use virtual drives and when i was last about to install daemon tools it had said that it doesnt work well with kernel debugger so i switched to power-iso which says nothing about that...but do u think that mite be a problem?

 

[Nodsu]

Do you have a reset button? Do you get the hard drives detected when you push reset? How about when you enter the BIOS setup and then exit after a couple of seconds?

 

[specopsx734]

its actually kinda weird u would say that cuz sumtimes it goes with no problems... then sumtimes it has the problems as said above

 

[Nodsu]

It could be that your computer is trying to detect the hard drive before the latter has managed to start up completely. Delaying the drive detection with something like entering the BIOS or hitting Pause or doing a reset without poeroff should fix that.

It could just as well be a weak PSU or loose cables or a dodgy hard drive itself.