Drive Not Listed in BIOS

[painead]

I need to make my Plextor DVD drive the first bootable drive. I've looked in BIOS and my options are as follows with the floppy being the first bootable drive.

Floppy 3.5
IDE-0: ST380011A

And that’s it, there’s a line for CD/DVD but it’s blank. I’ve looked up my configuration and it goes like this:

Primary IDE Channel
-Master: ST380011A

Secondary IDE Channel
-Master: Plextor DVD
-Slave: CD-RE-CDR

How do I get the DVD drive into the BIOS listing so that I can boot from the CD? I'm guessing I need to change cable connections or something. The PC has always been set up like this, I've just never needed to boot from CD before. Thanks in advance!

 

[Rik]

What mobo (motherboard) do you have?

There should be an option for boot sequency somewhere in your bios but i need to know what your mobo is before i can advise you on how to sort it.

 

[painead]

I'll get back to you with the exact mobo (thanks for definition!) number when I get in from work. I know that it has ASRock written across it if that helps.

 

[painead]

The motherboard is ASRock K7VM2. Any help would be much appreciated - I just can't figure this one out and everybody I've spoken to just says the drive should be in the list!

 

[Rik]

Just in case, do you have any spare ata data cables, sometimes a drive not showing up correctly can be caused by a faulty one. I will look up info on your mobo when i have time.

 

[painead]

I'll order a spare cable and give it a try. When the machine was built I remember it being booted from floppy so I just don't think it was ever set up to boot from CD.

 

[painead]

I'm not 100% sure which cable I need to replace but I did find a spare ribbon cable. I've used this ribbon cable to replace the ribbon connecting the DVD drive to the mobo but I still have the same problem in BIOS.

I can see what looks like power cables going to the DVD drive (red,yellow,black) which only leaves one other cable which I guess is what you refer to as ada, it's a thin cable with 3 wires (black,white,red) and it connects the DVD drive to the sound card. Sorry I can't be more specific but if you recommend replacing this cable I'll try and find a replacement and make the switch.

I appreciate time is given freely on this site so if/when you find a spare moment then let me know what you think. The PC is working so my world has completely fallen apart yet Cheers, A.

 

[iss]

it's a thin cable with 3 wires (black,white,red) and it connects the DVD drive to the sound card

That is an audio cable and has not bearing on the drive showing up in the bios. and if you are running XP it is unecessary. in XP the sounds goes thru the PCI bus, so audio cables are not needed.

The cable you need to try replacing is the IDE cable it is the flat wide ribbon.

 

[Rik]

The ata cable i referred to is the ribbon cable. Have a look at the bios for boot order and see what that says. Examine each entry on it and let me know what it says. I haven't been able to find an online manual for it as yet (I've been busy) but i will however have a better look when i get chance.

 

[painead]

Thanks iss. I've now replaced the flat ribbon cable with a brand new one and the drive still doesn't appear in BIOS. The problem must be a setting somewhere I guess. My PC has become unstable after running some registry fix software, it keeps freezing and just now the screen went black and asked me to boot from the floppy. I don't have a floppy disk so I powered off and it re-booted fine. After 3 years of amazing service my PC was in need of some attention but obviously registry fix was a bad move. I have the original XP Professional disc so I want to re-format, I can't do this without first setting the first bootable drive to DVD.

 

[painead]

Hi Rik, no probs with being busy, i'm just amazed that people can help out online-it's great!

Take a look at my first message, the boot order you mention is described there. I literally only get 2 choices, floppy and hard drive. Using my Nero software I got the info on my DVD and CD drives, this info is also listed in my first message. Hope this helps, my machine is still alive-just.

 

[iss]

Did you just recently install the plextor? is there a chance that both the plextor and the Cd drive are both jumpered as master and causing a problem?

 

[painead]

I installed the Plextor over a year ago. I found the original box last night which is where I got the replacement ribbon cable (the drive came with the cable but I didn't need it).

I made a point of ensuring the jumper was correctly set so I don't think this is the issue. Also, if you go back to my first message and look at the information I got from Nero (re my drives) the Plextor drive is defined as Master and the other CD drive is slave, this is how I set the jumper.

Thanks for trying, it's worth eliminating this stuff in case I've missed something obvious. I'm no computer expert, just a home user that only looks at this stuff when I need to.

 

[Rik]

Try setting them both to cable select then make sure the plextor is on the end plug.

 

[iss]

What motherboard do you have? and have you ever updated the bios on it?

 

[painead]

Rik, you've just found my limit re PC know how. How do I change to "Cable Select"? The Plextor drive is on the very end of the ribbon cable, the other CD drive is on the same cable but plugs in half way along. I think this is what you were hoping to achieve.

Iss, mobo is ASRock K7VM2. I updated BIOS version 2 years ago and checked for updates a year ago, there were no new updates but if I can remember how to check I'll check again.

 

[painead]

I've checked BIOS version and I have 1.90 which according to the ASRock site is still the most current.

 

[iss]

I would disconnect both the power and the IDe cable from the CD Drive and see if that makes a difference.

 

[painead]

I tried disconnecting the CD drive but unfortunately it made no difference to the list of drives in BIOS.

If I re-formatted the PC and just hoped that I could re-boot using the Plextor drive but was unsuccessful would it be a complete disaster?

 

[iss]

it wouldnt be aproblem as long as the Cd Rom was bootable. or as long as either drive was recognized by the bios, then at least you could use a 98 boot disk and use command prompt to navigate to the set up folder to start the installation.

one last thign you might try though is, set the bios to default settings save and exit. see if it then recognizes the plextor.

 

[painead]

Unfortunately neither the CD Rom nor the Plextor drive appears in the BIOS list. I'll try saving the settings to default as you suggest.

 

[painead]

Thanks guys for all your help. In the end a mate helped out, he re-formated the PC for me and booted from floppy.