Problem with BIOS/HDD

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Hello, I'm ss2man44, and I've been trying to fix a computer up for my mom for months.

Whenever i try to boot, it freezes while Detecting the IDE Primary Master (My main HDD)

If anyone can help, it would be much appreciated ;)
 
How have you set the jumper on the drive?
Is it a new or an old pc, i.e. has it worked fine before?
 
ss2man44 said:
The jumper is set to DS (Master).


Ive never before heard of a DS setting on a hard drive!!! There should be 3 different settings, CS which is cable select, MA which is master, and SL which is slave.

I suggest you set it to cable select, then clear the cmos. The mobo manual will tell you exactly how to do that. That may be enough to get it going, if not, let me know and i will help further.
 
rik said:
Ive never before heard of a DS setting on a hard drive!!!

DS = "Drive/Device Single" or "Drive/Device Select"
CS = "Cable Select"
SP = "Slave Present"

ss2man44, you're probably is very likely to be a failing (or failed) hard drive. If you disconnect the drive, I bet your computer gets past POST.

If the jumper was set incorrectly, it may cause it to hang. True. But since you haven't been fiddling with jumpers, this would not be possible. The only likely explanation would be a bad drive.

Some other causes might be an IDE data cable that's somehow not working correctly (oxidization, knocked loose?) or a motherboard problem. These things would be much less likely though.
 
ss2man44 said:
I have been fiddling with the jumpers, and i have tried 2 Cables/HDDs

I would assume your hard drive is bad. Any weird noises?

The best (and maybe only way) to find out for sure is elimination. You should install the drive into another system or remove the drive and install a known working drive into the PC having problems. The only catch is you need to have an extra drive or computer. :)
 
Have you tried clearing the cmos? You said its an old pc that worked fine before, it could still have settings stored for the drive that was originally in it, clearing the cmos will remove the settings for the old drive.
 
This IS the old hard drive, and I will have to try to put the HDD in this computer.

EDIT: I have placed the HDD in my computer and it works like a charm.

EDIT2: Thank you for all your help, i found out that this particular mobo will only go up to 32GB hard drives. I'll download a BIOS update and try again.
 
Hope that BIOS update works. :)

Many drives have a 32GB clip option using the jumpers, although I always hate wasting GBs like that. :(
 
It worked :grinthumb

The HDD i wanted to use didn't have a slot for limiting the GBs, but the other one i tested did, but i didn't realize it until after i flashed the BIOS.

Thanks for all your help!
 
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