New hard drive on Soyo Motherboard

[jklandon]

I just installed a new hard drive on my computer, I am replacing an old 7 mb HD, with a WD 60 5400. I installed the hard drive and installed Windows XP, it was working fine, then I unplugged everything to put my computer back together and it would not read the disk. I thought maybe it was a bad disk so I hooked up my old HD and it too could not be read. Is my motherboard bad? I am using a Soyo K7VTA-PRO? Any help would be appreciated. Also, I noticed when my computer was looking for the IDE controllers, there was a line that said no 80-conductor cable, could this be the problem? I know this cable makes them run better but should it keep it from reading it?

 

[vegasgmc]

You need to use an 80 pin IDE cable. One should have come with the new hard driver. Your old drive most likely uses a 40 pin cable.

 

[jklandon]

My new hard drive came from Newegg OEM, no cables or anything. I ordered one, but I am still wondering why my old hard drive wont be read? This makes no sense.

 

[jklandon]

I am having a really bad day, I just put back my old hard drive in and it finally worked, HELLO, there is windows XP. Then I rebooted to see if it would come up again and you guessed it, it was gone. The next reboot, I could not even get into my BIOS. HELP PLEASE. Should I order new computer and quit stressing or what.

Thank you in advance.

Sincerley,

The Desperate Computer Housewife.

 

[Lunatic]

Make sure that everything is plugged in well. That could be why the computer is not booting.

 

[jklandon]

Yes, I have done that, it seems my motherboard is bad, doesn't it seem odd that the hard drive works great then, whithout touchin anything, it can't be read?

 

[Lunatic]

Try unplugging everything except the harddrive, remove all cards as well. If you dont have onboard video leave that card in. Then try starting the comp that way, if it boots then you know something you took off is bad or going bad. Then to find out what the problem was plug in what you took out, one at a time.

 

[jklandon]

Okay, I unplugged eveything and still nothing. What is your opinion, go shopping or keep trying.

 

[Lunatic]

Is the mother board getting power? Do the fans on the processor and power supply come on?
Check power connectors as well, especially the one going to the harddrive.

If something needs to be replaced it would be cheaper to replace the one thing then the whole computer.

 

[jklandon]

Yes, the fans get power buy the monitor does not. Keep in mind that this is a made from scratch computer, I have taken leftover parts from vaiours machines to make this, nonetheless, it has never given me problems until the last couple of months. In addition to the other problems, tonight while working on the computer I had an memory dump error.

 

[Lunatic]

How far into the boot sequence does the computer get? Do you get anything at all?

 

[jklandon]

No, it does not even show on the screen at all. The strange thing is that it was letting me into the BIOS, now nothing