back to bug you guys some more :lol:

 

 

 

the problem i am having now deals with my second hard drive. when its not hooked up, my computer starts right up. when i hook it up, it takes 2 minutes checking both hard drives on startup, and then it blinks on a blank screen for a bit, then pops up this message: "Reboot and select proper boot device or put media in the boot device and press any key."

 

 

 

things ive tried so far:

 

1. many different jumper configs for the hard drives. cable select on both, master and slave setup, no jumpers at all.

 

2. changed hard drive priority in my bios. the one that is supposed to be first is first. even changed it around to see what would happen.

 

3. changed boot device priority. but hard drive first, cd second. put hard drive second, cd first. put floppy disk (which i dont even have lol) first and all other positions.

 

4. turned off the raid settings, but this was just for my SATA slots. i dont have any serial ata hard drives, so i dont think it matters either way.

 

5. press f8 on startup, i thought that was supposed to go into safemode. apperantly it brings up a menu of all my different drives, and allows me to pick which one i want to boot. i picked the one with xp on it, still gives me that error.

 

 

 

both hard drives check out ok through the opening sequence, it just takes about a minute or two a piece for the computer to check them. when i only have one hard drive it flies right through it. the only thing i can think of is something thinks their is two OS, and its trying to get a dual boot menu. i really dont know though, i just know i cant lose the data on that hard disk. already lost enough by formatting this one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and something completely unrelated to that, i am going to buy a new monitor. im thinking 20" widescreen. im thinking this one. would that be good? is it worth the price? the problem is my credit card is maxed, so i have to buy it at a store. all i got is about $800 cash on me, so i cant spend more than that, and would rather not spend anymore than $500.

 

 

 

 

 

thanks in advance once again :D

For the first thing:

 

Are you using S-ATA, IED, or both? Sounds like you are using both in which case you are screwed becaus the BISO (righ the thing that you go in to when you hit F2) will always boot to the IED HD first no matter what you do. Of corse you could just put your primary HD on a IED cabel and problem salved. Or this could be a simple case of swaping around wires untill you find the right combo.

 

 

 

For the second thing:

 

Go with what you like.

 

 

 

Vene

Ok , in order to help you , i'm going to need a bit more information

 

 

 

You said you dont use SATA , nor do you use RAID , so thats 2 things we can scratch off the list .

 

 

 

Are you installing the HDD's on the same IDE cable , and the CD/DVD on the other? When you say you are trying different jumper settings, are you changing them both or just on the problem drive? Is the one you want as the Master drive on the END of the IDE cable , or the middle (it should be on the END)

 

 

 

(is there anything on the second(problem) drive? or is it newly fdisk/formatted?

 

 

 

use those questions above and describe IN DETAIL , cable location , jumper settings (both) , ETC.

ok, ill try my best :D

 

 

 

primary ide channel has a 60 gig hard drive with windows xp pro installed on it at the end, for the master setting. my secondary channel holds two dvd drives, one rewritable. havent even touched those, they i dont think are the problem. i want to put my 160gig hard drive in the slave slot on the primary ide channel. when i plug it in, i get that error. i even have my 60gig hard drive set first in the bios, and when i hit f8 (on startup) it will give me a menu, with all the drives (including the 160 gig) available for me to choose which one i want to boot from. i chose the 60 gig, and it still gives me that error.

 

 

 

alright, jumper settings. my master (60gig) is on the end, and the problem drive (160gig) is on the middle one, for the slave. they both have jumper setting diagrams. my master one has 4 different settings on the diagram. cable select, master, slave, and no jumper for a master without a slave. the slave hard drive (160gig) has a generic diagram for all of the hitachi hard drives, so it has 4 different settings for 4 different kinds of drives, totalling 16 combonations. figured out which one it was, so that leaves us 4 settings. cable select, master, slave, and another one, dont know what it is. all 4 use two jumpers. now what i have tried so far: master set to master, slave set to slave. master set to cable select, slave set to cable select. master set to master, slave set to cable select. master set to cable select, slave set to slave. master with no jumpers, slave with no jumpers. many differenet other combos i cant even remember, none of them that make any logical sense. one time, i had the slave hard drive on one of the settings for a different type of hard drive, and i cant remember what the master was, but it did boot up. the hard drive was not in "my computer" or in the "device manager". did a new hardware wizard, to no avail.

 

 

 

the only thing i can think of is xp thinks i have another os installed on my slave hard drive, and is tring to bring up some sort of boot select thing. alternatively, my motherboard might think something like that too. i put in my xp cd once, booted up the computer. it said it would check the current hardware setup, said that for about 10 minutes. the disk was no longer spinning in the drive and neither harddrive was making noise, so i dont think it did anything.

 

 

 

thats pretty much all the info i have, i do have one question though. can i plug the hard drive in while the computer is on? i dont think you are supposed to, but if its possible, i could at least get the data off of it and back the data up, and if i dont get it to work i could try reformatting. the only thing is, i cant lose the data on the second hard disk. i cant no matter what.

could it be a power issue?

 

 

 

i would dissconnect all other drives and everything BUT your video card..

 

 

 

if it boots with both HD's you need MORE POWER...

 

 

 

if its not that.. i don't know man

When i got a big hard drive i had to flash my bios to get my mobo to recognise it.

When i got a big hard drive i had to flash my bios to get my mobo to recognise it.

 

 

 

im hoping its just something like that, although i couldnt find anything on the asus website about it. and i have no idea how to update my bios, i think i tried once to get my video card to work, but it didnt do anything. it supposedly was able to do it through windows, but the program would error everytime. and i havent used dos in a while, and i dont have a floppy drive, so my options are pretty limited there.