[agum]

hello,
i just bought/assembled (asked someone to assemble for me, to be specific) a new computer, and am having some troubles..

at first, i was having this "No Device is found. BIOS is not installed" problem, but i read in another thread in mobo forum saying that it has to do with the OnBoard Promise feature on the mobo. well, i can't disable it from the advanced BIOS menu for some reasons (the option isn't there), but knowing that it is no problem, i'll just ignore it

basically, right now the problem is i just can't boot up with this hdd, and can't install an OS on it. (so i'm thinking it's hdd problem - but since i'm not sure, i'll post it on this forum) my hdd is a hitachi 120gb.
when i try even the simplest way: partitioned with win2000 setup (just 20gb, for testing, on C), booted with a win98 boot disk, did format /s c:
after that, command.com exists in C: just fine. then i reboot, it says can't boot from hdd (forgot exact wording), so i inserted boot disk again, then dir c:, it says no files found, and there was like 4gb left.

so i wiped everything with win2000 setup delete partition, now forget that i'll just create some partitions here and try to install win98. near the end of the installation it failed. can't install again.

so i wiped everything with win2000 setup delete partition again, then this time i gave up trying to get win98 to work, now i install win2000 only, on the only 1 partition on the hdd (full 120gb), at first it formatted it fine and copied the setup files fine, then i got to the actual installation, and it starts detecting my device, then somewhere in the middle i get: http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~lui/P8300013.JPG

uh... i'm pretty stumped... basically to put it straight, i can't boot up my system no matter what i put on my harddisk - if i boot up with a bootdisk or cd it's fine. because of that, i can't install an OS on it because every time i try, it fails.

if anyone can help... i'll be really appreciated. thanks.

btw, system specs... i don't have them on hand right now, but they are approximately something like this:
P4 2.4ghz
1gb ddr ram
hitachi 120gb hdd
benq dvd+rw
nvidia geforce something..
sound blaster audigy

thank you in advance!!

--

edit:
sorry, deleted the attachment, changed it to a URL, you can find it in the msg above.

 

[agum]

oh yeah, each time after trying to install an OS fails (including the format /s c: and the failure of win98 installation), when i go back to win2000 setup, it will say the partition that i tried to install the OS on is unformatted or damaged (something like that), and when i was installing 98 and failed, it even said the other partition with 100gb (that i left unformatted) is damaged, when i didn't even do anything do it during the 98 installation.

and if you're wondering why i'm using win2000 setup to do all the partitioning... because i think that's the easy way, as the only other way i know how to do it is with fdisk on the win98 bootdisk i have, and i remember it not detecting all the space with a harddrive bigger than 20gb, or something like that. anyway, that shouldn't be the cause of any problems.

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edit:
oh yeah, and all drives (hdd, floppy, dvdrw) are detected fine in the BIOS menu as well as the specs screen after it checks memory and says "No device detected. BIOS is not installed"
so i don't think it's any connection problems with the cables or anything...

 

[Guest]

Welcome to the forums agum..............

Could you edit that picture to about half of it's size and update it in your post.

If you could post the manufacturer of the motherboard it would help a lot.....

 

[johnwill]

Since you can't read the numbers on it now, making it half the size won't help. I think he needs to write them down and type them in.

Since this looks to be hardware problems anyway, the actual error message is probably pointless. I think a good memory test and a disk diagnostic are the first things I'd be trying...

 

[Guest]

I only wanted him to make it smaller so that I don't have to
scroll from side to side................

I was also curious as to if the board has RAID on it..........

 

[agum]

sorry, post editted. changed the attachment to a url.

and no, no raid.

how do i perform a good memory test and a disk diagnostic?

and as for the manufacturer of the motherboard.. i'll have to look it up in the computer.. i'll post a response about that asap.

 

[Guest]

You can get a low level format utility for the drive you have from the drive manufacturer. Or You could also try ZAP.

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe

Run zap.exe to extract the files, and then copy zap.com to a bootable floppy.

 

[Guest]

Or you can go here and download their drive fitness test program.

 

[agum]

thanks, i'll try those in a bit...
my motherboard should be...
MSI 655 Max Series
SiS 655 Chipset Based
MS-6730 (v1.X) ATX Mainboard
Version 1.0
G52-M6730X1-K01

 

[agum]

hello,
i got news on this problem..
i ran the drive fitness test program from hitachi.
first, it detected the drive fine. so i ran quick test. that turned out to be no problem. then i tried advanced test, then it can't detect the drive there anymore... i tried rescan bus, still said no hdd.

so i rebooted and ran the drive fitness test program again... this time i skipped quick test and just ran advanced test. it ran most of it fine but near the end (forgot during which process) it crashed (unhandled exception).

now i'm running the exerciser seeing if it's ok...

i'm kinda convinced that it's hdd problem.... but then since the drive fitness test program crashed (unhandled exception), and supposedly that program should catch all hdd problems? that kinda confuses me...

maybe i should try zap. what does zap do?

[edit]

the unhandled exception happened on the S.M.A.R.T. analysis part of the hdd advanced test.
i ran the exerciser, it also crashed at the same place (S.M.A.R.T. analysis). would you say it's fairly certain that the hdd has problems? thanks for any help, greatly appreciated... thanks all.

 

[agum]

update:
an attempt at low level formatting with hitachi's DFT tool just resulted in the harddisk completely dying....
now when i boot up, the hdd can't be detected anymore. and won't be no matter what i try.

it kinda isn't very normal... like, normally when you don't have a device, it'll just say detecting and say no device found really quickly. but for this one, it tries to detect the thing on the primary master slot for a long time... then at the end it will say nothing detected. this same thing is happening at boot up, BIOS menu, and hitachi's DFT tool.

90% convinced it's hdd problem now... unless it's problem with the mobo's primary master slot? umm not likely =/

 

[Volt-Schwibe]

heh

please tell me that the hard disk is still under warranty...



oh please.

~BoB~