[Bawls1488]

Im putting together a simple tower thats made with spare parts. I plan on turning it into a media/seed box. My problem is that Im trying to get XP installed to make sure that everything is working and compatible. When I boot up it goes through its checks and sees what im pretty sure is the cd drive as the Primary Master but it doesnt see the Primary Slave. It then continues on and shows the message DISK BOOT FAILURE. Im pretty sure that its not my hardware thats failing because I pulled all the parts out of working machines. I do have XP installed already on the hard drive if that makes a difference. Any idea whats going on?

EDIT
I realize now that it might help if you know what my hardware is
80gb Western Digital HDD Model# WD800BB-75FJA1
Compaq CD Drive Model# LTH-486s
Compaq Power Supply Model# DPS-250RB-1A
SIS Motherboard withan Intel Celeron installed

Edited by Bawls1488, 06 July 2010 - 12:07 AM.

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Howszit Brawls1488 and Welcome to GtoG,

You didn't mention the MB model, but I would try to make sure that the hard drive and CD drives jumper pins are set correctly. If the MB has two IDE channels then I would also try to keep them separate by putting one device on each channel. The jumper pin settings are normally printed on the label and all you need do is change their position using a pair of needle nose or a tweezer to grip the pin.

If the hard drive already had XP on it, it will need the drivers for the SIS MB and to be re-activated with MS when it's ready, (you would need to boot from a XP CD and then either do a clean re-install, or repair the existing XP installation. You will need the MS Product key to re-activate.

Hope this helps...

Edited by Mark D, 06 July 2010 - 02:02 AM.

[Mark D]

Howszit Brawls1488 and Welcome to GtoG,

You didn't mention the MB model, but I would try to make sure that the hard drive and CD drives jumper pins are set correctly. If the MB has two IDE channels then I would also try to keep them separate by putting one device on each channel. The jumper pin settings are normally printed on the label and all you need do is change their position using a pair of needle nose or a tweezer to grip the pin.

If the hard drive already had XP on it, it will need the drivers for the SIS MB and to be re-activated with MS when it's ready, (you would need to boot from a XP CD and then either do a clean re-install, or repair the existing XP installation. You will need the MS Product key to re-activate.

Hope this helps...

Edited by Mark D, 06 July 2010 - 02:02 AM.

[123Runner]

When I boot up it goes through its checks and sees what im pretty sure is the cd drive as the Primary Master but it doesnt see the Primary Slave

Place the hard drive as the primary master and the CD as a slave. The hard drive should alwas be the master.

Is the hard drive being detected by the bios?

The chance of you actually booting with that hard drive and actually getting in to the OS are slim. It does need the board specific drivers as Mark D has indicated.

[Bawls1488]

Howszit Brawls1488 and Welcome to GtoG,

You didn't mention the MB model, but I would try to make sure that the hard drive and CD drives jumper pins are set correctly. If the MB has two IDE channels then I would also try to keep them separate by putting one device on each channel. The jumper pin settings are normally printed on the label and all you need do is change their position using a pair of needle nose or a tweezer to grip the pin.

If the hard drive already had XP on it, it will need the drivers for the SIS MB and to be re-activated with MS when it's ready, (you would need to boot from a XP CD and then either do a clean re-install, or repair the existing XP installation. You will need the MS Product key to re-activate.

Hope this helps...

Thank you sir for the welcome.

The reason I didnt give a model number for the MB is because there are a bunch of different numbers all over it and im unsure which one is correct lol.

When I put the HDD on the Primary IDE and CD Drive on secondary It doesnt get past attempting to detect the Primary Master.
With the CD Drive on Primary and HDD on Secondary it does detect anything for the Primary Master or Slave and gets stuck on Secondary Master. I cant F4 through any of it either.

When I boot up it goes through its checks and sees what im pretty sure is the cd drive as the Primary Master but it doesnt see the Primary Slave

Place the hard drive as the primary master and the CD as a slave. The hard drive should alwas be the master.

Is the hard drive being detected by the bios?

The chance of you actually booting with that hard drive and actually getting in to the OS are slim. It does need the board specific drivers as Mark D has indicated.

That was the configuration I had it in when I made my first post. But even when I switched them around I was getting the same result.

Also, the BIOS is not detecting the HDD. When I tell it to start auto detection It does nothing. I cant even press escape to exit.

[rshaffer61]

Disconnect the cdrom and put the hd on the master part of the ribbon. Without connecting the cdrom back up does the bios now see the HD by itself?
Do you know the manufacturer of the hd as this may help to find the jumper configuration to set it correctly.

Edited by rshaffer61, 06 July 2010 - 05:54 PM.

[Bawls1488]

Disconnect the cdrom and put the hd on the master part of the ribbon. Without connecting the cdrom back up does the bios now see the HD by itself?
Do you know the manufacturer of the hd as this may help to find the jumper configuration to set it correctly.

No. It doesnt detect any HDDs. Ive tried at least 2 different HDDs and none of them are detected.

[123Runner]

There is usually only 2 reasons the bios does not see a HD.
Either the cable or drive is bad.

Did you reset the bios to default and try another ide cable.

[Bawls1488]

There is usually only 2 reasons the bios does not see a HD.
Either the cable or drive is bad.

Did you reset the bios to default and try another ide cable.

Well the other day I took it over to my friends who is good with this kinda stuff. He said that the MB couldnt handle the HDD that was connected to it. He said this was due to the fact that its such an old MB. He said that he could tell that it was an old MB because it had what ISIS (Sp?) slots on it and when he was in his junior year of highschool he was taught about them in regards to them being part of legacy systems.

Does this make sense?

[Mark D]

Wow, if you're talking about the long brown expansion slots instead of the smaller PCI, then we are talking old stuff. See if the western digital hard drive has a pin setting to limit it to 32 GB. The MB might see it then, but I doubt that it be able to run XP. Maybe Win98 / 95. It will be able to do Win3.11

Good luck

Edited by Mark D, 08 July 2010 - 02:21 AM.

[123Runner]

If you limit the drive size it should see the drive. If it does not then you will probably be looking at a board.

Did you reset the bios to default and try another ide cable.

Did you do this?

It should run XP (barely)
Minimum specs are 64mb ram, 1.5 gb drive space, and 233mhz processor.

[Bawls1488]

Wow, if you're talking about the long brown expansion slots instead of the smaller PCI, then we are talking old stuff. See if the western digital hard drive has a pin setting to limit it to 32 GB. The MB might see it then, but I doubt that it be able to run XP. Maybe Win98 / 95. It will be able to do Win3.11

Good luck

If you limit the drive size it should see the drive. If it does not then you will probably be looking at a board.

Did you reset the bios to default and try another ide cable.

Did you do this?

It should run XP (barely)
Minimum specs are 64mb ram, 1.5 gb drive space, and 233mhz processor.

Now that I know this thing is actually a POS im not even gonna bother with it lol. I appreciate everybodys help with this though.