I have an Asus P4C800 Deluxe board that has been driving me nuts. If you know about this board, you know it is LOADED with features which include 2 UDMA IDE ports and 2 SATA ports on the SB, and a Promise controller handling a pair of RAID SATA ports and a RAID IDE port. There is also a GB of RAM and a P4 3.0 800MHz CPU in it. Here is where I am scratching my head:

I set it up and wanted to install just a CD-RW and 120GB PATA hard drive. I hooked the HDD to the Primary IDE as the master, the CD to the Secondary IDE as the master, disabled the RAID, set the boot sequence to CD->HD, and fired it up. Everything was OK until it came time to hit enter to install XP. It told me there were no hard drives. Hmm, so I checked the manual and all my settings were correct, I had SATA+PATA selected and IDE was in enhanced mode. Tried again, same thing.

So I selected PATA only and now my drive was Master on IDE3 and CD was Master on IDE4. Well, I tried it this way anyway and no drive detected. Understand that I was having no problem getting the BIOS to recognize it. Thinking that it may just need to be partitioned and formatted first, I slapped it on the testbench and set up 2 20GB partitions and 1 80GB partition then formatted them. Took it back to the P4C, adjusted the BIOS back to the settings the manual recommended, no hard drive recognized.

So for the hell of it, I enabled the RAID controller and set it to IDE, then moved the drive to the RAID IDE port. Loaded the driver when asked and...no drive recognized. So then I changed it from IDE to RAID and loaded the driver when asked, no drive recognized. The BIOS and the Promise Controller both recognized the drive correctly.

Even though the drive was new, by now I figured there had to be a hardware problem so I slapped in another that had XP on it. Booted right up. Now I went to go ahead and load a new copy of XP on this drive that just booted so I booted to the CD and... no drive recognized. Now I knew it couldn't be the hard drive. I went back into the BIOS and tried every combination of IDE configuration that was available, moved drive jumpers around, and even swapped a few cables, flashed a new BIOS, but it still wouldn't recognize the drive.

The BIOS can see the drive, the Promise Controller can see the drive, and both fdisk and delpart on a Win98 boot disk recognize the drive. I also used two different XP install CD's and even swapped the CD-RW out to see if that was the problem.

The fact that the drive I installed with the OS booted right up tells me how I am going to get around this problem, I will do an install using the 120GB on my testbench right up to the point where you get the first reboot, then move it to the P4C. But this is strange, I have never run across anything like that before. Any ideas on why?

I had the same problem with my ABIT mobo and called Tech Support - they were NO help. I continued fiddling with the setting in the BIOS and found a solution that held true on my mobo and every other ABIT motherboard I have used to date.

Enable BUS MASTERING and see if that gets you anywhere - it makes no sense why this would have anything to do with it but it worked in my case.

I am not at the board right now, but pretty sure it is enabled by default. If not, I will give it a shot after work.

the problem [could] lie somewhere between XP's medium detection and the hardware not giving the loaded interface drivers the correct format of medium description, this can happen if the default drivers loaded into xp (from the cd) arent "quite" updated and / or are faulty, everything in the BIOS would be just fine, and the system would boot just fine was well, but the generic drivers loaded for the purpose for installing windows just do not want to make friendly with the controller...

EDIT: possible solution

[obvious] load updated drivers for your motherboards PATA, RAID, SATA, and whatever drive inteface you are using on to a floppy disk (if possible), and press F6 to load them during install, see if that works, if not, then give the above suggestion a shot, bus mastering was NOT enabled by default on any mobo i have owned that gave the option....[/obvious]

I think you are right abotu bus mastering being on by default. Hmm, i was able to setup the drive no problem. Some boards actually have compatability problems with specific drives. But since you tried two different drives (different models, right?) the odds of both of those not workign in that specific mobo are slim to none.

Any chance you have a SATA drive to test on it?

Well i aint to hip on all this and still learnin but i did a clean install not long ago and was kind of getting the same thing i found out that the xp pro disk didnt have any service packs on it.
Or i would also just pull the pin on the harddrive ,and or get into the bios and and make sure its set to hdd0 ( its wierd but thats the way i have to do it on my epox it wount do anything when i go to hdd1)
I would also look and maybe change connections see if maybe you have some dead or weak power.
Just some thoughts.

Quote: Originally Posted by BigAkita I have an Asus P4C800 Deluxe board that has been driving me nuts. If you know about this board, you know it is LOADED with features which include 2 UDMA IDE ports and 2 SATA ports on the SB, and a Promise controller handling a pair of RAID SATA ports and a RAID IDE port. There is also a GB of RAM and a P4 3.0 800MHz CPU in it. Here is where I am scratching my head: I set it up and wanted to install just a CD-RW and 120GB PATA hard drive. I hooked the HDD to the Primary IDE as the master, the CD to the Secondary IDE as the master, disabled the RAID, set the boot sequence to CD->HD, and fired it up. Everything was OK until it came time to hit enter to install XP. It told me there were no hard drives. Hmm, so I checked the manual and all my settings were correct, I had SATA+PATA selected and IDE was in enhanced mode. Tried again, same thing. So I selected PATA only and now my drive was Master on IDE3 and CD was Master on IDE4. Well, I tried it this way anyway and no drive detected. Understand that I was having no problem getting the BIOS to recognize it. Thinking that it may just need to be partitioned and formatted first, I slapped it on the testbench and set up 2 20GB partitions and 1 80GB partition then formatted them. Took it back to the P4C, adjusted the BIOS back to the settings the manual recommended, no hard drive recognized. So for the hell of it, I enabled the RAID controller and set it to IDE, then moved the drive to the RAID IDE port. Loaded the driver when asked and...no drive recognized. So then I changed it from IDE to RAID and loaded the driver when asked, no drive recognized. The BIOS and the Promise Controller both recognized the drive correctly. Even though the drive was new, by now I figured there had to be a hardware problem so I slapped in another that had XP on it. Booted right up. Now I went to go ahead and load a new copy of XP on this drive that just booted so I booted to the CD and... no drive recognized. Now I knew it couldn't be the hard drive. I went back into the BIOS and tried every combination of IDE configuration that was available, moved drive jumpers around, and even swapped a few cables, flashed a new BIOS, but it still wouldn't recognize the drive. The BIOS can see the drive, the Promise Controller can see the drive, and both fdisk and delpart on a Win98 boot disk recognize the drive. I also used two different XP install CD's and even swapped the CD-RW out to see if that was the problem. The fact that the drive I installed with the OS booted right up tells me how I am going to get around this problem, I will do an install using the 120GB on my testbench right up to the point where you get the first reboot, then move it to the P4C. But this is strange, I have never run across anything like that before. Any ideas on why?

I have the P4C800E Deluxe version....And I ran into a problem similar to this....
At this point anything is worth a try...

First thing that comes to mind....Asus has a pretty good bios at recognizing drives even when they are out of order...Better then Windows can see sometimes...so......

I would suggest putting the drive back the way you started...PATA..NO SATA OPTIONS ON...Try running enhanced...make sure your on the cable the right way...and REMOVE THE JUMPER FROM THE DRIVE....Yeah sometimes with ASUS the Jumpers are gonna get ya. Remove it ...Don't try to force it to master or slave blah blah......use the cable...Especially if your using a Western Digital Drive...
Let me know how that goes...Ill monitor this thread the rest of the day....
Peace Digi
p.s. the caps aren't yelling....easy reference for when you come back to the thread after work

Fuel: Yup, bus mastering was on by default. I disabled it and no change, so it's back on again. All the drivers I have been using are the latest available for the board, as is the bios.

GK: Two different types of drive and unfortunately, my only two SATA drives are performing RAID work in my main rig. I looked and I don't have any PATA to SATA adapters in the junkyard.

Flounder: The drive is recognized as HDD0. When I set it to PATA only it is HDD2. When I pull the jumpers it defaults to Slave. None have worked. Power should be good, it's a Deer 250W (actually Antec 430W).

DW: See above.

I am going to try my trick here in a few. I took off part of the afternoon because my truck needs washing, so I'll do that first. I'm going to pre-load the XP setup using one system, then before it does the very first boot into XP, I will tranfer it back to the Asus rig. I'll let you know how it goes.

Quote: Originally Posted by BigAkita I am going to try my trick here in a few. I took off part of the afternoon because my truck needs washing, so I'll do that first. I'm going to pre-load the XP setup using one system, then before it does the very first boot into XP, I will tranfer it back to the Asus rig. I'll let you know how it goes.

In case it doesn't work out, I can send you an Abit IDE->SATA converter that would solve this
issue given that you have the promise controller drivers loaded in during XP pre-setup.

Quote: Originally Posted by BigAkita Fuel: Yup, bus mastering was on by default. I disabled it and no change, so it's back on again. All the drivers I have been using are the latest available for the board, as is the bios. GK: Two different types of drive and unfortunately, my only two SATA drives are performing RAID work in my main rig. I looked and I don't have any PATA to SATA adapters in the junkyard. Flounder: The drive is recognized as HDD0. When I set it to PATA only it is HDD2. When I pull the jumpers it defaults to Slave. None have worked. Power should be good, it's a Deer 250W (actually Antec 430W). DW: See above. I am going to try my trick here in a few. I took off part of the afternoon because my truck needs washing, so I'll do that first. I'm going to pre-load the XP setup using one system, then before it does the very first boot into XP, I will tranfer it back to the Asus rig. I'll let you know how it goes.

maybe a new ribbon cable.....
also try postioning the drive on the master part of the ribbon....

Thanks, DW, but I had already gone there also.

What finally worked was taking the drive to my bench rig, and loading XP there. I was wrong, it didn't work on the first reboot, I had to wait until the second reboot. Now the damn drive is happy as ever and currently downloading patches. The only drawback to this method was having to pull the drive, and the fact that XP didn't recognize a damn thing after I moved it from an A64 board to a P4 board. But nary a blue screen.

I'm still looking for someone to give me a reason that the drive wasn't recognized. I have a hint, but don't want to test it because it would mean a reload.

Gremlins (not the car), is my best explanation.

Quote: Originally Posted by BigAkita I'm still looking for someone to give me a reason that the drive wasn't recognized. I have a hint, but don't want to test it because it would mean a reload.

I'm pointing the finger at the Asus BIOS on this one...likely a setting.
Unless the IDE controller needs special drivers, the drive should have been detected, period.

I would try a beta or modified BIOS for the board and an XP installation CD w/SP2 Slipstreamed.

Ok let me get all this straight,

You Removed SATA Drives From Rig and cables,

Are you using Rounded IDE Cables?

Also Make Absolutely Sure Your cable is a 40pin Some are some aren't I had similar problems on my P4P800 and using Dual 120GB WD 8MB ATA100 Drives, I have the standard Asus Ribbon cable with one jump set to master and the other set to slave.

If I use my Vantec Rounded cable I boot but no WinXP IDK but the Asus cable works IDK if this is the case but set the HD ->Master and the CD-RW to Slave and use the Asus Cable

~Bob