confuzzled

[BroadbandPlacey]

acquired a computer to fix the other day,

P2 333mhz 8.5GB HD is about all i know about the specs

it originally had a mobo blow up on it, so my brother got hold of another one. switched the two over... turned on "no operating system installed" was the error message, it would go into dos from a bootable floppy but wouldnt format or open Fdisk, the error message was "no Fixed disks present"

so ive brought it home and put the hard drive in my shuttle - the shuttle booted into windows 98 no problem - all the files on on the HD still there

my XP install HD in this computer recieved the "no operating system" treatment

is this a borked Mobo?

[BroadbandPlacey]

oh forgot to say thankyou :D

and anyone got an old P2 motherboard?

[M3ta7h3ad]

I do have an old p2 motherboard, but im using it for my sisters computer.

You'll be looking for a Slot 1 board if its similar to mine.

[Slamdog]

slot 1 mobo....

hmm...


will look, although I might have sold all my old ones now.

[David]

If it displays "no operating system" at least there's some life in it. Before you bin the mobo you might try swapping the jumper on the hd from CS to MAS or vice versa. If you've got a spare IDE cable you try that too.

[Paddy]

Yep first thing to check is have a look in the BIOS and see if it reconises that there is a HD there, or have a look at the screen during POST and it should detect all IDE devices installed :)

If it's not popping up in either 2, then as David said try swapping the simple things like the IDE cable or the jumper settings before getting a new mobo, or maybe try a different HD!

[BroadbandPlacey]

we have tried a different HD, my XP HDD it came up with "NO OS Installed"

it doesnt detect the HD in the BIOS

It doesnt detect it in POST

different IDE cables made no difference

alltho i havent tried this jumper setting, tell me more?

[M3ta7h3ad]

Before you chuck the board, get hold of a bogstandard pci ide controller card, the ide controllers on the board could be fried, but I happily ran a computer like that with a pci ide controller card (cost a tenner I think) for a while :)

[BroadbandPlacey]

oh but the floppy drive DOES work...

[David]

alltho i havent tried this jumper setting, tell me more?
Just one thought, have you changed all the primary and secondary IDE devices to Auto in the BIOS? You probably have.

As for the jumpers, on one end of the HD there should be a few of pairs of pins with (probably) a clip (a jumper) over one pair. This is to force the HD to be a Master, Slave or let the position along the IDE cable decide it (cable select). Usually there's a little diagram on the top of the HD to show to where to put the jumper. The diagrams show someting like MA, SL, CS (master, slave, cable select). I sometimes read these upside down (d'oh!). Most systems are perfectly happy with CS for everything but some mobo/bios combinations won't play nicely unless you set the master and slave (if any). I've even had one HD that refused to be primary master or primary slave but was happy to be secondary master.

[M3ta7h3ad]

oh but the floppy drive DOES work...

Yeah so it did on mine as well. just the hard drive controllers were fubar'd.

and what dave says is true, its old boards are fussy as hell when it comes to cs/mas/slav.

[BroadbandPlacey]

cheers i'll have another play (always wondered what the CS setting was....)

[Totem]

I got a ide pci controller card if you need it.

[BroadbandPlacey]

cheers totem i might get back to you on that

[wizard_uk]

You have to be careful with XP, as it will be setup for the computer that the HDD was originally installed for, so you cannot just bung the HDD into any old comp, you would have to wipe XP and do a re-install.

[Twigman]

well you can to a limit...might as well try and see tbh...lol

[BroadbandPlacey]

does anyone have a pci IDE controller i can borrow, ill pay postage, then send it back