Calling Computer Guru's.

[Burn]

Well, let me start by saying I have a background in computers, and I am about halfway through an electronics engineering degree. So, I'm pretty competent with computers. This damn thing has me stumped. I have my main machine down and in shambles at the moment, because it wont read any IDE drives. When I pulled out one of the hard drives(not even touching the main HD) I tried to boot it up and it goes through the bios screen, reads no drives. I've tried different configurations, including stripping it down to no cards, and just the main HD. Nothing. I really don't want to give up and say the controller just "went bad" but I don't know what else to try. I really don't want to order a new motherboard.

[heartfielder]

Try using your secondary IDE cable that you hook your CD drive(s) to. This may get you to read a single drive to start. Also make sure your single drive is set to single and not specifically Master. Make sure your bios is set to AUTO for drive type, it may have been changed for some unknown reason.

Start there ...

[texasfury]

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[Burn]

Bios doesn't recognize anything primary or secondary IDE. tried new cables, tried many HDs, and cdrom drives. Notta.

[gemini8026]

Doing lots of computer work over the years, I feel your frustration. Sometimes a cap or something on the mobo dies, and you cant diagnose it worth a shit, and it's pretty much like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

If possible, try reflash the bios, and if that doesnt work, :s

use another comp, find the mobo's latest bios, make a boot disk, and try that!

[mjtripper]

It's always good to have a cheapo pci ide controller laying around so you can use it to eliminate the on board controller as the problem. Disable the on board in the bios first and try to use the pci card to access the drive. If it's toasty and you have to get to your data, put it in an external usb drive box so you can get to your stuff from another machine. While on the subject of data, you have backups right? Sometimes when a controller goes it takes your data with it by writing random crap all over your connected drives. Pretty rare, but it does happen.

[xenophobe]

Are you pulling a SATA drive to use a secondary IDE as a boot drive? If so, you need to go into the bios and select the specific drive to run as boot, and it has to have a system installed to boot from... make sure you're selecting the proper IDE channel and drive (since most mobo's will have two IDE channels, not including a CDR/DVDR IDE channel).

Do you have the jumpers on the IDE drive set correctly? Master, Slave, Master w/secondary... etc.. Do you even have to worry about this anymore? It's been a few years since I touched any drive IDE installations, but if you're running IDE hard drives, they need to know if they're master w/o slave, master w/slave, or secondary drive...

Also make sure you're putting the right drive on the right IDE connector. IDE ribbon will have 3 or more connectors. An IDE cable with 4 connectors, one end will be floppy/CD, the next will be drive 1, the second will be drive two, and there will be some extra space and then the mobo connector. On a 2 drive connector, one end will be for drive 1, the middle connector drive 2, the other end will be for the motherboard/ide card.

On a newer IDE controller/motherboard it may not matter which connector you use, but on older pre-ATX layout it may.

[GWARGHOUL]

Controllers do go bad. Especially lower-end boards that have one controller for two IDE, or SATA devices.

If it won't even read a simple optical drive, thats a good indicator.

You could TRY to flash the bios, but generally, its not going to fix the symptom, which seems electrical.

Theres always PCI IDE/SATA controller cards...or even better, scsci

[thetroy]

what gwarghoul and gemini said sums up anything helpful that I might have said

[DonP]

Well, let me start by saying I have a background in computers, and I am about halfway through an electronics engineering degree. So, I'm pretty competent with computers. This damn thing has me stumped. I have my main machine down and in shambles at the moment, because it wont read any IDE drives. When I pulled out one of the hard drives(not even touching the main HD) I tried to boot it up and it goes through the bios screen, reads no drives. I've tried different configurations, including stripping it down to no cards, and just the main HD. Nothing. I really don't want to give up and say the controller just "went bad" but I don't know what else to try. I really don't want to order a new motherboard.

So you are saying you just pulled a secondary drive out, and now it won't recognize the master?

If you tried putting in the old drive back in (the way it was when the computer was last working) and that doesn't fix it, time to start shopping.