ATA/IDE boot problems

[The51]

Hi,

I just recently rebuilt my P4 in a 486 server case, and had have some boot problems with most of the drives. First and foremost, I have a 120gb Seagate HDD and a 40gb Maxtor HDD (Don't ever buy a Maxtor!). Well, the seagate boots fine but has a corrupt version on XP on it, as for the maxtor, the bios recognizes it but nothing can read it! Not even the win2k setup, I also get a disk I/O error before the setup starts. The win2k setup recognizes how big the maxtor is but says "Setup cannot read for disk". I've tried running the POS diagnostic tool for the drive but that cannot even recognize. Now, with all the drives out of my case except for a 6.4gb HDD and a 52x CD-RW. I tried to install win2k, I set the first boot device as the CDROM but the CDROM won't boot! I've tried win2k and XP but it doesn't seem to boot. I hope someone can help, I'm very frustrated...

 

[AND_YOU_ARE]

For the maxtor have you tried using fdisk in dos to delete the partition and then create a new one, then format it and try to install an os.

 

[neversleeps]

i think the problem is a little deeper than that, with nothing being able to see it and cd roms not booting etc i have a feeling its not the drive. maybe the bios is corrupted or battery is almost dead and settings keep goin back to default as soon as its shut off, etc etc. i would look further into it than just the drive but hey i could b wrong tho and it is the drive

 

[TheMajor]

Check the cables, jumpers.
Set the IDE channels to "Auto" in your BIOS.
Connect to different connectors on the cable.
Try different jumper settings (MA/SL or cable select)

 

[The51]

I'm doing a low level format, hope that works!