How bad is this?

[Blademancer]

My IDE controller is making me sad, it chooses which of my two harddrives it likes off and on, and i cant slave either one to the tohers, so im constantly getting a BSOD(Blue Screen of Death) and then i have to put the other drive in and it will work for a wile then the same thing. Someone said something about changing a certain setting htat might help, but i dont remember what that setting was, otherweise would i hve to buy a new Motherboard to fix this? or can a IDE controller be fixed without buying one? Any help on this ongoing prolbem would be greatly appreciated, im getting to the"I may just go into debt and buy a new computer for christ sake" point, after many other problems ive been having.

 

[foofoo]

hi,
have you tried replacing the ide cable?
also, what kind of hard drives are they?
is the bios ide detection set to auto?
what operating system are you using?
have you tried running the hard drives on the secondary ide chanel to see if it behaves the same?
have you downloaded the drive utility from the drive manufacturer that checks your hard drives for errors/problems?
if you are using w2k or winxp have you checked the event viewer to look for logged errors?

this should be a good beginning.
also, most often you can not replace the ide controller on a motherboard. it is inthe chipset. you will need to replace it if that is indeed the problem.

good luck

 

[Blademancer]

I am running WinXP, i didnt understand much of what you said, i did indeed replace hte IDE cable, adn the problem pursisted, how do i go about changing to the secondary IDE cable?
Please reply again

 

[Blademancer]

I mean chanell, not cable, secondary IDE chanell, not CABLE!

 

[foofoo]

hi,
to change the ide chanel - there are two ide chanel connectors on your motherboard. ide1 and ide2. usually the primary master hard disk is the boot disk on ide 1. if you think that your ide1 chanel is bad, try moving the cable from ide1 to ide2 and see if you get the same behavior.

but - if most of what i said is not understood then try doing the following things first....

1. go to start => programs => adninistrative tools => event viewer. look in the system log for errors that your computer is having and let us know what they are. also look in the application logs and look for errors that your system may have had.

2. look at your hard disk in the case and see what model it is and who makes it. go to the manufacturers website and download software that allows you to check the drive for problems. check each drive for errors and let us know if the software finds any.

hope this helps.

 

[Escalade]

Maybe this seems obvious, but... is one drive set to SLAVE and one to MASTER? If they are both set to MASTER you?re probably going to experience all kinds of problems. There are usually dip switches or jumpers that you need to set on drive itself to accomplish this.

 

[redbeard1]

Yes, double check the master/slave settings. Some drives have a master with slave present setting, and some have a master/stand alone setting. Not having the drive set to match the circumstance, if it has one of these settings, can cause problems.


Or if the drives are set to cable select, and your not using a cable select ide cable, that can cause issues. Or if your using a cable select ide cable, which wants the master drive in a certain spot on the cable, and the slave on the other spot, and you are using the master/slave setting via the jumpers, and you have them mixed up, that will cause bad things.

Another option is to put one hard drive on each channel.