Epox 8k3a (no RAID)
WD 1200JB + WD 800JB HDDs
I think my problem lies in my motherboard, but I am asking a few outside opinions.
The Epox motherboard has always given me a few small problems, like one of my USB plugs does not work on it, and the I/O panel does not light the front lights on the case.
My problem is with my IDE setup and my HDDs. The board has primary / secondary ATA/100 hookups only. On the Primary, I had my 800JB with my OS on it as master, and 1200JB as slave, used for storage only. Secondary has always worked fine- it houses a 24x CDRW, and a 16x DVD-ROM.
I turned my PC on tonight, after it worked fine ALL day long, and it kept restarting right after it checked the RAM, and began to load the BIOS / POST. So, I reset the BIOS, and after that- everything with the IDE is all screwed up.
The only way I have got anything to work is with just the 80gb OS drive plugged into master on primary, with "fail-safe defaults" in the BIOS selected. I have ruled out hte possibility of a bad IDE cable, and my CD drives still recognize and load fine.
I have hooked up both drives just about any way possible, still with no luck. The most interesting thing about it all is- I can just have the 800JB hooked up, and start into WinXP just fine under the fail-safe defaults in the BIOS, but if I reboot and switch it to optimized (loads more things, like USB, etc.) it had a HDD failure at the POST.
Any ideas? The MB is less than 6 months old- so I could probably RMA it-
Need more suggestions on how I can test to make sure it is the Motherboard, and not a bad HDD. Tomorrow I will plug both HDDs into a seperate PC to make sure they both work fine. I am pretty sure the 800JB is OK, and I am not sure about the 120GB.
Anything at all is appreciated, Thanks.
WD 1200JB + WD 800JB HDDs
I think my problem lies in my motherboard, but I am asking a few outside opinions.
The Epox motherboard has always given me a few small problems, like one of my USB plugs does not work on it, and the I/O panel does not light the front lights on the case.
My problem is with my IDE setup and my HDDs. The board has primary / secondary ATA/100 hookups only. On the Primary, I had my 800JB with my OS on it as master, and 1200JB as slave, used for storage only. Secondary has always worked fine- it houses a 24x CDRW, and a 16x DVD-ROM.
I turned my PC on tonight, after it worked fine ALL day long, and it kept restarting right after it checked the RAM, and began to load the BIOS / POST. So, I reset the BIOS, and after that- everything with the IDE is all screwed up.
The only way I have got anything to work is with just the 80gb OS drive plugged into master on primary, with "fail-safe defaults" in the BIOS selected. I have ruled out hte possibility of a bad IDE cable, and my CD drives still recognize and load fine.
I have hooked up both drives just about any way possible, still with no luck. The most interesting thing about it all is- I can just have the 800JB hooked up, and start into WinXP just fine under the fail-safe defaults in the BIOS, but if I reboot and switch it to optimized (loads more things, like USB, etc.) it had a HDD failure at the POST.
Any ideas? The MB is less than 6 months old- so I could probably RMA it-
Need more suggestions on how I can test to make sure it is the Motherboard, and not a bad HDD. Tomorrow I will plug both HDDs into a seperate PC to make sure they both work fine. I am pretty sure the 800JB is OK, and I am not sure about the 120GB.
Anything at all is appreciated, Thanks.