k7S5A problem

[lsman]

about MB will only occasionaly detect the HD and CD-Rom.
my exp. is this:
at first setup, my k7s5a will detect the HD and after a cold boot, it will "lost the memory of what HD" i had, but the rest of the setting is "saved". While the MB need 4-5 mins. to search my HD, which afterall said cannot find it.
The answer to my problem is that my WB HD has jumper said "Master", "Slave", "Cable select" and "SINGLE" drive. The hard drive is new and i test it before i move to this computer and i am careless to note the jumper setting. If your setting is a lone drive on the IDE1. Make sure it is set to "SINGLE" or "Cable select" (use the end of the cable to connect to the HD)
And may i suggest to reseat the RAM (and possible to start with 1 DDR first)
Tell me if you get some result.

 

[eddieg]

This may or may not have any bearing on your problem but it is worth reading. http://www.microsoft.com/windows98/downloads/contents/WUCritical/q273017/Default.asp
I have built about 5 systems with this board and all have went well. I am by no means an expert at this just hope you get to the bottom of it.

Good Luck
erg

 

[Tom]

This may or may not address your problem, but it's the first thing you need to do or tell us you have done...

As mentioned previously you can't read from any kind of drive without an operating system. You have to run the operating system from either a CD or a floppy until you get the operating system installed to the hard drive.

To do this you have to either boot from a floppy, including dos CD drivers if you want to be able to read from a CD, or use a bootable CD and make sure the bios is set to allow for booting from a CD.

Also exactly how did you upgrade the bios ? Did it work correctly ? Did you reset the bios to defaults after flashing the bios ?

Edit- earlier on you said-
"I tried to load Win 2k by starting with the floppies to no avail"

What floppies do you mean ?(I don't have Win2kfloppies, but a boot disk made with Windows 98se asks if you want to enable CD drive access. Do the floppies you refer to do this or something similar ?)
Do they install CD drivers that are supposed to work with the CD drive you are using ?

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

The floppies are the ones you create by running the bootdsk32.exe on the Win2K CD. I've set the BIOS to boot first form the CD-Rom and second from the floppy drive. When it searches the CD-Rom for the boot record it says "Not found." When I run setup from the floppies, everything is fine until it asks me to insert the Win 2K CD. It just keeps asking for the CD when I know it's in the drive.

So, it detects the CD-Rom, but it won't read from it.

The BIOS update always goes smoothly and ends with a reboot and the setting of the date and time to that of the BIOS I just changed to. I've tried about 4 different BIOS and am currently using the most current.

Thanks for the continued advice.

 

[DieHardware]

Did you short the JP4 jumper to reset the CMOS after flashing?

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

I didn't do anything to the jumper. Do I need to? The BIOS is reset after each update.

 

[ku]

IF all that fails, try flashing your cd-rom firmware. I had a similar problem once I switched to the K7S5A but a firmware flash of my dvd drive did the trick.

 

[Pulse84]

Ugh. I have the same exact problem. I actually posted my problem in General Hardware under CD rom drive not working. I got one reply. "sounds like it's dirty".

Everything was going fine, then one day, Can't read CD's. I've tried everything you have except getting a new CD Drive. I emailed ECS, I haven't heard back from them and am not holding out hope that they will recognize this as a problem coming from them. (I used to work in software tech support. "Um, sounds like this is not our issue")

I have the ECS K7S5A board with win 98 SE.

I'm pretty close to just mailing it in and getting a Macintosh. No software=no problems. At least my CD rom drive will work.

 

[Pulse84]

P.S. As painful as this is to spend hours and hours trying to fix this, I appreicate the feedback so far in this forum. Misery loves company.

 

[Thump553]

Hero, maybe this is your solution. When you flash your bios it changes everything to "default" settings, not just the date and time. I know for certain that the CPU speed is changed, not sure what else is. You mentioned only rechanging your date and time. If you haven't already done so, check all your other BIOS settings, esp. CPU & memory settings. Perhaps your second IDE channel is now disabled? Also, have it autodetect your CD drive.

I had a similar problem on a non-ECS system. Never did figure it out there, but that system died a few weeks later (it was old & had a brush with lightning that fried its surge surpressor a year earlier). Maybe you have a flaky motherboard and its RMA time. I have installed W2k directly off the CD on three different ECS k7S5A systems (all with different CD brand/speed CD readers) without any of the headaches you have encountered.

 

[HeroOfPellinor]

I did notice that it resets everything and have been reconfiguring everything after each flash. I didn't notice anywhere where you could disable an ide channel, but I make sure every time to change the boot order to select CD-Rom first and have the BIOS auto detect everything, which it does fine.

I'm going to try a new disk tonight and, if it doesn't work, I'll RMA it.