David Farber wrote:
D Yuniskis wrote:
Hi David,

David Farber wrote:
I use my generic, home made, pc to test and analyze client's hard
drives. The motherboard in my pc is an ECS NFORCE3. It's never given
me any problems. When I hooked up the test drive in question (lots
of knocking noises) on the second IDE channel, the pc booted, the pc
speaker beeped once (normal for this pc), but it just froze after
that. I rebooted and tried to go into the setup menu but that didn't
work either. I gave up on the test and removed the drive I was
checking. But now, the same problem occurs. The pc powers up,
speaker beeps, and it freezes there. If I press "delete" to enter
setup, it just hangs without going into setup. If I remember

Sorry if the description wasn't clear. Let me try to list the chain of
events.

1. Pc works fine with Seagate drive as master drive on first IDE channel.
2. Installed another hard drive to test as master on secondary channel.
3. Pc freezes while trying to list attached drives. Cannot access bios
screen.
4. I remove the drive on the secondary channel.
5. At some point I think I was able to get into the bios menu after removing
the test drive but at that point, it indicated no drive was present.

So, there was still a SEAGATE on channel 1 master (?).
And, with *no* drive on channel 2, it CORRECTLY tells you
"no drive present" (on channel *2*?).

6. After a couple of more tries, I cannot get to the bios menu anymore.

Suggesting that the seagate on channel *1* is your problem?
(or, something in the PC/PS)

7. I tried different jumper settings on the Seagate drive and clearing the
CMOS. This didn't solve the problem.
8. Substituted another drive just to see if the Seagate drive was causing
the problem. No problems with a different drive installed. Drive is
recognized properly.

This is the channel 1 seagate that you have now replaced, correct?

I.e., all of this seems to indicate the seagate channel 1 master
is the issue (?)

Have you tried putting that drive on anywhere *else* WITH THE
"different" (working) drive installed?

Note that some drives have different jumper settings for
"master" and "master with slave present". The BIOS can
"hang" for quite a while (almost a minute) looking for a
slave that it *thinks* is there -- but isn't.