D Yuniskis wrote:
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?

Yes, that is 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?

I tried the Seagate on another pc connected to the second channel. The pc
hung trying to detect the drive. There was a working drive on the primary
channel.

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.

I waited for a while. Probably two minutes. No go.

Thanks for your reply.
--
David Farber
David Farber's Service Center
L.A., CA