bios doesn't detect h/drive

[jrobinson]

Windows NT5/2000 beta3 installed on a Samsung 4gig drive. System was up for about 7 hours working fine, I left it for 2hours, came back and it had crashed with a kernel fault. Now the bios fails to detect the drve as master or slave device, and Maxtor EZ-Drive can't find it either.

Any suggestions please.

[CharlesB]

Sounds like it could be the on-board controller on the hard drive. If needed I would take the drive out and double-check the jumper(s) on the drive to make sure all are present and properly set. Another possibility could be that the on-board controller could be overheating and causing the system to crash after awhile if the system was able to detect the drive again. And if the drive will still not allow itself to be recognized then try another system in case the on-board ide adapter on the motherboard is bad.

[jrobinson]

Thanks for the suggestion. I've got another drive running Windows98, and that gets detected ok, so I'll try the drive with NT in another machine and see what happens.

Thanks again.

[jrobinson]

OK, I put the drive in a different machine and bios detected it. Used EZ-Drive to set up partitions and format and then put it back in original machine. Bios found drive, started install of Windows2000 beta again, and then on re-boot bios failed to detect drive :-(
Any suggestions, as the bios finds the drive ok to start with.

[Niclo Iste]

Yep it's that time again. I will now answer posts from long ago so that those who have patiently waited for years can have their answers.

OK, I put the drive in a different machine and bios detected it. Used EZ-Drive to set up partitions and format and then put it back in original machine. Bios found drive, started install of Windows2000 beta again, and then on re-boot bios failed to detect drive :-(
Any suggestions, as the bios finds the drive ok to start with.

What you may have to do is replace the BIOS battery if that is not holding a charge the settings may be getting lost. Another theory I have in mind is that there is a problem with the IDE cable or the port where it's being erratic. I had a motherboard with a similar issue that would lose the drive halfway into using windows. I quit using the IDE port and problem solved.