I have built a new PC (see specs below) and when I finally turned it on today, wouldn't you know it, I had a problem.

When I boot up, I hit del to get to my CMOS. I went through it and everything seemed OK. My hard drive, CD player, and floppy drive were all recognized, and the first boot device was set to floppy, then the hard drive, then the CD. I only have one hard drive and one CD so the hard drive is the Primary master and the CD is the Secondary master.

The initial "Detecting IDE drives ..." appears to be working and lists both my hard drive and CD Rom. Then the scanning IDE drives gives me an error saying No array is defined, press CTRL F to enter Fast Build or Escape to continue.

If I hit escape or just let it continue, it gets to another error saying:
Pri. Slave Disk: none
Sec. Master Disk: CD RW,ATA 33
Boot from CD:
Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter.

When I insert any CD, including Windows XP or 98, it ejects it within 2-3 seconds. I assume this is because I have no drivers installed yet. OK, actually TDK tech support assumes that.

If I select CTRL F when the No array defined message is up, I go to the Fast Build Utility 1.32
This gives me some options to Auto setup and others but there is also a flashing message saying No Disk is found, please check for power and data cable connection.
Well, the hard drive does have power to it and the cable is connected. Not to mention it is recognized in CMOS and during the Detecting IDE Drives test.

Oh, I also have tried a Windows 98 boot up disk and a IBM utility boot up disk in the floppy drive, but it never tries to access the floppy, even though the floppy is set as the first boot device and has power to it.

Any help/suggestions you can provide me with would be greatly appreciated.

SPECS:
P4, 1.6 GHZ
512k ram
Gigabyte GA-81RXP motherboard
TDK 32x10x40 CD RW
IBM 41 GB hard drive

Thanks,

Ken

[This message has been edited by kwinterb (edited 05-09-2002).]

Sounds like quite a problem, but try this for starters. Put your CD-ROM as the secondary master. It's not a good idea to put your hard drive and CD-ROM on the same IDE channel. For one thing, you've slowed down your hard drive to ATA/33!

It's rare for a simple IDE device set-up to mess things up that badly, but keeping the two separate might cause your new PC less confusion.

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"No, we do not gnaw on our kitty." - Dr. Evil

I'm not familiar with your motherboard but it sounds like the bios is looking for a hard drive array that doesn't exist. There could be a jumper to set on the mobo or setting to change in the bios.

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From the hallowed legends of railroad lore comes the Deep Fried Core.

Whoops on me, didn't read clearly enough! Tried to save myself before too much embarassment, but darn it all Gallaeglagh! You posted another reply so I couldn't do that http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/frown.gif.

http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/biggrin.gif

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"No, we do not gnaw on our kitty." - Dr. Evil

Thanks for the reply. Since my hard drive is listed in CMOS and detected during the "Detecting IDE drives ..." test, doesn't that mean the motherboard recognizes it?

Also, any thoughts on why the boot up disk in the floppy is not kicking in right away?

Originally posted by Gallaeglagh:
I'm not familiar with your motherboard but it sounds like the bios is looking for a hard drive array that doesn't exist. There could be a jumper to set on the mobo or setting to change in the bios.

1. You BIOS is set to boot from the CD 1st, go and change the order to floppy first then you should be able to boot to a floppy.

2. It is looking for a RAID array, which I am assuming you do not have, so there should be an option to disable this, als make sure that your drives are connected to the correct motherboard connectors...

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

the master is supposted to be the hard drive and thie secendary should be the folpy and the cd drive with EDIE

Hey Kool:

do you realize this thread is almost six years old. We can safely assume the problem has been solved or the system has been replaced by now.