Windows not detecting drives on ide2 after switchout

decided to switch out a dvdrom for a hdd. i made sure the hdd was correctly set to slave and booted up... bios detects everything -correctly- on ide2 but neither of the drives show up in windows explorer. i turn the pc off and attempt to reset the hdd and manage to break the ide cable at the plug... i think nothing of this, replace the cable and try again... no luck, same as before. i pull out the hdd and put back the dvdrom, thinking 'well, at least i'll have music (the primary device was a dvd burner)' and am totally surprised when again windows explorer shows no other drives... W...T...F?!! could someone help me out here?


possibly pertinent info: i recently replaced a bad stick of ram which was causing some bad mojo in my system

someone please help

Try cable select jumper setting.
In Computer Management/Disk Management check and see if it shows up there.

Rbreb13 said:

Try cable select jumper setting.
In Computer Management/Disk Management check and see if it shows up there.

Click to expand...

Seconding this option.
btw is the disk pre-formated or just new?

//Christian

do you see anything in device manager? does the Secondary IDE channel show any conflicts or show up at all?

whoops, forgot to mention that this is in windows 98; not sure bout the functions y'all just mentioned but somehow under *a* tab in 'properties' in 'my computer' (**not at home right now so working from memory -will update soon) two exclamation marks seem to indicate that there's driver problems with both ide1 and ide2 there's a minimal chance that the original faulty ram screwed up the drivers but idunno... in as far as drive detection, everything worked fine before i attempted the switch i recently tried reinstalling the mobo drivers with my new ram and wasn't successful (though it passed 3 hrs of memtest -at below rated speed- without a problem)... i don't know...

PS: in case anyone wants to suggest installing xp, that's exactly what i intend to do once i've backed up my files

ok... 'My Computer/Properties/Device Manager' indicates exclamation marks for 'primary [and] secondary ide controller (single fifo)' and 'Properties/General' shows under device status: 'This device is either not present, not working properly or does not have all the drivers installed [Code 10]'

-indeed, it is a new addition to 'add new hardware'. i did NOT have this driver error before i took out the faulty ram... i goddamn hope this doesn't mean the new ram is bad too (passed 3 hrs of memtest at unoced xpm2500 speed without errors) or that there's something wrong with my mobo

the date of the driver, 5-11-98 indicates it's from the win98 cd but unfortunately, both optical drives -which seem to be functioning fine other than not being detected in windows- are on ide2 and i don't want to mess anything up more before knowing how it got messed in the first place... the hdd is a slave drive from another win98 system and the other devices that were and are on the cable worked perfectly before i tried the switch... my mobo is an nf7s v2 (nforce2 board) and i'm using "Merlin's Ub3r D25 BIOS CPC On" (ironically, with cpc off... should i enable with 1 512MB pc3200 ch6 ram and an xpm2500?). i tried installing multiple versions of nforce2 drivers including http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=589 which includes "IDE driver 3.40 (WHQL)" without success... i don't know what the hell is wrong... could someone please help me out?

try deleting the devices, rebooting, and letting Windows install them again.

hold up... if i delete the primary ide driver, won't that somehow interfere with the operation of my computer?

EDIT: not being facetious

no. Done this many times before. just delete the primary and secondary IDE controllers. let us know how that goes, and we'll go from there

ok... windows tells me i have to remove the standard dual pci ide controller so i do that. windows then asks me to restart and upon next boot 'windows found new hardware,' locates the 'best' drivers for it within the system (somewhere that ends with a folder called 'memctrl' i think) -i noted that cdrom was greyed out- installed the files/devices and asked to be restarted... upon next boot, the ide2 drives are still missing(!) and there are still exclamation marks on the ide controllers under My Computer/Properties/Device Manager... i tried the whole thing over again and ended with the same result...

i think somehow the drivers on the system are corrupt

help! someone

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VXD\IOS

go to that location in the registry, delete the NOIDE entry, and reboot.

Know Nuttin said:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CURRENTCONTROLSET\SERVICES\VXD\IOS

go to that location in the registry, delete the NOIDE entry, and reboot.

Click to expand...

HUZZAH!!!!!! A thousand thank yous for making this work!!!! i hope someday i may reciprocate for someone else on these forums. thank you for your continued support and ultimate solving of my personal computer problem. thanks!


PS: in case anyone else ever has a similar problem or was otherwise watching this thread, a search of the registry location Know Nuttin supplied provided me with this microsoft article (which i couldn't find before): http://support.microsoft.com/kb/151911/EN-US/

Microsoft said:

If one IDE channel has a supported hard disk, and the second channel has a CD-ROM or another type of drive that requires Real-mode drivers. Because there must be serialization between the two IDE channels, Windows cannot access the hard disk in Protected mode and use the other device in Real mode. When this occurs, the Protected-mode driver is not initialized and the NOIDE switch is placed in the registry to prevent future errors. Both disk devices can then operate in Real mode.

Click to expand...

this sounds exactly like my problem... i hate when technology complicates things instead of simplifying

again, thank you Know Nuttin!


EDIT: actually, i'm not yet through with this topic... right now i've got both my dvd drives plugged in and i'd like to switch one out for a hdd... what is the proper method of doing so without invoking this error once again?

shut down, make sure the jumper settings are correct, boot up and see if bios detects them.

This windows thing, is not consistent in nature. It can happen to some, and not to others. You can keep all factors the same as well, and it still can happen randomly.