MBUultra133 (PDC20276) Bios not installed because there are no drives atatched

Factual Questions
1

That is an error message I get whenever I start my new computer.
The computer will then seem to hang at a completely blank screen for about a full minute, maybe two, then boot up.

I just got the parts yesterday, they are:

Athlon 2100+ XP
Gigabyte GA-7VRXP MoBo
Western Digital WD1200JB Hard Drive

Those are the new parts, older stuff I have connected to it are
Generic DVD ROM drive
a (shudder) TNT2 Ultra video card
Generic Floppy drive
Generic Ethernet card, I could not get the on board one to work.
This new machine is acting screwey, It says that it the drives I connect are not ATAPI compatible and cannot continue, but has allowed me to install WinXP on the new harddrive and boot up (I am posting this from the new computer). It seems to be moving very slowloy whenever it does any interaction with the drives, and I can’t get the on-board sound or Ethernet to work. I am 90% sure that I have screwed up in the BIOS settings somehow, but for the life of me I don’t know what it could be. I don’t know what about a third of the settings even are! the last computer I built was a Pentium 100 with 16 megs of ram (16 megs, good lord how that impressed people then).

Any help would be appreciated.

2

1:Update the MB BIOS to the latest version.

2: How did your format the new WD drive? Did you use an overlay driver from the WD install disk or did you format in DOS with a DOS boot floppy?

2: What are the ATA/PIO settings in BIOS for the WD hard drive?

3: Is the WD drive BIOS flashable? if so update it to latest. Try booting with DVD disconnected and see if that makes a difference.

4: Reset the BIOS settings to BIOS defaults (the BIOS will have a place to do this) and start fresh with BIOS config.

3

Also make sure the drive and DVD are master drives on different IDE channels (ie different drive IDE cables).

4

Does your motherboard have a chipset driver that needs installed that hasn’t been? Check your mobo manual to find out how to clear NVRAM (or Reset Configuration Data) and try that as well.

5

How am I supposed to update the BIOS when I can’t make a boot disk for WIN XP?

6

Just make the boot disk on a 98 or ME system. It doesn’t have to be an XP boot disk to start up and re-program the BIOS even if the hard disk OS is XP.

7

Updating the BIOS is rarely needed, and can really foul things up if something goes wrong. I wouldn’t recommend it.

If you go to the BIOS manufacturer’s web page you can usually get a good description of what all of those cryptic settings really mean.

8

Check the bios and see if it’s trying to use a PCI video slot first.

What happens when you only have the video plugged in and you boot it? Same thing?

If not, start adding cards/devices one by one until it hangs.

9

Some of your devices may actually be not ATAPI but ATA ones.

10

Seems like one of two things:

1)Hardware
-Make sure you are using ata-133 rated ribbon cable for your HDD connection. Do not attach the DVD on the same cable.

2)Firmware
-Your controller biod rev is out of whack with your software driver? Happened to me on an older (ata-66) ABIT board.

Are your drives listed as using ‘Software compatibility mode’? If so, look to drivers and bios flashed for your cure.