New motherboard, won't boot up if new hard drive is plugged in

Factual Questions
1

OK, so I once again tried to upgrade my computer (the previous attempts many months ago can be found here, here, and here.)

Long story short: I got a new mobo, vid card, CPU, hard drive, and memory. Both times I tried to install them, I had problems. Frist time was mostly my fault, I tried to use a new mobo w/out reinstalling windows. Went back to my old system. Second time, it seemed to be the mobo’s fault. It would not boot from the CD drive, so I RMA’d it to the company.

I got the mobo back last week, and yesterday put it all together again. I had all my stuff ready to go. Legit copy of XP Pro, flopppy w/ SATA drivers to install on SATA HD, good good. Well…problems yet again. First time I booted, it would show the mobo logo, get to a screen where it detected SATA drives, then stop. I unplugged the old HD from the mobo (the one with a copy of XP still on it) to avoid confusion, and booted again. Ahh! Works this time. Get into the windows install proces, press F6 to get SATA drivers from floppy, load the drivers, but Windows can’t detect a HD to install to. WTF? It’s right there! Oh, no…it isn’t. The cord came loose after I plugged it in.

So, after plugging it back in, I re-boot and…nothing. It detects the drive during the boot sequence then stops booting. If I wait about a minute, a blinking cursor apears, then after a muinute it goes away. Nothing else. I have checked the BIOS, and the boot sequence is Floppy, CD-0, and then the SATA drive. I KNOW this CD is good, since it booted from it before, so I unplug the SATA drive and it boots to the install screen just fine.

After a few more tries, I confirmed that indeed, it will not boot into the windows install screen if the SATA drive is plugged in, despite the HD being last in the boot order. I tried to “fool” the system by leaving the SATA unplugged until Windows install started, then plugging it in (since SATA is hot swapable, I fogured this was ok.) But now the problem is that the SATA drivers no longer seem to be on the floppy. I hit F6, and when it gets to ther point of letting me search for them, it looks at the floppy and says there are no drivers on it, even though there are. :confused:

I downloaded the SATA drivers again while at work, and will try a new floppy tonight, but I fear that even thoguh a SATA is hot-swapable, it needs to be there during ther boot for windows to find it, and if it’s there during the boot, I can’t boot.

Any one know what might be causing this? I will call theuir tech support tonight if I can’t get it to work, but I have been throguh their support twice, and have a feeling waht their answer will be (they will probalby assume one or more piece of my hardware is bad and leave it at that.) Plus, they will make me go through the sequence of unplugging everything but the CPU, memory, and vid card, then plugging everything inone by one, then putting the mobo on a n on-conductive thing to make sure ';ts not shorted, and blah blah blah. I know the problem (sort of.) It’s a comob of the drive and/or BIOS not working right together. Maybe a BIOS flash will fix it, but I won’t do that unless they tell me.

2

This probably is not it, but…

Do you have two drives? Are the master/slave jumpers set correctly?

3

Just one drive, and it’s SATA, so there is no master/jumper setting.

4

Is your power supply up to the task?

5

Up to the task of nothng but a mobo, vid card, one optical drive, one floppy drive, and one HD? I would fucking hope so, since that’s the bare minimum a computer needs to work (at least until OS install, then I guess the optical and floppy can be ditched.)

But to answer mroe tactfully, I have a 650W power supply. I forget the brand, but it had good reviews on newegg when I bought it, and hasn’t given me any trouble before, and it once had to power all that, plus another optical drive and a CCFL.

6

A 650 is a pretty hefty supply but other questions come to mind…

1 Are you driving excessive case fans or decorative lighting?

2 Do you have a meter to check and see if your supply is putting out sufficent power. You could have a bad supply that has just been squeaking by and is now causing problems with the increased power demands of a new mobo/drives.

3 Hi Opal

4 Does your new drive draw significantly more power than the old one.
Many more pc problems are power supply related than you might think. Of course thats one of the things very few people pay any attention to.

Plenty of places could and do cheap out on power supplies and everyone would still wonder why “the exact same computer” was $20 less at “CheapPOS.com”.

7

No, I have no excessive case fans or lighting. I have my motherboard, video card CPU fan, hard drive, optical drive, floppy drive, sound card, and two case fans.

Seeing as I ran my old setup with a motherboard (different), CPU fan (same), optical drive (same,) sound card (same,) four case fans, and hard drive (different), I would think it can handle what I have on it. Just to be safe, I will take out the sound card and unplug the two case fans when I try again tonight. But it’s pretty much 100% guarenteed that I am using less power now than I was with my old setup with the same PSU.

If anything, the new hard drive should use less power. Don’t SATA drives use slightly less than an IDE? I don’t hjave any kind of PSU tester, and I’m not about to buy one just to see if tyhis is a good PSU. It’s less than a year old, was not a POS one (I’ll get the brnad tonight, but it was a mid-range one on Newegg,) and hasd run fine with the old setup, I’m convinced it’s not the culprit.

8

With a 650 watt PS you could run the whole block. Unless it is going bad that should be more than up to the task.

I just built a brand new machine last weekend much in the same way you are. New SATA drive (first time I worked with one), motherboard, memory, processor etc. I have to say that it was an awesome experience. Everything arrived on time, right parts, and it all worked. A small miracle.

Anyway, SATA drives…I was expecting boatloads of problems but had none. It got detected right away and I was able to load windows without using a floppy with drivers. Kind of a surprise there…I thought you always had to use a floppy to install to that kind of drive.

I hate to say it but your description reeks of hardware failure. Unless you have that drive hooked up wrong it should at least get detected. The fact that it refuses to boot while its hooked up really does point to configuration or hardware failure. Any chance you could test with a known good drive?

One last tip…could it be that your MB requires that you hook up the SATA drive to a specific SATA controller? Mine has several (one set for RAID) and the manual specified which slot to plug into when using just one drive. Same for memory.

9

The manual informs me that it shouldn’t matter which connector the SATA drive is pluggged in to.
Last night I tried to boot to a DOS prompt from a floppy and oculd not, so it seems the motherboard is no longer recognizing my floppy drive either (I unplugged the SATA drive.) Now it’s getting absurd. Although it does explain why the windows installer cojuldn’t locate SATA drivers, since the mobo decided not to recognize the floppy. I checked and doublechecked the connections, and took them out and reinsrted them. No bent pins, no pins missing, there is no reason it should not be working. I can’t beleive the motherboard would be broken again, after jsut getting it back from an RMA. I can safely say that I will no longer do business with Soyo ever again.

So now I am pretty much screwed. It looks like I just cannot use my new mobo and will have to shell out another 8%0 for a decent motherboard, that actually, you know…works.