Insane HD problem

[jaclaz]

I'm thinking that there might be some combination of jumper settings that might reset this password locked mode.

NO.

jaclaz

[cyberformer]

98Guy!

"When your system boots, press del or f2 and get into the BIOS menu and see if there's an option to auto-detect (or just detect) the hard drive while you watch. If not, then make sure you have all your IDE channels enabled and set to auto."

Well, right now I am working with it in the Dell 900 + MHz PC, which is the most modern one I can easily test it on at the moment.

Even though I know this PC is already set up that way "to auto detect the HD"

I decided to do what you said above anyway.

I am going to have to replicate these conditions, as the result, whilst not great,

are interesting nevertheless.

Upon going into the bios from the delete key as you said upon the PC booting up, and upon bringing up any HD auto setting activation from the bios, it would seem that the bios gave the message HD not detected, or drive not detected,

then upon exiting the bios--for a split micro second---right before, or after booting up ( this all happened in the wink of an eye) the black screen had some words at the upper left that I did not catch (since this was a flash in the pan, so to say) but I distinctly saw in white letters (in the middle section of the screen)

WDC---and then a series of numbers/and or letters that seemed to be a lot more or lengthy than just WD300.

Then after this fleeting recognition of the HD --(By the bios?) the words,

"Incorrect boot disk"--Insert boot disk (or insert proper boot disk) appeared followed with the A prompt at the bottom!

Of course, I tried an Me, and a 98se boot disk---and the same message continued to appear.

But, this shows that whatever happened in my fooling with the bios settings

(and not just accepting the fact that they were already set to auto detect)

seems to have triggered that split second recognition.

Quite puzzling!

I will continue to work on this (trying to replicate the conditions I described above, among other methods suggested.

[starcraftmaster]

i dont know if any one ready said this but have you tried putting it in a computer with a hd thats on master that has a os and puting the dead hd in slave and seeing if the os sees it