Reloading OS (Issues... Suggestions? MBR??)

StrangleHold

StrangleHold

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I know what a 80 wire 40 pin IDE cable is. Still didnt answer my question or do you just like making things up!

(show me somewhere where it ever says 40X2)

The extra 40 wires don't carry new information, they are just used to separate the "real" 40 signal wires, to reduce interference and other signaling problems associated with higher-speed transfers. So the 40 extra conductors are connected to ground, interspersed between the original 40 conductors of the old cable. Any stray signals that would "cross-talk" between adjacent wires on the 40-conductor cable are "absorbed" by these extra ground wires, improving signal integrity. The extra ground wires can be either all of the even-numbered wires, or all of the odd-numbered wires in the cable.
 
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LauraKoz

New Member
Brand new cables with a grounding wire, so that shouldn't be the issue.

PCEye, "Besides a fresh battery consider a loss of bios information now being seen where you would have to update the bios if the same or newer update was found. That owuld be board related there. The last item is one worn drive bogging the other one down" ...

1) Not sure about the battery. Wouldn't one think it would be all or nothing if it were a battery problem? (i.e. it wouldn't be able to find the master either). Is there a specification on HP's site on which type of battery to get? Also, where could I find one? I couldn't even get the damn IDE cable at Best Buy and Office Max only had one.
2) How can I figure out if I need to update BIOS and what would be the procedure for that?
3) So you're thinking that the older slave is somehow bogging down the new master ....blah blah blah... which is the cause for the HP to not find the slave?

Thanks, I know I ask a million questions...
 
StrangleHold

StrangleHold

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LauraKoz said:
1) Not sure about the battery. Wouldn't one think it would be all or nothing if it were a battery problem? (i.e. it wouldn't be able to find the master either). Is there a specification on HP's site on which type of battery to get? Also, where could I find one? I couldn't even get the damn IDE cable at Best Buy and Office Max only had one.
2) How can I figure out if I need to update BIOS and what would be the procedure for that?
3) So you're thinking that the older slave is somehow bogging down the new master ....blah blah blah... which is the cause for the HP to not find the slave?

Thanks, I know I ask a million questions...
Click to expand...

If its the battery it would reset the bios to default everytime you restarted, in other words the bios would lose any changes you made when you restarted.

You can get a battery at Radio Shack if you have one. there just a few bucks.

As far as the bios, did you load the OS on the old drive and using the new drive as a slave, if so how large is the new drive, some old boards has a bios limit on how big of a harddrive it could see?
 
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LauraKoz

New Member
Well considering I had to go in and fix things through the BIOS before it would completely load Windows, don't you think if it reverted each time it booted I would have issues getting back to the desktop?

I loaded the OS on the new drive and set the old slave to be the slave again. The new one is 232 and I don't quite recall how much the slave is, but significantly less.
 
StrangleHold

StrangleHold

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Well only if you changed something in the bios from default, like if you set it to boot to the CD and on restart it would boot back to the harddrive or if the bios clock keep resetting itself

Have you tried setting up the drives on two differnt IDE cables to see if both showed
 
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LauraKoz

New Member
I made random changes in BIOS while trying to load Windows (i.e. boot from here, there, etc) and it always seemed to stay until I changed it. Haven't tried setting up the drives on two cables, didn't know you could do such a thing. Only ever seen the single cables with the two hook ups for devices. I did just get a brand new cable though...
 
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PC eye

banned
A battery on a board can be weak without resetting factory defaults every time you start the system up. I wanted to point that out first there. You can running one minute and the system will be "totally lifeless" the next time you go to power it up. That would be a sudden problem where the battery simply was too weak. Upto that point you can sometimes see the warning signs by how things are getting a little "flaky"?

With a good working cable you want to keep the two hard drives on the primary cable if the older one is faster then ATA33. Otherwise that can place a drag on the newer faster drive. Depending on the actual age of the system a bois update would probably be found at a 3rd party site no longer at the support site for that make which is...??? That's the one main thing missing here for finding information about.
 
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LauraKoz

New Member
Well the new cable is an ATA33...

I'll check out getting a new battery at Radio Shack later (nasty weather here at the moment). Where exactly is the battery located in the PC?

In terms of a BIOS update, any hints as to what to Google to find one? And that wouldn't mess with anything on the hard drive, right?
 
StrangleHold

StrangleHold

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LauraKoz said:
Haven't tried setting up the drives on two cables, didn't know you could do such a thing. Only ever seen the single cables with the two hook ups for devices. I did just get a brand new cable though...
Click to expand...

As a secondary harddrive you can set it to slave on the primary IDE or Master or Slave on the secondary IDE, doesnt matter!
 
StrangleHold

StrangleHold

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LauraKoz said:
I'll check out getting a new battery at Radio Shack later (nasty weather here at the moment). Where exactly is the battery located in the PC?
Click to expand...

Its on the motherboard itself, about 1 inch circle, silver, as far as the bios, what make and model is the computer or motherboard.
 
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LauraKoz

New Member
StrangleHold said:
Its on the motherboard itself, about 1 inch circle, silver, as far as the bios, what make and model is the computer or motherboard.
Click to expand...

I think we may have just had the 'stupid moment of the day'.... do desktops have lithium batteries? or is that just the laptops? :(
 
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LauraKoz

New Member
Alright, Radio Shack and Best buy don't carry the batteries, at least not in their stores. Haven't checked online yet. May venture out tomorrow to try and find a watch store. I'll be scanning a doc I drew up with the specs on both hard drives as well as all of the pin settings they offer. Maybe that will be of some help and I can mess around with that tonight and fix things before needing to find a battery.

Thanks
(pic to come in a few minutes...)
 
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LauraKoz

New Member
HDD.jpg
 
StrangleHold

StrangleHold

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If on the same IDE, I would run the new one as Master with a jumper on the first set of pins and the old one as slave with a jumper on the fourth set of pins from the left, Oh and your old drive is ATA 100 too, so it need a 80 wire IDE cable too.
 
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StrangleHold

StrangleHold

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Yea set the pins that way on the harddrives and in the bios set your Primary and secondary on your IDE 1 and 2 to Auto detect
 
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