Is my mobo bad or do I need a jumper?

[unfaithfulsfan]

It all started Saturday when we were getting wind gusts up to 70 mph. I was happily working on the village web site when the power suddenly went off. Sucks, but not to worry, there are other things I can do in the meantime. No more than I thought that thought, the power came back on.

Hit the power button and went to the kitchen to grab something to drink. Came back to an error message that the boot disk was missing. Went into BIOS and my 'raptor boot drive was missing. Feeling a little panicky, I pulled the drive and connected it to my drive caddy then to the laptop. Nothing.

FFWD to today. New 450 GB raptor comes in. Doc changed my insulin pump settings to eliminate the lows I've been having so I awoke to sky high blood sugar. I felt like crap all day. Finally after dinner I felt better so I installed the new drive, fired it up, can't enter BIOS. I know this is a SATA 6 and my board is a 3 but aren't they backward compatible or do I need a jumper on the drive? Or did my board suddenly die? Mobo is a Gigabyte GA-EP43-UD3L.

Thanks
Jack


Crap, sorry, got interrupted and lost my train of thought before I posted. Disconnecting the new drive makes no difference.

Get normal boot screen except when it gets to the point of listing the drives, it reboots.


Connected new drive to my laptop. Shows up in disk management but I get an "incorrect function" when I try to initialize it. don't know if that's because it's connected via USB. Wouldn't think it would matter but there again maybe it does. Hear a slow tapping noise from drive. Is this one fubar out of the box? Beginning to wonder but still can't get into BIOS on desktop.

[Major_A]

Slow tapping tells me it isn't getting enough power. There might be a jumper on the drive but as far as I know you only had to do that with certain drives going from a SATAII drive to a SATA I motherboard. But it could always be a bad drive. Have you reset the BIOS to the default settings and seeing if the drive will work?

[unfaithfulsfan]

Thanks for the quick response. I can't access BIOS. It just restarts when it should be entering setup. That's what's got me so befuddled. I can't initialize the disk on my laptop, as I said, I just get an "incorrect function" error. Don't know why it'd be low power, got the caddy/drive mate plugged into the wall!

Guess I'm gonna go to bed. maybe I'll think of something I'm missing in the morning........

Thanks again!


Well, so far I haven't thought of anything. Was hoping maybe one of y'all had. Guess I've stumped everyone! Please keep thinking on it and let me know if you come up with anything.

Thanks!


go figure. decided to try booting it, went into bios with no problems. WTF?


I must have set some kind of record by replying to my own post!

Now, I'm stumped again. The windows install began but I got to the first reboot and now I'm stuck in another loop. When it restarts it just prompts for another first round of setup. e.g. "Choose an OS to start.......:Windows Setup [EMS Enabled] is the only option and it just starts setup all over again....

Holy schnikes!

[vbironchef]

unfaithfulsfan, that's what the edit option is for.

[Major_A]

I must have set some kind of record by replying to my own post!

Now, I'm stumped again. The windows install began but I got to the first reboot and now I'm stuck in another loop. When it restarts it just prompts for another first round of setup. e.g. "Choose an OS to start.......:Windows Setup [EMS Enabled] is the only option and it just starts setup all over again....

Holy schnikes!

Try this and see what happens.
http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/mss ... vd_dwnTool

If you don't have an ISO then format a thumb drive with NTFS and just copy the Windows DVD to the drive. Enter the BIOS and tell it to boot from that hard drive first.

[unfaithfulsfan]

even from a command prompt, all I get is "X:\" Cannot access either optical drive or either of my other two storage drives except in bios. This is moderately to severely irritating.

MSoft's other fix was to find the "is too long" string which, of course, doesn't exist in my or any other respondent's case.


LOL, vibronchef. It actually was almost that simple.

Color me , in a word, "dumba**." This is beyond even "Keep It Simple, Stupid."

How about when it's time for the first restart, remove the DVD from the drive? How low-tech can ya get?

The install just completed about 90 seconds ago.

Thanks, though, Major_A, for the suggestions and, vibronchef, for the levity!

Jack