Strange problem.

For a long time, I've had the BIOS seek the HDD as the first boot up device, as well as disabling floppy seek.

Today, fed up of the issue with Windows hanging and not finding a cause, I thought I'd cut my losses and reinstall windows. Have downloaded nlite and created a custom installation. Stuck it in the drive, set the BIOS to boot off the DVD drive and nothing. It just boots up as normal.

Windows recognises the drive and I can use it as normal.
If I go into the BIOS, it has it in the list of connected devices on each IDE channel.
But on the POST, it only recognises the two HDD.

Set up as follows:

IDE 0 --- HDD1 --- HDD2
IDE 1 --- ODD1 (--- ODD2)

I've taken the second ODD off as it's kaput. ODD1 jumper has been set as master.

I can't fathom why the ODD won't POST and yet it can be recognised by both the BIOS and Windows.

Is it the motherboard?
The IDE channel?
The ribbon? I'm about the swap the two IDE ribbons and see if it's a defective ribbon.

Any ideas in the meantime?

having a quick read at the nlite site i would suggest setting the boot order too
http://www.nliteos.com/index.html

1. floppy
2. cd/dvd
3+ hdd

save settings

then try booting from the nlite dvd ...

Okay so I've tried a few things out. The IDE cables are fine - both work one IDE 0 and I can run the ODD off them.

The problem is with IDE 1. It doesn't recognise anything at POST and I don't know why. As above, it's been fine in windows, though haven't checked in the last two weeks.

Am I looking at a new motherboard?

try a BIOS update first
if that fails to repair the problem then a new mobo would be an option ...

Yeah thought about updating the BIOS last night but it was midnight and I didn't want the hassle. Will try it out today. I'm sure I've had a similar problem like this before.

Have you tried hitting the boot menu key? Usually F12 on ASUS boards, gives you a list of bootable devices?

Well I decided to reflash the BIOS.

Completely forgot that the floppy disc drive was kaput, which messed up plans to reflash. Thankfully, Giga-byte have a windows-based BIOS flash utility and I reflashed it. It was already on revision F12 but reflashed it again to F12.

Now I can back up user files and format C:

glad you got it sorted ...

From one problem to another. I need to override access to my HDD so I can back stuff up from the other users but XP won't let me. On to the software forum!

I had that issue when I tried to access My Documents from my last laptop via a USB caddy. Thankfully Windows 7 told me how to take ownership of the folders.
Always make sure you select "inc sub folders" (or an option to that effect), or you'll be there for ages.