bios won't recognize more than 1 ide devices

Hi, I am having a weird problem with a couple of old systems. I (stupidly) tried to boot from a hard drive that was running in another computer on a separate computer. After that failed attempt and putting everything back together where they belonged the bios on each computer is only recognizing 1 ide device each. If only one ide device is connected at a time, the bios would recognize it with no problem and boot normally. But if I added just 1 more device, none of the devices would even power up regardless if it was a DVD drive, a hard drive, or a CD drive. It would boot into bios fine, but none of the ide devices would be recognized. All jumper combinations have been tried. Any one ever heard of anything like this before? Any ideas?

system specs:
Win XP
Intel pentium 4 2.4 ghz
ASUS p4sdx
1.5 gb ddr ram.

 

the eide cable and device have a setting master and slave.
one device must be master the other set to slave mode. try not the cable selct option cause in some old mobos just fail to see the device. else i would change the eide cable and check again

 

Thanks for the input, but like I said before, all jumper combinations have been tried. I've also used different cables with no luck.

 

Hi,

Rule of thumb: If using master and slave any connector can be used anywhere even on the MB. If using CS (Cable Select) the end connector is the "Master" and the Center one is the "Slave".

Jim

 

I fail to understand clearly how you tried booting from a hard-disk running in another computer. Either you plugged it out without switching off (aiyaiyai) or you tried booting from network. The latter is geek and shouldnt have caused no probs, so maybe the first?

I would try using separate IDE-cables for each device, limited to two max? My only other remedy lies still with the jumpers: try ensuring the boot HDD is on primary (IDE connector 1 on mobo) master, then the other devices on secondary (IDE 2) with CD drive as master.

Also try checking through the bios, maybe something reset in the fracas: like the 'storage options' or 'boot-order' and get it back to normal. If you messed through the settings already try resetting to default then start over.

The other thing I noticed is when faced with such problem, one changes the power cables severally, and the devices have pins differing abit in size, so the CD drive makes the contacts wider such that the HDD pins dont quite grip on??? Jus saying.

 

Another thing when you say you tried all the different jumper settings: see my maxtor and seagates are such that for 'non-ATAPI' drives (HDD's, as oppossed to ATAPI drives = CD drive) as slave one has to use two jumpers on the master HDD and none on the slave drive. Hope you got that covered too?

 

SOLVED.

I found a different driver for my ide controller, installed that, and all is back to normal. Thanks.

 

from when a driver issue solves a bios issue?!?!?!?