hard drive not recognized anymore

computer works fine usually, then today, I turn it on, and both IDE hard drives are not recognized anymore. BIOS doesn't see them either, and it does a short "bip-bip" every now and then. I checked cables, and everything seems fine. could this be a BIOS virus or something?

 

Test the RAM.

 

how would you test the ram? try to run knoppix?

 

Your hearing BIOS (Basic Input Output System) Error Beep codes. It is telling you pre-OS (operating system) something is wrong with the hardware. The beep codes will act as "coarse level" indicators of system failure.

http://www.pchell.com/hardware/beepcodes.shtml

plodr is indicating that 2 beeps is an indicator that there is potentially something wrong with the memory, RAM.

Try and remove and reseat the RAM.
http://www.ehow.com/how_895_install-ram.html

If that doesn't work you need to DL and run Memtest86, if you don't have a floppy create an ISO boot CD and run that.

 

You might want to test the drives one at a time. I had a slave drive go bad and the computer would not detect any of the hard drives.

 

memtest says my memory is fine. Also, I tried removing the slave IDE. still doesn't work...

 

please read the first post. if the hard drives are not detected, windows won't load

 

yea, I go in the BIOS to see if it sees them, but it doesn't. the bios doesn't see the hard drives. what's funny tho, I had this problem 2 months ago (the first post), and by magic, it worked the day after. Now it has this problem again. let's see what happens tomorrow...

 

hmm i can't find any 'Disk Controller' or 'Compatibility Mode'.
it's an old Athlon XP mother board