Can't find HDD during POST.

My desktop can't find the disk drives during POST. This has been going on for a while now, but it's random. During POST it gets to "detecting IDE drives" and stops. If I unplug the drive cables and reseat them on the motherboard and the drives, it fixed the problem temporarilly. I've tested the HDD's and they seem to be ok. I've also replaced the cables. The controller plugs are located on the corner of the motherboard. Could it be that the traces on the board have been broken with all of the plugging and unplugging or could I have a bad controller all together?

I have an MSI K7N2 delta board.

 

Need the specs. How many drives? What kind? Raid?

In the meantimes, you can try unplugging power cord for 1 min, clearing cmos, & set up bios.

 

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I've been having trouble with my laptop too. I ended up changing the motherboard and the HDD. I had the drive tested and it was bad.

Now I have another problem, the new motherboard doesn't post past detecting the HDD. I've loaded windows and gotten all the updates and after rebooting, it stops at that point.

I have a PC Chips motherboard M848a, SiS 746 chipset, AMD Athlon 2100+, 1 GB memory, Seagate 160 GB HDD.

I've looked for a BIOS update but can't find one for manual update. They're all web based updates and since I can't boot the system, I can't update the BIOS. Any suggestions.