Hi, I am looking for assistance in hooking up some devices on my new (and first) build. Here is what I have built so far: Antec 1650B Case, 120 mm fan in rear, 80mm in front Antec 550 watt PSU Asus M2N Sli-deluxe mobo AMD X2 4000, stock heat sink/fan 2 gigs corsair XMS 667 Gigabyte 7600GT 256 card, silent pipe Soundblaster (cheapest) 120 gig WD SATA HD Sony CD-R/DVD Rom Add-on front panel for 4 more USB ports/firewire/audio Windows XP SP2 Drivers all updated but having a problem flashing new bios. Things are working well except for IE6 hanging up and an occassional reboot. System points to video drivers as the problem there, but device manager says all is OK. I plan to add a floppy for BIOS purposes. Here is my question: The mobo has only one pin-out for IDE (forgive me if I used the wrong term - it's the ribbon-type cable). Currently, only my CD-R is hooked up to it (HD is connected via SATA). I want to add a DVD/RW drive and another HD that I pulled from my old system (both were manufactured in 2004, so they're pretty new). Both of these devices need the ribbon cable. How do I hook them all together? In summary, I'll have 3 devices that need the ribbon cable and only one slot. Any suggestions? Oh, one more thing. I did 3DMark06 last night and scored 3853 with no overclocking- is that good for this system? I guess I was expecting more. Thanks in advance. K
An IDE Controller card would be your best bet, assuming you have a free PCI slot. Another option would be to acquire a SATA to IDE converter, but quiet honestly, the IDE card is cheaper, and, at least in the past, the coverters haven't been reliable. Device manager is helpful if there's a device conflict, but if there's a driver causing a blue screen, then it won't show that. I know one of the Forceware 91.xx drivers was causing some stability issues. Assuming it's the nForce or GeForce drivers, hit nVidia's website and grab the latest drivers.
Thanks for the quick reply, Big B. If I install the IDE Controller Card, which has 2 internal sockets, would I just hook my one ATA/133 hard drive to it, or would I also hook my DVD/RW to it? I assume I'd leave the SATA hard drive alone. I have the most recent nForce and GeForce drivers, so I don't know what's up with that.
You have another option here, You can connect both CD-R/DVD Rom and DVD/RW using one IDE cable, just set the jumper settings to master and slave. For your IDE HDD, you can just buy an IDE to SATA adaptor like this one.
Do you really need to flash the BIOS? I suggest you don't unless you have a very good reason to do so That's just normal Windows behaviour! Nothing to worry about there
You can hook your hard drive to it, BUT, you will need to have the card installed first and Windows recognize it and install drivers for it (which it will automatically). If you drop the card in and change the hard drive over to this card, Windows won't know "how" to commuicate with the system and you'll get a BSOD. IDE only allows for 2 devices to be connected on one channel at a time. Each channel is represented by the IDE connector on the motherboard or controller card. However, only one device at a time can be accessed. It's not necessary, but a good idea, to have each device on it's own channel. That's the way I do it whenever possible. As far as the system crashing, when does it do this?
To Big B: There does not seem to be anything "specific" that I'm doing when the system will just reboot. I'm usually reading e-mail or on the web, come to think of it. I haven't really done any gaming yet, i.e. nothing graphics-intensive. IE6 will do the "Not Responding" thing on every 4th or 5th new page I visit. All critical Windows and Office updates have been downloaded. To Megamaced: Being a novice, I figured that the most current BIOS was the best BIOS! This isn't so? Seriously, I thought it might solve the problems I'm having. The Asus BIOS update tool isn't working for me - the one where you can update the BIOS using Windows instead of DOS. I have BIOS version 0202 and there are two more recent versions listed on Asus' website.
i used to think that a BIOS flash would solve everything, but thanks to HWF i now don´t, only upgrare one BIOS if your 100% sure that it will solve your problem, and even then think about it carefully, because if something goes wrong during a BIOS upgrade then you will have just turnen your mobo into a very pretty paperwight (killed it perminently) anyway back to your problem, stop using IE6 its got more security holes than 17 packets of polo´s, instead use FF or opera, because if the only problem is with IE, not using IE makes the problem go away
Thanks for the advice on IE6. I solved part of my problem - got the DVD burner hooked up and working. To solve the IDE hard drive problem I bought a 3.5" hard disk enclosure. Has anyone used one of these? You put your hard disk in a box, then connect to your PC with USB-acts like a mass storage device, and I was told it is much faster than the other methods. Portable, too. Problem is, I plugged it into my PC and the system knows that I've hooked up a mass storage device, but says that the installation failed. I can't get the dang thing to recognize it. Aarrgh.
RightClick MyComputer > Manage > Disk Management; right hand side bottom, can you see your drive? If yes then right click and initialise it.. If it doesnt solve your problem then, Have you got a power adaptor connected to your drive? Try swaping it with different USB ports... Otherwise RightClick MyComputer > Manage > Event Viewer > System > double click on the error events, copy them and paste here. They might be helpful for knowing the problem..
Thanks, it now works. Literally jiggled the wires a little and it recognized the drive. Couldn't get into some of the folders, though, got some "access denied" BS but luckily I had taken most everything of value off before removing the drive from my old PC. I then did RightClick MyComputer > Manage > Disk Management and formatted the drive, so now I have a nice 120Gig portable drive. Thank you everybody for your help, this forum is great!
