Hard disk detection problems

I am having problems with detection of my hard disk.

I have:
Slot 1 PIII motherboard with award bios
40Gb WD HDD on primary IDE cable (tried with C/S and Master jumper pins)
A CD writer and DVD drive on Secondary master and slave

The HDD is preformatted for NTFS and works fine in the other computer. On running windows XP home setup it happily found and correctly described the HDD and installed windows on it.

Unfortunately, the bios won't detect the drive and so I cannot boot windows.

Any ideas on how I can get the bios to recognise the drive? It tells me that my primary IDE bus has nothing attached. Windows XP tells me the drive is Volume 0 on Bus 0 (or something like that!).

My BIOS boot sequence is cet to: C, CD ROM, A

Thank you!

Try resetting the bios to default values. If that doesn't work, try removing the cmos battery from the motherboard for a few minutes. That sometimes can clear up problems of this nature.

You can also try a different IDE cable and ensure that the cable is correctly connected.

I'd have to say change the IDE cable. It has solved issues for me many a time before!

JrzyCrim's suggestion on the BIOS and CMOS battery should work. I spent close to 6 hours one day on the same problem including buying and installing a new hard drive, and pulling out and reinserting the battery was what solved it.

Hi ATNO/TW, TRUCE and Jrzy Crim,

Thank you very much for your suggestions - they are most appreciated. I have so far managed to try resetting the bios settings and removing the battery (for about half an hour!) but sadly to no avail. I shall try a new IDE cable as soon as I get the chance.

All the best,

Guy

Here is an update - I have tried most things! I have changed processor, CMOS battery, IDE cables, RAM sticks... You name it! I have also had the same problem on two other computers. It seems that sticking newer drives into older computers is a nightmare.

Has anybody got any other ideas?

Do you have the jumpers set to there correct positions? Primary for the hard disk? Is the IDE cable in the right way, Blue end in the motherboard and the End Furthest away from the other end in the hard disk??

*plum*

Taking a da that works and putting it on a different computer and it stops working points to the settings. What are the drive specs? SATA, ATA66 ATA100?

Also your BIOS may never recognize it due to an older BIOS. Head over to the WD web site and download the DDOL (Dynamic Drive Overlay) it allows older BIOSes to recognize new drives.

What year, version etc is your BIOS (as well as MB maker)? thes may help identify some more ideas.