Drives not detected on IDE2!

I just upgraded to an EPoX 8RDA+ Motherboard, with an AMD AthlonXP 2800+ processor and a Radeon 9600XT graphics card. But I am getting a couple of problems occuring on and off:

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1. After having the PC switched off overnight, when I switch on in the morning, I get no display, and the CPU speaker makes a continuous 2-tone beeping noise. If I switch it off at the mains and then back on again, its fine. Any ideas what this means and how I can stop it happening?</s>
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2. My DVD Drive and DVDRW Drive are not always being detected by the system (both on BIOS startup, and in WindowsXP). They occasionally get picked up, but its rare, so I am guessing its not a faulty motherboard/socket? I have also tried 4 different IDE cables too. The drives are both on the IDE 2 cable, as IDE 1 seems to have no problems whatsoever. Again, any explanations as to why it wont detect my secondary master/slave drives 99% of the time?

Hope someone can help, please email me at: dionket@aol.com if you have any questions or ideas :)

Andy (aka Omegaweb)

It would be something going wrong with IDE channel on the board.

Perhaps it has problems to the extreme of screwing up the whole PCI bus from time to time - hence your bootup beeps.

That was a shot in the dark though.

I have no idea, although when it blackscreens&beeps the mobo lcd says "C1" which i looked up in the manual and it referrs to a memory detection issue... but would this affect the IDE 2 drives not being detected?

this may be obvios and youve proly already checked, but are the ide cables in the right way round?
withthe memory check its seated properly and if youve got more than one stick try each seperatly.
also would be a good idea to clear the bios - might be mem timings which are to fast for the ram.
also check your psu rails with a multimeter or in your bios

Not sure what Bios the Epox uses but a two tone beep warning signal often means overheating or out of spec. voltages. So if possible, try a substitute PSU. And check CPU temp in Bios.

As already mentioned, reset CMOS, set Bios to default settings and try that.

Also trying one stick of RAM at a time is a good idea, and make sure they're properly seated.

Also make sure graphics card is securely seated and that it's not lifting when you put the AGP board retaining screw in.

Doubtful if it's this one, but it's also worth checking in the Bios to make sure the CPU fan detection function is disabled, although it probably wouldn't boot at all if this was enabled and you had no fan plugged into the motherboard cpu fan socket.

Hi folks the black screen and beeping appears to have fixed itself, but am still having trouble with IDE2.. and yes SilentDeath i checked the cables are plugged in right :-) theyve got that little notch to prevent it going in wrong anyhows but thanks for the suggestion. Can't even get drives on IDE2 to register at all, even by double checking the cable...

What else could be causing this that I could try and amend? (in simple talk, im still only a newbie tech lol)

Thanks,
Andy

C1 is memory error, could be a problem with that. Tryed swapping the memory around, what memory you useing?

Hi folks.

Have stumbled across a detail, don't know whether it will help anyone form an opinion about why im getting these problems or how to solve them... but here goes anyway...

After plenty of tests, I have discovered that once I have the drives working, if I shutdown the computer but NOT switching off at the mains (just letting windows do its shutdown/powerdown).... ALL IS WELL when i switch on the next morning.

HOWEVER...

If I switch off at mains, the problem is back when I switch back on.

Strange, no?

And yes I discovered in the mobo manual that C1 is a memory problem, although the memory I got was (and i quote) "original" memory for dual channel (?).

my friend (frosty) has the excact same mobo as you do and flashed the bios to latest but still has the same problem with his DVD drive. considering he hasn't updated his mobo driver for about 5 - 7 months i'd say you should try updating to the latest nforce drivers

On the topic of drives not detected, my aunt put a new 80GB Maxtor drive in her computer and it won't detect it at all. Does it have to be formatted before it can be detected? :confused:

Could the problem (both the memory and the drives) be due to a flat motherboard battery? A friend said it could be why the problem comes back whenever I turn off at the mains but not when I do a normal powerdown.

Otherwise, the mains socket has been left switched on and i've not had a problem...

Any comments welcome :)

Ok well I got advised that it could've been dodgy memory or a flat motherboard battery (CMOS or whatever it is, the little flat silver one yknow) but I've replaced both and still no change :(

Any more ideas?

Is it a master or slave, and have the jumpers been set correctly?

Cheers
Rob