Very quick query. I've built a new PC but it appears to not be happy. I tried to install Vista and it says its loading the files, but after the progress bar completes I get a frozen vista screen.

A very very quick message appears on booting saying hard disk not found, but this is after a message saying it has found a drive (and it also sees it in the BIOS). Do I need to jumper the drive to master? At the moment there is no jumper at all so could that be causing my problem? Do SATA drives need the jumpers? Do I need to connect the drive to SATA port 1 or does it make no difference?

Thanks in advance and sorry for the stupid questions. Its been 15 years since I built a PC!

AFAIK jumpers don't make a difference, nor does the socket. Have you got another HD you could try?

SATA drives don't have jumpers. The port selected shouldn't make any difference but I'd recommend using the first (probably port 0) for the system drive since if you add more drives it could cause issues with the order.

I tip bad memory or maybe even a power supply. Try running Memtest86 or similar and give it a bit of a stress test. Reseat any pluggable cards, memory etc.

Is it a totally new machine? It's a bit hard these days with all the integration in mainboards but remove any extraneous components to rule out incompatibilities?

I assume this a genuine install disc?

My SATA drive does have jumpers with instructions on setting it to master or slave its just I have no jumpers I can try Its a Samsung F1 1gb drive in a Asus P5Q-EM board if that helps?

Yes its a genuine legit OEM version of Vista. All brabnd new components. I don't have another drive I can try and I can't test the RAM without a working machine.

Hmmm I guess I'll start from scratch and remove things I don't need and see how I get on. I was hoping it was a port problem but apparently not.

So I'll try the first SATA port and one stick of RAM and see what happens.

Thanks for the suggestions.

In my last build I had a Samsung 1TB drive that was recognised by both BIOS and Windows, but only as 32MB. Took me ages to figure that out, just sent it back. Go into BIOS and see what it tells you about the HDD.

Memtest does not require an operating system of any nature. Go download it, burn it to CD, and boot it.


Are those instructions labeled "PATA Installation"? That doesn't apply to your drive.

SATA drives do not have master/slave jumpers. If your drive has those, then it is not a SATA drive. You may have instructions for master/slave jumpers on PATA drives, but they jumper positions themselves simply do not exist on your SATA drive (look at it).

The brief "no drives found" message you see flash by at boot is for the secondary SATA ports. Many motherboards have two SATA controller chips, each with several ports. One Intel chip, and one by somebody else (eg. JMicron or Marvell). The brief message is for the latter.

It is usually best to hook the boot drive to the Intel controller, but most systems can boot from any port.

Cheers

A Sumsung F1 drive does not need jumpers set. I'm currently using a couple of these drives without any problems. Maybe you should try a different SATA cable? (make sure the cable you're using is a SATA2 cable!)

Your drive probably wasn't faulty, I've experienced the same thing. I wrote about it here on this forum and Mark was kind enough to provide me with the solution to this problem. I'm currently still using the drive without a single problem.