HELP ME

I had a ASUS TUA266 mobo, celeron 1.1, 384MB SDRAM.
Not sure what the hard drive and cdrom came up as, I think I had both on ide channel 2 and the hard drive as slave.
I had 98 and then installed XP Pro Upgrade.
Now I have GIGABYTE GA7VAX, basically same board except dual bios, KT400, I have installed a XP+1800 and 256MB of 2700 DDR.
So it comes up as Primary Master is hard drive, and the CDROM as Secondary master, thing is I cant get XP Pro Full install to work, nor any other installs, they come up with I have no fixed disk to install too!

So I switch the cables and make the CDROM Primary Master and the Hard drive Secondary master. Now I can format, and install the basic XP files but on reboot it goes back to wanting to format or reinstall those basic files. On boot up all I see is the Primary Master is the CDROM, I do NOT see the Hard drive as the Secondary master.

Do I need to get some professional help here? Or can u guys help me out at all?
THANKS IN ADVANCE TO anybody who can help.
CPL is helping me too, but this is a weird problem I think…..

I always thought that you weren't supposed to have a hard drive and cdrom shar the same cable? Or, if you did, there were certain precautions that you had to take on the settings.

Check in that area if you have access to the Net (which I assume you di since you posted here)

First of all why would u want the CD-ROM as primary master?

U can change the boot order in the BIOS to make the CD-ROM the first boot device.

Are u leaving the XP cd in the drive when u boot?

I DONT WANT the CDROM as Primary Master..only way on a guess to get the HD to be seen....

Did you change the jumpers on the drives to reflect their positions? Is that how you are changing primary/secondary or are you doing it in the bios only? I only ask cuz you used to have them both on the same controller and now you have them on different controllers. The hard drive's jumper should now be set to master for it to show properly. Also the Hard drive that you will boot to should always be primary master.

Profhet!!!

DO THIS

Set IDE1 Primary Master to your boot Harddrive and make sure its set on the right spot on the IDE cable as well as the jumpers set to the correct Master position.

Set IDE2 Primary Master to your CDROM and make sure its set on the right spot on the IDE cable as well as the jumpers set to the correct Master position.

Then you have less things to worry about, and can add the other shit after you are up and running.

CPL!!!
oN the ide cables, which connector is the primary connector? or does it matter?. The very end connector or the one between the end connector and the board connector?

should be middle then end.... but if you just have 1 HD hooked to it, it shouldn't matter

actually it all depends on your jumpers more than anything

if you have your Harddrive or CDROM set to cable select, i think the primary is always the 1st on the IDE cable. like this.

MOBO-PRIMARY-SLAVE-END OF CABLE

I would have to relook it up for sure.

if you can't autodetect a drive from the BIOS, you know you have a problem even before you try to boot up.

1, does your bios see the drives?
2, if you are certain the jumpers are in place. just keep moving the HDD until its in Primary Master position.
3, then add your CDROM to same spot on IDE2.

then reboot, and change your boot order in the bios to see your HD first for now.

thats what i would do.

is it normal to have a 8mb partition "owned" by XP?

it must be a restore point or something weird like the install files.

I would low level format and start over.

Use the disk editor.