BIOS failing to see Hard Disk

[Efkay]

After 15 months use my friend's pc fitted with an ASUS P5gd1 Pro motherboard is giving him grief.

On start-up it gets as far as the Windoze logo on the black background, then after several seconds re-starts the process again. When I enter setup the BIOS is not recognising the HDD, although both CD/DVDs are seen.

Any suggestions as what might be happening and how it might be fixed?

[rojash]

Are both CDs/DVDs on the same controller? If they are, then the most likely cause is that the Hard drive or the controller has failed (unless you accidentally disabled it - check that too). If both CDs are on the same controller, try disconnecting one, and connecting the hard drive in its place. If it is now detected, the fault is with the controller, if not the fault is with the hard drive, its connections or cables.

[TeeGee]

Have you carried out any changes since it last worked, like adding a CD / DVD drive? If so then possibly they are both primary or secondary.
Alternatively, you could have a virus that changed the BIOS.
Look on your motherboard for slugs like 'Clear CMOS' and change them. Try again.

[Efkay]

rojash: Both CD/DVDs are on the same controller; the HDD has a separate one. Due to location of HDD I'll have to detach both CD/DVDs as the connection won't reach to the HDD!

TeeGee: Nothing has been added nor changed. Was wondering whether I should remove battery to clear CMOS - but not done that yet. To be frank I don't understand "Look on your motherboard for slugs...." Can you enlighten me please!

Both: What I have done is tried another HDD and interestingly it too is not seen in the 'Main' BIOS, with only the CD/DVDs being recognised as the Primary Master and Slave. Yet when I escaped out of the BIOS, a 'dos' type window offered me the option on how I wanted to start; so I selected the (replacement) HDD and before my eyes my old Win98 disk started up!

That said, like the original HDD, the replacement is 'Not Dectected' in the 'Main BIOS' window, BUT both it and the original HDD are both seen in the 'Boot BIOS window' as 2nd Boot Drive (1st = Floppy and 3rd = DVD).

I take it I won't screw things up if I use the MB's CD controller to run connect the HDD - seeing as they are on different parts of the MB?

[Efkay]

Okay - here's the latest.

As per rojash's suggestion, I connected the original HDD using the CD ribbon. I went straight into BIOS and saw that the HDD is now recognised in the 'Main' BIOS window, although sometimes as the 1st primary master and sometimes as the third! Again it appears in the Boot Device Priority after the floppy drive.

Sadly this has had no effect in being able to complete the start-up procedure, so the original problem remains, ie it keeps re-cycling once it gets to the Windows logo (on black background).

As I've already tried a second HDD on the hard drive ribbon (controller) which did start up Win98, would this indicate that the original hard disk has failed? Any thoughts?

[TeeGee]

Hello again, Ideally the hard drives should be on IDE0 and the CD's on IDE1. However, I go back to my original post and suggest that you may have a ( boot sector ) virus on the hard drive that isn't being seen. The fact that IDE0 is the second boot device is immaterial, what really matters is that the hard drive is seen by the BIOS so that its parameters ( size, sectors etc ) are logged.
The CMOS clear slugs comment refer to the small ( usually ) black 2 pin connectors on the motherboard - used as a last resort to clear the CMOS memory of any settings ( BIOS password being one of them ), removing the battery ( unless for a few days ) wont do the same job.
OK?