Question on Windows

[ch]

Hi, i have a question: i just restarted my computer and i gave me a CMOS checksum error.. i've been looking around and finding that it seems to be a problem with the battery, which is unlikely, as my pc is jsut a few months old and the parts were new... does anyone know what it could be?
then i have a problem which i don't know how to solve, b/c i have two hard drives, both connected to IDE 0 on my gigabyte motherboard.. they both appear in BIOS but windows can't find one of them. at startup it tells me IDE 80 connector cable not installed, or something like that..
i hope u guys can help me!
thanx
ch

[locustfurnace]

If the HardDrives are new, you will need to use an ATA ribbon cable that has 80 connectors. This should have come with the new drives. Don't use older cables laying around, unless your certain they are 80 pin connector cables. The older ones are 40 pins, and will not give you the transfer rate the hard drive supports.

It is possible, but unlikely, that the cable is installed reversed. Make sure you have the cables hooked up correctly.
Also did you format these new drives? You may have to format them before using.

If your getting a CMOS error, it can be related to the incorrect hard drive settings. The battery CAN also be dead, just because the system is new, does not mean the battery is. The battery could have come from inventory that was stockpiled for an incredibly long time.

[ch]

Well, the HardDrives were new, and so were all the cables. What is an ATA cable? I used the IDE (flat grey) cables that came with the motherboard.
I dodn't format the drives because Windows doesn't find them, it only finds one. That is, when I click on "add Hardware" in the control panel, it doesn't find anything new.
I'll try rehooking the cable, but I think I tried some time ago and it didn't work..

[locustfurnace]

ATA cable or IDE cable, same thing. its the flat ribbon cable. Todays newer hard drives require the 80 pin connector cable, while older hard drives and or Cd-roms used the 40 pin conenctor cables.

you might have to formt the drive, BEFORE windows will find the drive. So you might have to do this via DOS, use a boot floppy, boot the system up and format that drive.

Also, one other thing to check is that you have each Hard Drive configured properly, 1 hard drive's jumpers set to MASTER and other set to SLAVE, unless your using a cable Select setting. Which you should read the instructions included with the Hard drive for setting that up.

Besure you also have the Motherboards BIOS set to detect the newly installed drive. Which alot of the newer BIOS's can use AUTO to auto detect these drives. Otherwise you will have to tell the BIOS what the cycliners, heads and secotrs of the hard drives are.

What capacity are these hard drives? does the BIOS support these capacities? Some older Motherboards have limitatiosn on what hard drives can be used on the system, without using overlay software.
So if the capacity is too large. your system ownt see the hard drives.
If the Motherboard is newer, then this should not be a problem