DOS Games Discussion

OK now this is something I have never encountered before in all the years I have used a computer. I have an Asus P5N-D Motherboard with 8 gigs of DDR2 ram and quadcore processor .(Win 7 Ultimate OS) Recently, my hard drive died and I had to get a new one..so I got one....a WD 500 GB Black label. When I put it in my computer on SATA 1 it did not read the drive in BIOS and came up as empty slot...I tried all SATA ports....I put in a band new SATA cable...even tried moving the RAM (taking some out putting some in) BUT NOTHING WORKED..it STILL would not rcognise my hard drive in the BIOS. No...I did not update my motheboard BIOS, but I had never had his kind of problem either. I am scared of updating my motherboard BIOS unless I just have to, because I can brick my motherboard.

So I go to my local computer repair shop and they put a different hard drive in my computer to see if the BIOS will recognise it...it did right away! They tried another SATA hard drive also recognised instantly on SATA 1! I was scratching my head wondering WHAT was going on...I thought it was the had drive just being bad....so THEN they put in my old hard drive and...WHAT DO YOU KNOW....it worked....in BIOS on SATA 1!

I know that computer shop owner looked at me funny....but no matter WHAT I did last night...I could NOT get the BIOS to recognise the hard drive! The ONLY thing I an think of that would have "set it right" was somehow when those other two drives were hooked up....they somehow set right whatever was wrong in the BIOS? I really don't know...still stumped! By the way... my computer loaded win 7 great and is working FINE! The question I have is what made it act "wacky" in h first place? I have read on other forums about an AU P5N-D motherboard not recognising a SATA drive and those guys tried everything like did...yet they had no luck. Most just chunked their hard drives! This is a really weird mystery to me. Never had to deal with this before! If anyone wants to take a guess....please feel free!

because I can brick my motherboard.

I understand the fear, and it's possible, but it's unlikely and these day's it's pretty easy to update bios. And Asus is great.

As to the rest, nice mystery. The closest I got was trying to put a drive as SATA #2 in for the first time, but similar "nothing recognized" until I realized I had to turn that port on in the bios.

Otherwise I'd guess things like two bad cables, or something on the sata port or a loose connection between port and motherboard (???). Not that it makes sense.

And there is always the "I'm an idiot" stuff like had the board upside down and plugged it in sata 4 late at night, but I'm sure that never happens to anyone but me.

Cool mystery, and I'm glad you got it sorted out!

Yeah I checked the BIOS and made sure all the SATA ports were active and working....unfortunately...they were.

Weird...guess I will never know what caused that.

By the way, the SATA port that kept saying empty...SATA 1 is now where my hard drive is and runs great...I am typing this on the computer in question!