OK.
This is really happening and no, I don't know why, so any thoughts would be appreciated.
Recently one of our original customers brought back his PC for an upgrade.
For sentimental reasons he wished to keep his case and he provided two 300GB Maxtor HDDs (still new in box) that he had gotten off eBay but we provided all the other parts.
-AMD 3200 Venice core CPU
-2x1GB Patriot RAM
-DFI LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D motherboard
-CoolerMaster RS-450 PSU (his request)
Install/stress testing went without a hitch and he picked it up yesterday morning.
Within a half hour I got a phone call...PC wouldn't boot.
"Cannot find any bootable devices, please enter BIOS and set boot order" or some such nonsense. "Press F1 to continue or Del to enter setup".
He brings the machine back and sure enough, no HDDs are listed in BIOS...in fact, no IDE devices are detected at all.
How odd.
Replace cables, check molexes, power on the PC.
BIOS detects everything, boots right to desktop.
Reboot several times without an issue.
Unplug the PSU, let the machine sit for 5 minutes, power back on and...no IDE devices detected.
Enter BIOS (where no optical or HDD devices are shown), make NO changes, hit F10 and "yes" and all devices show up and PC boots normally.
Repeat, lather, rinse.
Basically, once mains power is removed, BIOS "forgets" all the IDE devices and has to rediscover them.
Date/time and all other settings are retained, it's only IDE that gets lost.
Test CMOS battery,which tests good, and replace it anyway.
Nada.
This is definitely a motherboard/BIOS issue (IMO) but I've never seen such a selective failure. I would expect ALL BIOS settings to be lost but they aren't...only the IDE devices go missing and they are rediscovered and work properly after the second reboot after opening BIOS (but making no changes).
As long as standby power is present (PC plugged in to wall) all is well.
What am I missing here?
Bookmarks