PC won't even POST with 1 IDE + 2 SATA attached

[johanb]

Hello new friends

A somewhat long story, but I am loosing sleep over this one.
I have this very weird problem after purchasing a second, identical sata drive. Mobo= MSI Neo FSR v2 / IDE = NEC DVD rewriter / Sata = 2 Samsungs 2504C, BIOS = latest AwardPhoenix.

Everything worked fine until I bought the second Sata drive. I now have 2 satas connected on mobo, and the DVD on IDE0 as a master.

No matter what I try, those three drives attached and my PC won't even go into P.O.S.T. after turning on. Just a black screen, no messages whatsoever and after 4 to 20 seconds it powers off.

When I pull the power cord off the DVD, systems boots fine and I see both SATAs in XP Explorer. Same thing with DVD and first SATA attached, no problems. Even works when I boot with 1xDVD and 1xSATA, and then after I plug in the second SATA (love hotswappable), everything runs smoothly. I just cannot get it to boot with all three drives attached at boot time. Once again, no error messages, no HD-spin up, just black, and power off. I can't even enter BIOS that way.

I tried the following: changed boot sequence order, changed HD boot order withing boot sequence, turned IDE and SATA controllers off and back on... I spent two nights in my BIOS.

Please help, I am almost ready to buy a USB DVD writer and pray that I can boot from that thing, should the need ever arise.

Much appreciated.

[jbennet]

sounds like having 3 drives is drawing too much juice. you may need to upgrade your power supply

[johanb]

Should have foreseen that answer by mentioning it's a brand new 430 W Antec power supply. I have no other peripherals attached except those three drives and the mobo itself, no GPU-fans, no USB devices etc. Also it doesn't explain why all three drives run fine after initiall startup.

[jbennet]

ok thats wierd.. Maybe your BIOS is getting confused and cant decide which HDD to boot from?

[johanb]

Yups James, that's my own opinion also. The problem is only trying to find out where and how it gets confused?

[jbennet]

i used to have a server that had both SCSI and IDE drives and i could never use both at the same time as it would cause it to say "error selecting boot device" on POST. Maybe a similar problem?

Refer to your motherboard manual and take a closer look at the boot order in the BIOS to see whether you can explicitly specifify the drive arrangement

[MeadowsPV]

Not much experience with SATA... but found refrences to issues with that motherboard on SATA slots #1-#2. Suggest you try the two SATA slots #3-#4 closest to cpu..
regards,
PV