I just recently built my 933 p3 up.It consists of a Iwill VX133 mobo and the p3 chip.Upon setting everything up i booted and went into the bios checked all settings and then rebooted.Since neither of the 2 hard drives i had installed had any os installed i proceeded to reboot with my windows me disk in my master cdrom..After it got past the bios/info screen i got the error something like this {initializing ATAPI cdrom "failed"}.Without having a floppy drive i figured i was screwed. I next took an old 810mb hd i had and set it as master and my other 20gig maxtor as slave in another system ran the maxtor program and copied its contents to the maxtor,replaced it into my newly built system and now i could actually boot into windows.Windows then proceeded to detect all my hardware etc.It configured some things and recognized my cdroms..but it wouldnt detect my modem/sound card, wouldnt detect the onboard sound and i have all the drivers installed still no luck..After all this i figured id finally be able to reboot and boot via cdrom.I still got the atapi error.So i ran the Win Me update in windows and went from 98-ME.MY friend didnt send me the cd for the mobo which from what im gathering has the drivers for the onboard sound and a few programs.What could be going wrong? I have the factory cdrom that came with my HP Pavilion 4440 as the master drive and then my MEMOREX 4224CDRW as the slave.They both operate fine once in windows.All my settings in the cmos are configured correctly.The next problem im having is my 40 gig hd.Before i built my new pc i had partitioned my 40gig and moved 8gigs worth of important data to it.I figured id then format the drive and then just copy my info bac over from the partition.I couldnt get it formatted right and now it shows up as FAT format,and only having 7.33mb capacity all of which is used and it shows nothing on the drive under windows or dos.Upon checking the drive in the maxtor maxblast software it still detects my partition and shows that the data is still there.How can i go about SAFELY! formating the drive and NOT corrupting/deleting the partition or data within it? Any information is much appreciated. Thanks

Your CDROMs may not be correctly jumpered or cabled. Some MOBOs are very sensitive about using specific cables and some of the faster HDDs require a 40pin/ 80conductor cable for appropriate function. Your BIOS settings may not be correct though it sounds like you’ve checked into that. Having the correct MOBO drivers couldn’t hurt but shouldn’t prevent CDROM detection in DOS.

Ive got the cdroms jumpered correctly.Once im in windows i can use both the cdroms fine.My HDs are only 5400rpm.

You may have the problem called partition layering: 2 or more layers of partitions on a single drive. Maxblast is notorious for this (personal experience). It is far better to make sure ALL partition layers have been removed via fdisk, then start fresh. Don't use maxblast, just fdisk. Also make sure your your ATA/33/66/100/etc. drives have the 40 pin/80 wire cable attached to them. Once your operating system (windows in this case)is installed, right click on my computer, click on properties, click on device tab. Double click on each HD/DVD/CDRW and enable DMA access. You will need to reboot to activate. If any of the drives, particularly dvd/cd acts funny, disable for that drive only. Enabling DMA for the HDs is as good as maxblast, without the headaches associated with it. On another note, the version of maxblast I have, doesn't work when at least a promise eide controller is present. Besides, if I read your post correctly, you don't NEED maxblast, have your mobo bios detect your HDs and select the one with LBA. Newer boards don't need to do this. That should help you solve your problem! Good luck! Charles

I couldnt copy the data via maxblast so i just dropped back out to dos and luckily for some reason this time i could view the partition.I copied all the info via xcopy to my 20gig.Next i went into maxblast to del the partition and format the 40gig.I got the error, "Although the boot track was successfully created,partitioning of drive 1 failed because creation of the boot record failed because the partitions could not be read", I then went back out to dos and formatted the primary and the partition.The strange thing is that my HDD=40gig and its showing my primary as 27,502.23mb and the partition as being 19,525.31mb. That doesnt make sense according to those reading id have about a 48 gig HDD.I orignally partitioned the 40gig with partition magic.When i was in maxblast the max i could set 2 partitions would be half of the 40gig around 20gig for each.I can access the 40gig as well as the partition fine.

When i use maxplast plus the version that came with my 40 gig drive, it shows partition A=28,840mb free,654mb used partition B=20,475mb free,5488mb used When using Maxblast Plus 2 the latest version... partition A=19,534mb,627mb used partition B=19,534mb,0mb used Windows lists them as.. partition A=Capacity=26.8gb,26.2gb free,649mb used partition B=Capacity=19gb,13.9gb free,5.11gb used Whats the deal?