I'm upgrading a system I built about four years ago. I'm running an Epox 8K3ae motherboard, AMD 2.8 ghz Thoroughbred, 3 gig DDR 2700ram. For drives I already have a WD 40 gig and an IBM 15. They have given me no problems. I've added a Seagate 200 gig which isn't formatted yet. My CD writer broke so I picked up a Samsung SM 332 (brown box no software). I'll be adding a 500w power supply after I fix the following problems. Problems: The system will only start with the cmos battery out. I've cleared the cmos by using the jumper, by removing the battery, and by rapidly turning the system on and off, and I get the same result - when its clear and I reset the settings in the bios, it won't start up until I remove the battery again! This leads me to believe I've lost something somewhere. Originally I had the base 2000 on the WD drive (its there now and I'm presently using it) and the IBM had 98 (for games)and most of the additional programs a person adds through the years. I moved all of that onto the WD since its a 7200 drive, in order to prep for the upgrade. The WD will be my OS drive, IBM for simple games, and the 200 gig for photo storage. I did a lot of deleting and used Regcleaner judiciously. I think something may have been lost or corrupted in the move. Additionally, my new optical drive doesn't work at all. It powers up, lights come on but other than that nothing. Windows doesn't recognize the drive at all and I haven't been able to manually load it through Add/delete hardware. As far as I remember Windows has basic drivers for these drives but if I can't get the system to see it I can't use it. If I can't use it I can't run my 2000 setup disk to repair whats wrong. My only hope is when I run my boot floppy tomorrow, to setup my big drive, that I can also run the optical drive off the bootdisk (run with cd support). Now my questions: Do you think the boot disk will allow me basic function of the cd/dvd player so I can run my 2000 disk? Could the cd/dvd "no seeum" problem be the fact that it is slaved off the unformatted harddrive? What the heck is the startup problem? No battery and it starts right up, albeit the cpu runs at 1.250 (its a 2.8 gig)and the boot screen calls it unkown, and the DDR 2700 ram registers at 1600 aat 200 mhz! Is it a cmos/bios problem or simply I've lost some basic parts of the OS that can be replaced if I can get the optical drive working? Is a bios flash in the realm of possibility/necessity? These are the basic problems. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Mike

First disconnect the new drives and restore the cabling and jumpers to original settings to verify this isn't a coincidental hardware failure. I would suspect the cabling and/or jumpers are the problem. Removing the battery makes the BIOS revert to default settings, as you have discovered. When you replace the battery do you then reset the necessary values in the BIOS screens? That is necessary.

I agree with OtH, it sounds like you didn't set the jumpers on the drives correctly. The battery's only purpose is to maintain power to the CMOS chip when the system is powered off, otherwise the BIOS settings would be lost everytime you shutdown. When you used the clearCMOS jumper, did you move it from the normal position, to the clear postiton, then back again? Booting up with the jumper in the clear position can damage the board. BTW, why didn't you buy a DVD burner? Newegg has several for under $25 with free shipping. "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

when the bios is reset the computer won't start at all.......not until the cmos is dumped again. on the cd/dvd front I have had a little success. While not an ideal setup, the combo drive slaved off the seagate hd, I did find a jumper setting for that drive that does work. now I have a cd drive.....the dvd won't work until I get a dvd decoder program. I am considering getting an add on ide controller in order to run the combo by itself. new problem - Win 2000 won't let me format a drive that large...thought it would since its sp4. it gets about 87% done and then coughs up an error message saying the drive is too large.

Use the Seagate software to partition & format the new drive. "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction

Are you formatting NTFS? If so you MAY not have the registry tweak to use 48 bit LBA. If you BIOS doesn't see the entire capacity of the drive then don't use it. You will either need a BIOS update, if available, of install a controller card. kReboot and watch the POST screens to see what size the BIOS reports.

That board's a lot older than I thought...released in 2002 & based on the VIA KT333. There is no 2.8GHz T-Bred so I assume you mean 2800+? It was a bit of a rarity. It runs at 2.2GHz (16.5 x 133MHz)...would that be what you have? If so, you're hurting performance if you're running your PC2700 RAM at it's default speed. It should be underclocked to 133MHz (266MHz DDR) to match the CPU. http://www.firingsquad.com/hw/1519/... I don't know if the Epox site is shutdown or having problems but I wasn't able to access it: http://www.epox.com/ I found this BIOS though. All you need is the right Award flash utility: http://driverscollection.com/?file_... "If my answers frighten you then you should cease asking scary questions" - Jules Winnfield (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction