Your mboard has no SATA controllers, so that is not a factor to consider regarding bios settings and your problems.
If your hard drive is working properly, is connected to it's data cable properly (if you removed it, it may be possible you installed it backwards), if the data cable is not damaged (see above), if the jumper setting on the drive is correct, if the drive is receiving power and is spinning, then your bios default settings, and your Recovery CD should have no problem seeing it properly.
But
- is the bios seeing the drive?
- is the hard drive working okay?
- is the power supply okay?
I have no idea whether your Evesham system has a Evesham bios version on your mboard, or just the regular MSI bios version. Sometimes lesser brand name systems don't bother customizing the bios version, or they do but the only thing that is different is the logo screen you see while booting is the brand name's (Evesham) instead of MSI, or they may do like major brand name system builders do - use an more modified bios version, often leaving out some settings you would normally see in the MSI version.
I'm assuming the bios Setup settings are the same as in the MSI bios version.
If the mboard bios is seeing the hard drive, you may see the model of the hard drive on the first screen as you boot, if that isn't obscured by a logo screen. If you don't see that model number and you're getting a logo screen, you could try turning off the logo screen.
Go into the bios Setup ....
(In any case, if you have been messing with bios settings, load bios defaults, save settings, then go back in.)
Advanced Cmos Features
Full Screen Logo Show
If you are getting a logo screen while booting, Disable it temporarily, save bios settings.
That will probably allow the hard drive model to appear on the first screen as you boot if it is being detected properly.
While you're in the bios Setup, somewhere you may also see the model of the drive there, or the parameters for it, or at least that it has been detected.
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If the hard drive is not detected
- is it spinning?
- are you sure it's connected correctly, and the data cable isn't damaged?
- is it making any strange noises?
Have you checked the power supply (see above)?
Have you run diagnostics on thre drive (see above)?
IDE 1 - Primary IDE - is the header farther away from the corner of the mboard
IDE 2 - Secondary IDE - the one closer to the corner of the mboard
If you have the drive you want to boot from on the IDE 1 header (Primary) jumpered as master, or on the end connector of a 3 connector cable if you are using cable select jumpering, it should boot with default boot order settings.
However, if the mboard is seeing the drive as slave ands it's by itself on the cable, this mboard probably will not see it at all.
If in doubt, try connecting the hard drive to another computer if you can, as slave on primary ide, or as master or slave on secondary IDE. Don't boot with it on the other computer - you just want to establish whether it is detected and working - it is normal for XP to not load Windows if the chipset on the other mboard is more than a little different, and if it does boot into Windows you will be loading settings for a different mboard.
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I thought MS-6712 sounded familiar to me.
I turns out it is, very much so.
There are two nearly identical MS-6712 series of mboards - there is a Ver. number beside MS-6712 - which one do you have?
Both series are marked KT4AV, but some have the built in LAN option (and network port) and are actually KT4AV-L - the mboards are identical except the one without the LAN chip are missing the chip and it's network port.
One series has the Via KT400 chipset, the other has the slightly newer Via KT400A chipset.
The manuals for both series say they are for Ver. 1.x mboards - it's only when you take a close look you find one series has the Via KT400, the other the Via KT400A.
However, on the actual mboards that main Via chip is covered by a heatsink - the two series of mboards can look identical otherwise.
A friend of mine had a mboard marked KT4V (it's actually KT4V-L) and MS-6712 Ver. 10A (= 1.0A).
About a couple of years after she got it (she had her computer on 24/7) it would misbehave and sometimes do flaky things, such as reboot for no apprent reason, and some other things I don't recall. She put up with that until she could afford to buy XP MCE 2005 and wanted me to take the computer to my place and reload her system.
I figured I might as well try flashing the bios while I was at it, since release notes for newer bios updates seemed to indicate it might help.
It turned out I used the wrong bios version - for the MS-6712 series with the KT400 chipset. That mboard has never booted since I flashed. The bios chip is soldered into the mboard, rather than being in a socket, so it was not an option costwise to pay to have it replaced. I only found out after removing the heatsink it has the KT400A chipset - pictures I found on the web had the same MS-7612 Ver. 10A on them, but apparently MSI had provided the wrong picture. Ver. 10 (1.0) has the KT400, but Ver 10A (1.0A) has the KT400A chipset, as does Ver. 1.1.
I replaced the mboard with an Asus A7V600 (Via KT600 chipset) instead and was able to use the same cpu and ram on it.
I had never encounted a mboard with the bad capacitor problem, so I didn't look for that at the time. Now that I look at it, her mboard has no obvious leaking or blown apart capacitors, but there are 2 larger ones near the cpu socket that appear slightly bulged on the top, and three smaller ones near the ram slots that appear slightly bulged on the top - that may have been the cause of the flaky behavior(the tops of them should be dead flat).
I had a mboard of my own develop the symptoms of bad capacitors about Nov. 2007 - a Gigabyte 7ZMMH, another Socket A mboard.
It was rebooting for no apparent reason, etc., and when I looked closely at it, it had several obvious bulging and leaking capacitors - I stoppeed using it, and tried it again about a month later - it no longer boots.
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