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I am praying someone can help me with this. This is my first build and I've been at it now for many months!!!! I've been through 2 hard drives, 2 optical drives and I'm on my 3rd mobo and still can't get it to work. I do have a basic/intermediate knowledge of hardware and configs but am really stuck.

Right now, I've got a FoxConn A7VMX-K mobo. This is my second one. I sent the first back because it couldn't detect my IDE dvd drive or my SATA hdd and now I've got the same problem with the replacement they sent me.

I've tried different data and power cables, tried reconnecting and have tried going to into BIOS to specify the master drive as a DVD drive instead of letting it auto detect but no luck. When set to auto detect, it doesn't detect anything. When I manually specify that it's a dvd drive as the primary master and reboot, it says the device is not atapi compatible.

The hdd is SATA and is not detected at all.

I had the IDE drive working with a Gygabyte mobo but I couldn't get that mobo to detect the sata hdd so I assumed it was bad sata connnectors and sent the mobo back and went w/ FoxConn (it was the second hdd I'd tried on the gygabyte).

At this point, I'm ready to throw the entire pc into the river and be done with it! However, I thought I'd check here first for some help.

Right now, I'm thinking maybe the mobo just doesn't have the drivers for these devices and that's why it can't recognize them. I'm thinking maybe if I installed a floppy drive and created a start up floppy disc that maybe I could get to a point where I could install some drivers? I'm really lost at this point.

Any advice on where to begin?!?!?!?! Would you think I need drivers, I need to change a setting or I've just got 2 junk FoxConn mobos?

Sorry for the long post but I'm desperate and beyond frustrated.

This isn't really my area of expertise but, yes I think if you got to the point that you could at least download some drivers via a bootable floppy just to rule it out that would help.

I have marked your thread as open for another tech to come look at it

Hello and I second your welcome to the forum.

Lets see if we can rule out a few things.

Crush is right this maybe a driver issue/jumper settings.

Could you please remove any CD/DVD rom drives.
Remove all but one RAM stick.

Any other hardware not pertaining to boot up disconnect.

Also an issue with jumper settings maybe.Fit the IDE HDD and make sure it is master set via jumper.

Do not connect CD/DVD rom drives to same IDE cable as the HDD as this could be the cause of your issue.

Thanks. This might be tough to do in real time since I've only one monitor but I'll try to keep at it as long I'm getting responses.

To clarify, only the dvd drive is IDE and its jumper is set to master. The hdd is SATA and plugged into SATA port 1.

I've never created a start up disk so I'll have to read up on that and of course, I'll have to get a floppy drive for it.

If the DVD rom drive is set as master are you adding the hard drive to the same IDE cable?

Or is the HDD on its own seprate IDE cable and port?

If you only have one monitor and need to swop things around we are here to help and we can wait to give you more help while you test things out.

Jellybean, the hdd is sata so it's connected to sata port 1 - it's not on an ide connection.

Regarding your advice to remove everything but one stick of memory, I wonder what should I look for as a result? Right now, the cpu and memory are fine and both showing up correctly in BIOS. Thanks again for the help.

Ooops sorry I missed read lower down in your post.

You can get it to work with an IDE HDD but not with the SATA?