Hey guys,

I'm having a problem with a new 500GB SATA (HD501LJ) drive I've bought. XP is installed on it, but the computer will not boot directly from cold. It gives
"Hardware Initiate failed, Please Check Device!!!
The Bios does not be installed. Press <g> to continue! !".

Pressing G results in a messaging saying "No Harddrive was found. Install Boot device and try again". Ctrl+Alt+Dlt reboots the comp and this time it finds the drive and boots properly.

It's like the bios is too fast to detect the HDD or something, and once the drive is going, it is found when the computer is restarted.

I've disabled Quickboot in bios, installed the SATA drivers, and also used a jumper to drop the HDD speed from 3mbps to 1.5, but nothing has helped.

I've google this quite a lot but found nothing that works. Someone suggested a HDD delay function in the bios, but I've flashed to the latest version for my motherboard and couldn't find anything like this.

Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 3500+ Chip
ASUS A8V Deluxe Mobo
Samsung HD501LJ 500GB SATA drive
3GB Total Kingmax + Cosair Ram
2 x Dvd Drives (LG and Pioneer)
500watt Codegen Power supply

Any Ideas?

Thanks

Very good description of the problem, kudos.



..... Wow.

Good one. Every solution I had, you tried. Makes me wonder if there's some sort of compatibility issue going on here. The only people I found with your combination of drive and motherboard never said they solved the problem, and the problems were identical. Unless maybe there's some sort of problem with the sata cable or the connection, but that seems unlikely.

Maybe you can find something with the mobo or HD manufacturer, or you could try to contact support? With such a rare issue they may not have bothered with a fix. Or you could always just return it while you still can.

Some bios default to IDE instead of SATA. Check your bios hard drive settings for anything similar to that. Also check your boot order.

Thanks for the replies,

I'll try to get on to Samsung or ASUS and see if they can suggest anything. I'll have another look through the BIOS, but I don't think there is much more I can try in that respect. I did find an IDE/SATA option early on, which I made sure was set to SATA.

I'll let you know if I get anywhere.

Cheers.

Hi
I have very similar setup and slightly different (though no less infuriating) problem.

I currently have a system that is stable running XP. I have two IDE 160gig hard drives (NOT using RAID) and 2 DVDs (one read, one write). HD are masters on each IDE channel and DVDs slaved off HDs. MOBO is ASUS A8V Deluxe. No problems whatsover - running this set up for 2 years+

My problem is that I am trying to install a new Hitachi 500 gig SATA drive and I can't. My first foray into using SATA. I checked the forums before buying to make sure I could mix IDE and SATA.The BIOS refuses to see the new drive as does XP under computer management.

Error: "Hardware Initiate Failed, Please check device!!! The Bios does not be installed. Press [g] to continue" (quote - not my bad english!). This is the VIA Serial ATA Raid BIOS setting utility V2.01

Pressing "g" then goes into next part of BIOS - and another error - "SATA378 TX2Plus BIOS ver 1.00.0.33 No Device is found! BIOS is not installed"

My normal, stable, WinXP then proceeds to load and my new SATA drive is just invisible. It has power and is spinning. It is connected onto SATA1 socket. I have flashed the BIOS to the latest from the ASUS website - 1017.002.

I am just looking to use the 500 gig SATA for data storage. I do not want to put XP on it and use it as boot drive. I do not want any form of RAID.

ANY help would be appreciated. I am pulling my hair out!

Cheers,

UPDATE: After some more hours of struggling my system bios now recognises the drive - but NOT XP

The VIA Serial ATA RAID BIOS Setting Utlility scans but detects 'No Device' on Channel 0 or Channel 1 - but at least it scans.

The Promise SATA378 TX2plus BIOS correctly detects "D0 Hitachi HDT725050VLA3 465GB Ultra DMA 6".

Since I don't want raid I have the BIOS set to "IDE Bus Master - Enabled". This way I *should* see the drive as a stand alone. Unfortunately in still does not show up in Windoze computer/disk management.

Not much hair left. . . help! ! !

I'm not sure of the HDD limitations on XP. However, XP home or pro has a limit of 137gig (I believe) whereas XPsp2 has up to 300gig (I think)

So try and make your HDD into two partitions - both drives will be in "my computer" but with equal space between them. So you'll have to re-install your XP by booting from the disk, which should allow you to choose whether to format or repair your initial partition OR create a new partition.

It should sort your problem out. I'm not sure whether MOBO's have limitions either, but try the partitions.

Fox,

What BIOS and version is your MB running? It sounds like a BIOS issue to me, but not that it is too fast. If your BIOS is not up to date, perhaps flashing it might fix the problem, but check the BIOS providers web-site before you attempt this.

I'd try dropping the speed of that 500gb down. Or flash the bios. Might have to do both.

Hey mate, yeah, I've already flashed BIOS to latest version.

Achilles2k, you problem sounds similar to some troubles I had getting the thing initally recognised.
I found that XP didn't have the SATA driver, and thus couldn't find the drive. There is a stage in the XP install that gives you the option to insert a floppy containg extra drivers. I don't have a floppy drives so I created a custom XP install cd with the drivers included and then installed Windows (which included the drivers).

You may have to reinstall Windows, but I'll go back and try to find the steps I followed for you.