failing drive question

If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change other than going
into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?

Susan wrote:

If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off?

Not necessarily. If the drive's physical connection is fine but the laser is
duff, the drive will still show in the BIOS and show as enabled.

What causes bios settings to change other than
going into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?

If the drive controller on the optical drive fails or the drive controller
on the motherboard fails, the drive won't be seen in the BIOS.

I think you would get a more useful answer if you asked a specific question
and detailed exactly what your issues are.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

Susan wrote:

If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off?

Not necessarily. If the drive's physical connection is fine but the laser is
duff, the drive will still show in the BIOS and show as enabled.

What causes bios settings to change other than
going into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?

If the drive controller on the optical drive fails or the drive controller
on the motherboard fails, the drive won't be seen in the BIOS.

I think you would get a more useful answer if you asked a specific question
and detailed exactly what your issues are.

Malke
--
MS-MVP
Elephant Boy Computers - Don't Panic!
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/#FAQ

Susan wrote:
If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change other than going
into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?



You would hope nothing could do that.

The CMOS is protected by a couple checksum values. One checksum
is for the few bytes used to store passwords. The second checksum
covers the rest of the CMOS. The CMOS RAM is backed up by a battery,
and if a single byte is corrupted, the checksum verification done by
the BIOS code during POST, should detect it.

In the event of a system crash, a BIOS writer may choose to "reset
to defaults", all the BIOS settings. That presents an opportunity to
screw up the user's settings. It would not be normal for the
default to include disabling any IDE ports. The ports should all
be enabled, so that the BIOS can search each port at boot and
discover any connected devices. Disabling ports is something humans
do to their BIOS settings, to speed up the POST sequence.

So, potential mechanisms

1) Likely possible for well crafted software or malware, to mess
around with the CMOS. I don't know how well defended the CMOS is
from the OS level, or how difficult it would be to disturb the CMOS.

2) Turn off computer power, battery is bad, could lead to corrupted
settings. A checksum error may be seen at power up, or some other
side effect.

3) On some systems, a crash and reboot, may find the BIOS settings
changed. (My Asus motherboards do that.) But the default should
be to leave all IDE ports enabled. It makes no sense for the default
to be disabling IDE ports.

HTH,
Paul

Susan wrote:
If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change other than going
into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?



You would hope nothing could do that.

The CMOS is protected by a couple checksum values. One checksum
is for the few bytes used to store passwords. The second checksum
covers the rest of the CMOS. The CMOS RAM is backed up by a battery,
and if a single byte is corrupted, the checksum verification done by
the BIOS code during POST, should detect it.

In the event of a system crash, a BIOS writer may choose to "reset
to defaults", all the BIOS settings. That presents an opportunity to
screw up the user's settings. It would not be normal for the
default to include disabling any IDE ports. The ports should all
be enabled, so that the BIOS can search each port at boot and
discover any connected devices. Disabling ports is something humans
do to their BIOS settings, to speed up the POST sequence.

So, potential mechanisms

1) Likely possible for well crafted software or malware, to mess
around with the CMOS. I don't know how well defended the CMOS is
from the OS level, or how difficult it would be to disturb the CMOS.

2) Turn off computer power, battery is bad, could lead to corrupted
settings. A checksum error may be seen at power up, or some other
side effect.

3) On some systems, a crash and reboot, may find the BIOS settings
changed. (My Asus motherboards do that.) But the default should
be to leave all IDE ports enabled. It makes no sense for the default
to be disabling IDE ports.

HTH,
Paul

Susan wrote:
If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change other than going
into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?

Hello Susan:

1) If others, with computer skills, have physical access to your
system, then others could change change your BIOS settings. Of course
this would take a reboot in its simplest form.

2) Malware. But admittedly this is rather rare.

3) Hardware failure. Again somewhat rare.

HTH

Pete
--
1PW @?6A62?FEH9E=6o2@=]4@ [r4o7t]

Susan wrote:
If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change other than going
into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?

Hello Susan:

1) If others, with computer skills, have physical access to your
system, then others could change change your BIOS settings. Of course
this would take a reboot in its simplest form.

2) Malware. But admittedly this is rather rare.

3) Hardware failure. Again somewhat rare.

HTH

Pete
--
1PW @?6A62?FEH9E=6o2@=]4@ [r4o7t]

Susan wrote:
If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change other than going
into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?




If your bios was set to "auto"
and the drive failed...then the bios would simply report "none"

However, a bios call is *not* required for anything other than the drive
you are booting from...

so whether or not the bios was set to list the drive...if the drive is
working...the operating system should still pick it up...
so it looks like a new drive is in order...but of course check the
cables first

Susan wrote:
If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled
drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change other than going
into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?




If your bios was set to "auto"
and the drive failed...then the bios would simply report "none"

However, a bios call is *not* required for anything other than the drive
you are booting from...

so whether or not the bios was set to list the drive...if the drive is
working...the operating system should still pick it up...
so it looks like a new drive is in order...but of course check the
cables first

"Paul" wrote in message ...
Susan wrote:

If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change
other than going into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?

You would hope nothing could do that.

[snip]

So, potential mechanisms

1) Likely possible for well crafted software or malware, to mess
around with the CMOS. I don't know how well defended the CMOS is
from the OS level, or how difficult it would be to disturb the CMOS.

2) Turn off computer power, battery is bad, could lead to corrupted
settings. A checksum error may be seen at power up, or some other
side effect.

3) On some systems, a crash and reboot, may find the BIOS settings
changed. (My Asus motherboards do that.) But the default should
be to leave all IDE ports enabled. It makes no sense for the default
to be disabling IDE ports.

I had a similar situation just last night. (intel board) By accident I
inserted a PATA drive jumpered as master in a caddy that is slave to another
drive. Doing so, removed the SATA boot drive from the BIOS boot priority list
completely. Removing the misconfigured PATA drive had had no effect. The
only drives in the boot list were CD and floppy.

"Paul" wrote in message ...
Susan wrote:

If cd/dvd drive fails/stops working would the bios setting for enabled drives change to off? What causes bios settings to change
other than going into the set-up and manually changing it yourself?

You would hope nothing could do that.

[snip]

So, potential mechanisms

1) Likely possible for well crafted software or malware, to mess
around with the CMOS. I don't know how well defended the CMOS is
from the OS level, or how difficult it would be to disturb the CMOS.

2) Turn off computer power, battery is bad, could lead to corrupted
settings. A checksum error may be seen at power up, or some other
side effect.

3) On some systems, a crash and reboot, may find the BIOS settings
changed. (My Asus motherboards do that.) But the default should
be to leave all IDE ports enabled. It makes no sense for the default
to be disabling IDE ports.

I had a similar situation just last night. (intel board) By accident I
inserted a PATA drive jumpered as master in a caddy that is slave to another
drive. Doing so, removed the SATA boot drive from the BIOS boot priority list
completely. Removing the misconfigured PATA drive had had no effect. The
only drives in the boot list were CD and floppy.

Bill Blanton wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message ...


I had a similar situation just last night. (intel board) By accident I
inserted a PATA drive jumpered as master in a caddy that is slave to another
drive. Doing so, removed the SATA boot drive from the BIOS boot priority list
completely. Removing the misconfigured PATA drive had had no effect. The
only drives in the boot list were CD and floppy.


I'm curious. What were the exact symptoms ?

There is a difference between "screwing up the boot order", versus
"disabling a port in the disk screens". I've had the boot order problem
a number of times. If you reconfigure disks, it pays to visit the boot
order, and verify that the disk priority menu is correct for what
you're doing. BIOS implementations vary, on how well they handle it.

On all the computers here, I've never had a case of a disk port in the
screen that identifies disks, going "disabled" on its own. But I've had
boot order problems plenty of times.

My current boot order consists of two levels. There is the
"floppy-CDROM-HardDrive" level, for specifying the basic order.
But since multiple hard drives are present, there is also a
"disk3-disk1-disk2" type menu, where you push the real boot
drive to the top of the list, in order to boot. Plugging and
unplugging drives, seems to upset the "disk3-disk1-disk2" list.

Another side effect of the "disk3-disk1-disk2", has to do with
some level of disk identification later. I haven't figured out
what is going on there. For example, if I install Linux on the
computer, and happen to leave multiple hard drives connected,
the MBR gets written on some drive during the installation.
And the drive selected, appears *not* to be the same one the
install is going to. So I've had the MBR wiped out on my Windows
drive for example. In that case, I'm actually booting from the
CD, in order to install Linux, and yet the "disk3-disk1-disk2"
must be consulted in some way, in order to identify a drive to
have the MBR butchered (disk3). So I can identify some side effects
from the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. It even affects a Linux install,
where I'm booting with a floppy disk with GRUB on it, and telling
GRUB which drive to use. The value I enter in the GRUB menu,
changes as a function of the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. Either I
have to go back into the BIOS and change the disk priority, to
make the current value in GRUB line up, or I have to edit GRUB
each time I use it from the floppy. (Using a floppy and GRUB,
is a work around which avoids Linux touching the MBR :-) )

So that is where I see the most instability, and undocumented
behavior. In the hard drive priority menu of my computer.

Paul

Bill Blanton wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message ...


I had a similar situation just last night. (intel board) By accident I
inserted a PATA drive jumpered as master in a caddy that is slave to another
drive. Doing so, removed the SATA boot drive from the BIOS boot priority list
completely. Removing the misconfigured PATA drive had had no effect. The
only drives in the boot list were CD and floppy.


I'm curious. What were the exact symptoms ?

There is a difference between "screwing up the boot order", versus
"disabling a port in the disk screens". I've had the boot order problem
a number of times. If you reconfigure disks, it pays to visit the boot
order, and verify that the disk priority menu is correct for what
you're doing. BIOS implementations vary, on how well they handle it.

On all the computers here, I've never had a case of a disk port in the
screen that identifies disks, going "disabled" on its own. But I've had
boot order problems plenty of times.

My current boot order consists of two levels. There is the
"floppy-CDROM-HardDrive" level, for specifying the basic order.
But since multiple hard drives are present, there is also a
"disk3-disk1-disk2" type menu, where you push the real boot
drive to the top of the list, in order to boot. Plugging and
unplugging drives, seems to upset the "disk3-disk1-disk2" list.

Another side effect of the "disk3-disk1-disk2", has to do with
some level of disk identification later. I haven't figured out
what is going on there. For example, if I install Linux on the
computer, and happen to leave multiple hard drives connected,
the MBR gets written on some drive during the installation.
And the drive selected, appears *not* to be the same one the
install is going to. So I've had the MBR wiped out on my Windows
drive for example. In that case, I'm actually booting from the
CD, in order to install Linux, and yet the "disk3-disk1-disk2"
must be consulted in some way, in order to identify a drive to
have the MBR butchered (disk3). So I can identify some side effects
from the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. It even affects a Linux install,
where I'm booting with a floppy disk with GRUB on it, and telling
GRUB which drive to use. The value I enter in the GRUB menu,
changes as a function of the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. Either I
have to go back into the BIOS and change the disk priority, to
make the current value in GRUB line up, or I have to edit GRUB
each time I use it from the floppy. (Using a floppy and GRUB,
is a work around which avoids Linux touching the MBR :-) )

So that is where I see the most instability, and undocumented
behavior. In the hard drive priority menu of my computer.

Paul

My mom lives alone and does not have anyone fooling with the computer. I do
not believe this is malware related. I found the following post on Dell

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19283543.aspx

and it was the same computer model and occured this month so I tried to
reset the CMOS but the problem still exists.



I had changed Drive 1 and Drive 2 to On prior to the reset so I know that
there was a change after doing the reset.



When I went into the setup after the reset, the Drives showed the following:

Drive 0: On

Drive 1: Off (the factory default is On)

Drive 2: Off (the factory default is On)
Drive 3: On



OnBoard Devices

USB Controller

On (the factory default is On)



There have been no hardware additions/replacements to mom's computer. We
opened the case for the first time to reset the CMOS today. I have also
called McAfee and asked if there was anyway the Total Protection could
change the BIOS settings and was told no!



Any suggestions? Thanks

Susan



"Paul" wrote in message
...
Bill Blanton wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...


I had a similar situation just last night. (intel board) By accident I
inserted a PATA drive jumpered as master in a caddy that is slave to
another
drive. Doing so, removed the SATA boot drive from the BIOS boot priority
list
completely. Removing the misconfigured PATA drive had had no effect. The
only drives in the boot list were CD and floppy.


I'm curious. What were the exact symptoms ?

There is a difference between "screwing up the boot order", versus
"disabling a port in the disk screens". I've had the boot order problem
a number of times. If you reconfigure disks, it pays to visit the boot
order, and verify that the disk priority menu is correct for what
you're doing. BIOS implementations vary, on how well they handle it.

On all the computers here, I've never had a case of a disk port in the
screen that identifies disks, going "disabled" on its own. But I've had
boot order problems plenty of times.

My current boot order consists of two levels. There is the
"floppy-CDROM-HardDrive" level, for specifying the basic order.
But since multiple hard drives are present, there is also a
"disk3-disk1-disk2" type menu, where you push the real boot
drive to the top of the list, in order to boot. Plugging and
unplugging drives, seems to upset the "disk3-disk1-disk2" list.

Another side effect of the "disk3-disk1-disk2", has to do with
some level of disk identification later. I haven't figured out
what is going on there. For example, if I install Linux on the
computer, and happen to leave multiple hard drives connected,
the MBR gets written on some drive during the installation.
And the drive selected, appears *not* to be the same one the
install is going to. So I've had the MBR wiped out on my Windows
drive for example. In that case, I'm actually booting from the
CD, in order to install Linux, and yet the "disk3-disk1-disk2"
must be consulted in some way, in order to identify a drive to
have the MBR butchered (disk3). So I can identify some side effects
from the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. It even affects a Linux install,
where I'm booting with a floppy disk with GRUB on it, and telling
GRUB which drive to use. The value I enter in the GRUB menu,
changes as a function of the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. Either I
have to go back into the BIOS and change the disk priority, to
make the current value in GRUB line up, or I have to edit GRUB
each time I use it from the floppy. (Using a floppy and GRUB,
is a work around which avoids Linux touching the MBR :-) )

So that is where I see the most instability, and undocumented
behavior. In the hard drive priority menu of my computer.

Paul

My mom lives alone and does not have anyone fooling with the computer. I do
not believe this is malware related. I found the following post on Dell

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19283543.aspx

and it was the same computer model and occured this month so I tried to
reset the CMOS but the problem still exists.



I had changed Drive 1 and Drive 2 to On prior to the reset so I know that
there was a change after doing the reset.



When I went into the setup after the reset, the Drives showed the following:

Drive 0: On

Drive 1: Off (the factory default is On)

Drive 2: Off (the factory default is On)
Drive 3: On



OnBoard Devices

USB Controller

On (the factory default is On)



There have been no hardware additions/replacements to mom's computer. We
opened the case for the first time to reset the CMOS today. I have also
called McAfee and asked if there was anyway the Total Protection could
change the BIOS settings and was told no!



Any suggestions? Thanks

Susan



"Paul" wrote in message
...
Bill Blanton wrote:
"Paul" wrote in message
...


I had a similar situation just last night. (intel board) By accident I
inserted a PATA drive jumpered as master in a caddy that is slave to
another
drive. Doing so, removed the SATA boot drive from the BIOS boot priority
list
completely. Removing the misconfigured PATA drive had had no effect. The
only drives in the boot list were CD and floppy.


I'm curious. What were the exact symptoms ?

There is a difference between "screwing up the boot order", versus
"disabling a port in the disk screens". I've had the boot order problem
a number of times. If you reconfigure disks, it pays to visit the boot
order, and verify that the disk priority menu is correct for what
you're doing. BIOS implementations vary, on how well they handle it.

On all the computers here, I've never had a case of a disk port in the
screen that identifies disks, going "disabled" on its own. But I've had
boot order problems plenty of times.

My current boot order consists of two levels. There is the
"floppy-CDROM-HardDrive" level, for specifying the basic order.
But since multiple hard drives are present, there is also a
"disk3-disk1-disk2" type menu, where you push the real boot
drive to the top of the list, in order to boot. Plugging and
unplugging drives, seems to upset the "disk3-disk1-disk2" list.

Another side effect of the "disk3-disk1-disk2", has to do with
some level of disk identification later. I haven't figured out
what is going on there. For example, if I install Linux on the
computer, and happen to leave multiple hard drives connected,
the MBR gets written on some drive during the installation.
And the drive selected, appears *not* to be the same one the
install is going to. So I've had the MBR wiped out on my Windows
drive for example. In that case, I'm actually booting from the
CD, in order to install Linux, and yet the "disk3-disk1-disk2"
must be consulted in some way, in order to identify a drive to
have the MBR butchered (disk3). So I can identify some side effects
from the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. It even affects a Linux install,
where I'm booting with a floppy disk with GRUB on it, and telling
GRUB which drive to use. The value I enter in the GRUB menu,
changes as a function of the "disk3-disk1-disk2" menu. Either I
have to go back into the BIOS and change the disk priority, to
make the current value in GRUB line up, or I have to edit GRUB
each time I use it from the floppy. (Using a floppy and GRUB,
is a work around which avoids Linux touching the MBR :-) )

So that is where I see the most instability, and undocumented
behavior. In the hard drive priority menu of my computer.

Paul