Medion MD5000 - HDD Recognized in BIOS - Not Recognized after POST

[kopfjaeger]

Greetings Sportsfans,

Your next mission, should you choose to accept it, is to help troubleshoot the odd behavior of this rare board.

HARDWARE


Mainboard:

MEDION MD-5000

Initi string on POST includes the following:

01/24/2003- SiS-648-6A7I0M4BC-00

Award Bios v 6.00PG 1984-2003

W6701M7 V1.1 012203 15:10:00 MedionPC LN


A Medion information page offers this information:

07/05/2005-SiS-648-6A7I0M4BC-00
W6701M7 V1.1H 070505 10:12:04 MEDIONPC LN
Medion info and files

See also:
MEDION USA

Wim's Cool, cool BIOS page:
MODBIN & MD8000 (MoBo: Medion MD5000 aka MSI MS-6701)
MODBIN & MD8000 (MoBo: Medion MD5000 aka MSI MS-6701) - Wim's BIOS Page

[okay, I found a PDF manual now]
http://www.csl-computer.com/download...0Mainboard.pdf


Medion MD 5000 v1.2 Info Required
Medion MD 5000 v1.2 Info Required - Emuforums.com


PROBLEM:


Hard drives connected to IDE01 (Primary / Master) ARE recognized in the Phoenix-Award BIOS CMOS setup utility.

As the machine progresses through Power On Self Test, the process stops butt-cold after the PCI device listing (ending at the ACPI Controller) with:

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK YADDA YADDA YADDA


WHAT HAS BEEN TRIED:


1) Re-setting CMOS by removing the CMOS battery (reason, I cannot locate an on-line PDF manual for this board and cannot verify which is the CLEAR-CMOS jumper, since I have found no silkscreen markings on the MoBo itself);

2) Swapping out IDE Ribbon cable connector;

3) Swapping out several known, good HDD's, varying in capacity from 80 Gb to 40Gbm 30 Gb to 6Gb. All already test as good on other machines) register as dead on this board.

4) removing all but one DDR RAM module (yes the remaining is in the primary DIMM slot).


MY GUESS AS TO CAUSE:

Corrupted BIOS?


QUESTIONS:


1) Could a corrupted BIOS cause this behavior?


2) If so, are there BIOS flash versions which are most appropriate for this board?


3) More importantly, are there BIOS flash versions I should avoid?


IN THE ALTERNATIVE:


4) What other causes and remedies for getting this board running can you suggest? (is the failure immediately after the ACPI reference a hint?)

[NOTE: destruction and trashing are non-starters, as well as non-responsive to the call of the question.]

Thanks in advance!

-- KJ

[RicheemxX]

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK.....Swapping out several known, good HDD's, varying in capacity from 80 Gb to 40Gbm 30 Gb to 6Gb

Just a guess these are empty drives with no OS?

[kopfjaeger]

Ah c'mon Rich...

think it through....

Even a harddrive that has been Fdisk'ed, formatted and partitioned should be recognized and you'd get a normal boot sequence that ends in

Command.com

disk capacity

C:\ (blinking cursor)


It should not consistently result in DISK BOOT FAILURE

Any other suggestions?

[RicheemxX]

Uh no when the disk is just formatted you would just get a "disk boot failure" common the drive is blank the only time you'd get a c prompt is of there was actually a dos command on there somewhere....think it out man. Grab a boot disk and you should see the drive just fine.

[kopfjaeger]

Okay. Whenever I get a drive, I generally handle it in one of two ways:

1) If new, I format and partition it using the bundled utility (SeaTools, MaxBlaster, what have you).

2) If used, I ...

a) first run FDISK (the newer one) and look at what the status of the drive is at the moment. Oftentimes, drives come to me formatted for NTFS, so I use DELPART to wipe out the existing partitions.

b) FDISK and partition the drive using FAT32 (yes, it's old but is universally readable);

c) reboot (to allow FDISK to take).

d) FORMAT C: /s (this installs System onto the active boot partition).

e) FORMAT X:\ (where X is drive in the extended partition).


Thus, your boot drive always has at least Command.com and can boot normally by itself.

After that, I install the OS of choice.

Why on Earth would anyone format a C:\ drive without formatting it as the boot drive?


Any other suggestions?

Does the ACPI entry and then HDD FAILURE have something to do with the problem?

[RicheemxX]

One option would be trying to test the system out with a live cd or even using SeaTools, MaxBlaster ect to see if the board boots to anything at all or medion does have an updated bios you could try that out
Bios Update MD 5000 (Rev 1.2)
ATA Security Freeze Lock Update
12.10.2005 - Version: 2.18

Bios Update biomd5kv12.exe
2.18
Supply date 12.10.2005
Made downloads 160637

Bios Update of the MD 5000 (Rev 1.2) mainboard

+++Instructions to update your system bios +++

1. Unzip the downloaded file into a created folder at the partition E: of your harddisk.

2. Afterwards restart your PC with the Application-/ Support-CD.

3. At the MS Windows CD-ROM-Bootmenue choose "Boot from CD-ROM".

4. After that select "MS-DOS Prompt" in the Application-/Support-CD Startmenue .

5. Finally execute the md5000.bat file which can now be found at Partition C: into your specified folder.

6. Now start the update procedure by pressing any key.

7. After the bios update please reboot your system.

Please be aware that you noticed the original bios setting before starting the update, because some values may have changed afterwards.

Information:
To extract all files press the "Extract"-Button. The files will be extracted to the folder specified in the "Folder"-Field. This folder will be created, if it does not exist.

Important:
For any errors, caused by the execution of this update, we don´ t accept any responsibility for damage or lost of data.The customer agrees with that fact by executing the update.

[kopfjaeger]

THANKS!

We'll see how that works.

Best,

- KJ

[paul9]

Also, it may be helpful to get your hands on a plug in IDE or SATA card and try a drive connected to that in the PCI slots.

[kopfjaeger]

Originally Posted by paul9

Also, it may be helpful to get your hands on a plug in IDE or SATA card and try a drive connected to that in the PCI slots.

Paul9,

Would that mean that I testing to see if my primary IDE has gone bad?

I am suspecting the same thing, but hopeful that it just might be corrupted firmware or an outdated BIOS version, since I don't see any missing pins on the IDE board connector.

Unfortunately, my noodling with computers is relegated to the weekends, since the work schedule prevents week-time PC tinkering.

Thanks for the suggestion though. I do have an old RAID card and drive. You think I could press that into service? I haven't worked with RAID SCSI drives all that much and wonder even if I am using the terms of art correctly.

-- KJ

[paul9]

Well I think it would be better with IDE or SATA, then at least you could use the same set of drives to test with. With any luck it may be just a misconfigured BIOS but, as you said, I would suspect the IDE port itself, or rather the controller chip.