IDE and SATA together, and i can't boot my windows

[bloodybunny]

Hi there ,
i bought a new box from alienware a couple of weeks ago
and today i upgraded it from my local hardware store
bought another 1GHz of DDR2 which seem to work fine
and ATI x800 which also works fine ,
but the issue is with the 120GB Western Digital HDD that i bought
i already have a 120GB Western Digital SATA HDD installed on the box
so today when i plugged the new IDE WD HDD on my board ,
it detected it in the bios,
but when i tried to start my PC it wouldn't boot , asked me to restart or insert a boot cd,
that is weird because i even went into the bios and chosen the boot devices and selected my SATA HDD as my boot device , which is the HDD that has the windows on it.

i have my SATA HDD plugged into SATA 1 slot with RAID controller installed
I have my DVDRW plugged as master on IDE 2nd slot and my CDRW pluged as slave to the DVDRW on the same IDE 2nd slot ,
the new IDE HDD that i bought is plugged to IDE 1 slot
i even tried to switch IDE slots between them , and i tried to remove the DVD and CDRW completely from the board , and still it wouldn't boot my windows as long as the new IDE HDD plugged to the board.

i dunno , maybe it's something to do with the jumpers ,
i have ASUS P4800D SiS board , and after i plugged the extra DDR and the new video card, when i try to boot , it says something like "Overcloacking failed - please hit F1 to enter SETUP or F2 to load defaults and continue with booting windows".

i don't know what i've done wrong. maybe one of you could help me solve this issue?
i would greatly appriciate any kind of advice.

thank you for your time.
BB.

[FatalException]

While you have the SATA drive set as the main boot device, do you have it listed before all other items (floppy / CDROM, etc) in the BIOS? There are two places where this can be set - boot priority and enabled boot device order. I've run into this same problem myself on a number of occasions - just keep playing with the settings (jumpers, BIOS configurations, etc) until you get it. I have a feeling that for some reason, your SATA controller is no longer the priority boot controller, but the IDE controller is. Usually IDE is the default priority controller and SATA is secondary - if it encounters a drive on the IDE controller and can't boot it, it presents you with the "insert a boot CD" line. If there is no hard drive on that controller, it skips it and goes to the SATA controller. Sounds like Alienware was lazy (not to dis your new system, but this is really no surprise, the quality of their stuff has really decreased over the past year or two and their support services are absolutely useless) and didn't setup your BIOS properly when it left the shop. That leaves it up to you to set the priorities correctly in the BIOS.

[bloodybunny]

thanx
i'll try to change some bios settings
heh
i switched the SATA HDD with the windows xp on it as a primary boot
i also tried to disable or other boots , and i even tried to disable the new IDE HDD from the BIOS , and also tried to set it as SLAVE to my CDRW , still nothing , all the same :| even setting the jumpers to make it slave and master , didn't help.

im kind of hopeless now ,
i think i will take it to a local hardware store and get it fixed ,
thou it's shame that i have to spend like 150NIS out of my pocket just to plug a damn hard drive that i already payed for. :|

[bloodybunny]

well, before i'll go on, it's going to be a sorta long post..
so i appologize upfront..

i have this weird thing with the bios.. it will not save itself permenately ,
meaning..

every time i restart , and this is an issue for some reason , because the restart at windows and restart button , do not function for some reason..
meaning , my PC won't restart , only when i hit the power button till the PC shuts down completely , then i have to press it again , and then i have to hit the restart button several times , until my PC will actually start..
i dunno the cause of this..

but then another thing.. once i restart , i have to go into BiOS again .. and set the boot priority to my SATA drive , because the windows is on it..
i have two HDDs , one WD 120GB SATA and the other is same drive , only IDE.
now if i go into bios and set it to load from SATA , then save , then restart (again with power shut down and hit restart button several times till it starts the PC).
when i do that , it saves.. and then i can run windows..
but if i restart again.. i have to go through that process all over again cuz the BIOS sets it all back..

now.. i think i know the cause of it.. but i dunno what to do..
every time i start the PC.. it says "overclocking failed, hit F1 to enter setup (bios) , hit F2 to load defaults and continue.. . so i hit F2 ofcorse and then it works , until i restart the pC again , and then i have to go into the damn bios to set the boot device priority and HDD priority back to SATA / IDE and not IDE / SATA like it sets automaticly when i hit F2 so i could run windows. :\

i tried playing with the PC abit , and the BIOS , to remove that damn F1 and F2 thing.. but nothing seems to solve it..

the weird thing is that my PC is overclocked now and it works super great , i have P4 3.0 GHz , 1GB DDR 2 Dual Channel 400MHz , ATI x850 , and i have a water cooling system from thermaltake AQUARIUS III , so there is no way that the overclocking could damage my system cuz my mother board "ASUS P4800D" has options in the BIOS for overclocking..
i really tried everything in the BIOS to remove the damn F1 and F2 loading thingie..

and i dunno why it wont restart normaly when i hit restart button or restart from windows..

maybe im doing something wrong.. i doubt that there is something wrong with my MAINBOARD.. but i supose that everything i've put into my box , is supported..

one more thing to mention , before i had the upgrade, i had 512MB DDR instead of 1GB , and i had just one SATA WD HDD 120GB drive , and i had radeon 9200 instead of my ATI X850.. back then the PC used to start normaly..
althou i tried to remove the DDR already back to the priveous 512MB , and it didn't solve it.. and i doubt it has to do anything with the graphics card and my second IDE HDD...

and i also tried to update the BIOS to it's latest version , no change , only more problems , causing my onboard network card not to function correctly so i had to rollback the BIOS to my priveous version..

maybe any of you have any idea how i might fix it , so that the PC will restart like it should be restarting , or atleast to make it stop loading the F1 F2 / overclocking failed " screen every time i restart cuz it causes to load defaults , so i have to set the HDD priority all over again every time i restart and it's REALLY annoying concidering that i have to power off and on like crazy every time before i get my windows started..


thank you for reading this long post.

[phecky]

If you have to use defaults (F2) like you said then your rig is not overclocked. Sounds like your not saving your bios settings (F10) before you start up but rather using the F2 selection to get up and running. At least that's how I understand your post. Have you tried removing your new hardware and then reinstall one at a time or did you add them all at once? As of now it's a bit confusing to what might be the actual problem.