Dead Toshiba Satelite Pro - IDE #1 Error

[adamchapman]

I've got an old Toshiba Satelite Pro that I use to run my mobile disco at weekends. Friday night, worked perfect as normal .... Saturday night switched on "IDE #1 Error"

Once the error is displayed, after a short delay the boot process continues and tries other boot devices and ends up failing.

I've replaced the HD with a new Seagate 160GB and still get the IDE #1 error. I then removed the DVD drive and still the same error. Even with no drives in the laptop at all - IDE Error.

I'm now guessing that the motherboard has died. Would you agree?

[Red_Barchetta]

I'd go for that, or driver controller died (and it's probably integrated on the MoBo.

[CPLTD]

sounds like the ide controller chip on the motherboard fella,

[kmount]

Check in the BIOS to see whether it's identified the drive (or incase the drive is forcing the size/cylinders etc for the previous drive).

Typically that error is where it cannot identify the drive but is unusual if even without the drives connected you're getting it.

Can you get a USB drive to boot? Might be worth reflashing the BIOS.

[adamchapman]

thanks for your useful advice guys as ever! Will have a go tonight. I'm suspecting the motherboard has given up - It is around 6 years old!

The BIOS doesn't recognies the HD, and is set to Auto Detect.

Think I might be better off giving up as a bad job, will see how I get on. It's more annoying that it's going to take forever to re-load all the MP3 files on there (60GB). Just glad I've got them backed up on my PC

[OutToLunch]

I had a student bring a dead personal laptop in to me with this error - initially refused to touch it as I thought it was going to be a wipe and reload job, then took a quick look and turned out to be somewhere between the two. It seems to throw an IDE error if the optical drive is not properly seated - I didn't touch the IDE HD, just pulled the DVD drive and reseated it and off it went again! Had you already tried this, or did you pull the drive completely?

If you'd already done that, the other piece of info I pulled but didn't have to use was that the same Toshiba's apparently have a problem with Cable Select. If you replace drive with a non OEM one you may have to do some pin shorting!

[adamchapman]

FIXED!

Played in the BIOS and found an option that was set to detect IDE drives from the OS. I've changed it so that BIOS will detect drives and this now recognises the HD.

DVD ROM not working - But I can live with that!

[kmount]

Brill