Hard drive not seen by BIOS

[Wildman]

Ok, in re reading your original post, I see  this started suddenly. I assume (don't like to assume) the system and drive worked properly
before the McAfee notice and the freezing.
This being the case, I would move the Hard drive cable from one connection on the motherboard to another just to check the serial port connections.
This may also fail.
In your last post, are you saying that even if you remove the Hard drive the system still will not see the IDE drive?
If so, then either your motherboard has a problem, or the BIOS has been corrupted. Yes this is possible from a rogue virus/Trojan..
The newer flash BIOS makes this possible, I have received security warnings about this over the last couple years.
 its incredibly hard to do, but, who knows the mind of people.
I think I would download the latest BIOS information from the Mfg's site save it to a floppy or USB drive,and then remove power and the battery from the motherboard.
Once that's done I'd boot from the floppy/usb and re-flash the BIOS.
I have a Intel Motherboard D975 (known as the Bad Axe) that does a similar thing with IDE drives, but, it did it from the beginning and the solution was to replace
CD with a SATA model.
Maybe that will help...  

[RPsx94]

The thing is, The BIOS sees another IDE drive when I hook it up.

It still sounds like my drive just went bad.

[Wildman]

Seems so..! 

[RPsx94]

Now I just gotta wait and get myself a new drive, preferably one of similar size to the one I had.

I'm not too keen on having both OS's on a single drive.

[Wildman]

I ironically, I had a box come in yesterday with a like problem. Indeed, the hard drive can't be seen by the BIOS.
After much work, I was able to find out it has many many unrecoverable areas on the disk.... so, out with it and in with a new one..

[Old-Polack]

The thing is, The BIOS sees another IDE drive when I hook it up.

It still sounds like my drive just went bad.

I just went through something similar on the machine I'm typing this from. It very suddenly went to the black screen on boot, and wouldn't load any OS. I checked all the BIOS settings, made what should have been appropriate changes, but got error messages, at best, about there being no bootable media found. I was able to boot the liveCD, but nothing from the hard drive.

I added a second hard drive, then did a rsync of one of my other installations from a USB external drive to it. That too failed to boot. (no system drive found) Just before giving up, while doing a last search through the BIOS, I saw a setting to "Restore Defaults" so I selected that. On reboot, the new OS booted. I then added entries to the /boot/grub/menu.lst for the other 9 OS on the connected drives, and each now boots without issues. Rechecking the BIOS, the only change I could find was that the Compaq splash screen was active. I turned that off, and as far as I can tell, every setting is the same as when nothing would boot, but now everything is functioning as it should.

I have no idea what bone got stuck in the throat of my BIOS, but resetting to defaults seems to have effectively cleared the obstruction. You might want to try that with your machine, then reset your BIOS preferences, if, and only after, the machine then boots either OS.

[YouCanToo]

The thing is, The BIOS sees another IDE drive when I hook it up.

It still sounds like my drive just went bad.

I just went through something similar on the machine I'm typing this from. It very suddenly went to the black screen on boot, and wouldn't load any OS. I checked all the BIOS settings, made what should have been appropriate changes, but got error messages, at best, about there being no bootable media found. I was able to boot the liveCD, but nothing from the hard drive.

I added a second hard drive, then did a rsync of one of my other installations from a USB external drive to it. That too failed to boot. (no system drive found) Just before giving up, while doing a last search through the BIOS, I saw a setting to "Restore Defaults" so a selected that.

So that should of reset the BIOS to the original factory setting - correct
If so why would you need to have mess with the menu.list to readd the entries for you 9 other os's? I don't understand how the BIOS being reset would effect the menu.list on the hard drive.

On reboot, the new OS booted. I then added entries to the /boot/grub/menu.lst for the other 9 OS on the connected drives, and each now boots without issues. Rechecking the BIOS, the only change I could find was that the Compaq splash screen was active. I turned that off, and as far as I can tell, every setting is the same as when nothing would boot, but now everything is functioning as it should.

I have no idea what bone got stuck in the throat of my BIOS, but resetting to defaults seems to have effectively cleared the obstruction. You might want to try that with your machine, then reset your BIOS preferences, if, and only after, the machine then boots either OS.

[Old-Polack]

So that should of reset the BIOS to the original factory setting - correct?

That would be my understanding.

If so why would you need to have mess with the menu.list to read the entries for you 9 other os's? I don't understand how the BIOS being reset would effect the menu.list on the hard drive.

Pay attention son... I say, pay attention! 

There was only one stanza, to boot the single OS that was a copy of one of the USB drive's installed versions, in the original menu.lst. It didn't work until the BIOS was reset to it's default configuration. Once that worked, I added new stanzas for each of the other installations. Each new stanza worked immediately.

Resetting the BIOS did nothing to menu.lst, just allowed the hard drives/controllers to be seen properly, and identified by BIOS itself, as bootable system devices. Once seen as a bootable system device, the boot drive's MBR was read and grub launched in the normal fashion.

[RPsx94]

Well, I might try the drive again as I updated the BIOS and reset the settings.  But the stubborn drive in question flat out didn't want to boot even on my older PC running Puppy Linux Live CD.  It just didn't show up at all.

Plus it seems my RAM, when run through Memtest, has errors.  For some reason PCLinux doesn't have any problems when I have all 4 sticks installed and running.

Then there is the fact that I could not get Windows to restore from the backup image I made.

When it rains, it pours. 

[Wildman]

Oh man, I think you need a umbrella! 
kidding, I suspect we have all been there at one time or another!
So Smile, makes it all better....Deposit drive in f-13 and go get another!
 

[RPsx94]

Well, I'm looking into getting a replacement drive since I'm still under the "5 year warranty".  It remains to be see if I can get it replaced gratis.

Still doesn't fix the supposed RAM issue, but why does Linux not care of there are "bad" ram sectors?

[Wildman]

I haven't seen Linux not care about the memory before, but I have seen it work around bad memory
storage until it starts getting so bad it can't boot with out memory errors. Is guess the reason is because
its designed to use every thing it can or has available.
Now, having said that, I'd remove the memory sticks, make sure they are clean, make sure the slots are also clean,
then re-install them and run memtest (If I remember correctly memtest is a free download, google?) or some other memory tester, to see if they are bad for sure.
 

[Old-Polack]

I haven't seen Linux not care about the memory before, but I have seen it work around bad memory
storage until it starts getting so bad it can't boot with out memory errors. Is guess the reason is because
its designed to use every thing it can or has available.
Now, having said that, I'd remove the memory sticks, make sure they are clean, make sure the slots are also clean,
then re-install them and run memtest (If I remember correctly memtest is a free download, google?) or some other memory tester, to see if they are bad for sure.
 

Memtest is on the liveCD, last item on the boot menu.

[Wildman]

I haven't seen Linux not care about the memory before, but I have seen it work around bad memory
storage until it starts getting so bad it can't boot with out memory errors. Is guess the reason is because
its designed to use every thing it can or has available.
Now, having said that, I'd remove the memory sticks, make sure they are clean, make sure the slots are also clean,
then re-install them and run memtest (If I remember correctly memtest is a free download, google?) or some other memory tester, to see if they are bad for sure.
 

Memtest is on the liveCD, last item on the boot menu.

Quite right, Thanks O-P I missed that!