K7S5A Bios problem?

[Front242]

About a year ago I networked a small drug store in our little berg, and built a PC with said mobo. In the last 3 mos. the software he has been using has locked up the computer (Win2k) and on restart the HD disapears. The bios (set to auto) is reset to none. Anyone ever see this before and any suggestions.

[Peter M]

The drive might be dying. Or the power supply is on its way out.

[Front242]

Initially I suspected that myself, except for two problems. It only does that at a specific point of the program, and I don't see how that would alter Bios settings.

[Peter M]

BIOS freshly autodetects the drives when you enter BIOS setup - so if yours is gone fishing, it won't be shown.

I suspect the application is hitting an unreadable spot on the drive media at that specific point, which makes the drive go offline. IDE drives aren't any good at dealing with such a situation.

[Front242]

You write Bios software right? So let me see if I understand. Even though the BIOS is set to "auto", it can be reset to "none" if there is a bad sector on the HD. I did not know this. (not as up on my CMOS as I should be)

I did run scan disk on this HD (full scan) and it came up clean. Should I run it again?

[Peter M]

You're simplifying the issue way too far, jumping to a thoroughly messed up and BIOS-writer-insulting conclusion. Are you female?

Drive hits bad spot. Drive is too cheap to do something useful about it, goes offline instead. System hangs. User reboots machine. BIOS, being set to "Auto", redetects drives. None found, no boot. User resets again and enters BIOS setup. Upon this step, BIOS auto-fixes the drive list to show "Not Connected" where it previously said "Auto" but no drive is actually there.

[Peter M]

Re scandisk, maybe the drive has a spot it can't WRITE to. Scandisk doesn't check that. Use a SMART utility to inquire the drive's own opinion on its health.

There is also a remote chance that it's an application software error that makes the IDE driver confuse the drive.

[Front242]

No insult meant, I thought I read on another thread you wrote BIOS software. I understand the process, It is just difficult for me to type because of disability, so I tend to simplify, esp later at night (when I tend to have the most pain). I refuse to write in text, so it takes me 10 times longer to type than the average person. I was just trying to confirm that my dawning of realization was going in the right direction.

BTW I am all male big boy.

[Gait_Keeper]

This could get interesting

[Front242]

PeterW, I misread your last posts and thought you were saying that you were not a BIOS writer. I just checked your profile and saw the Bios Engineer under Occupation (D'oh). Yes, I really can be this stupid. My lack of Knowlege on how BIOS works is real (beyond the basics and settings). You have enlightened be on the interaction of applications and BIOS, whereas I was under the erroneous understanding that BIOS was protected from such things. My dawning of understanding was that the HD which of course is booted from bios could have a direct effect on bios. Sometimes the logic flips me off and walks on by.
The HD is a 30 gig Maxtor ATA 133 7200. I used the maxtor utility to check the drive (I have the bad habit of using scandisk as a generic term) and it came out clean.

What, would cause app software to create such an error, would it trick the HD into thinking it was a bad sector?