I recently built a PC for my mom and the HD I ordered is a Western Digital Caviar SATA 80GB. When this drive is attached to the motherboard (Abit KV-85), the system does not go past the POST screen. It counts the RAM, and then just stops. The only thing I can do is press Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart. I can't enter the BIOS setup either.

If I disconnect the drive, everything works perfectly. I sent the drive back to NewEgg and got it replaced. The second drive is doing the same thing. I flashed to the most recent BIOS, tried each SATA connector, different SATA cables, with no improvement in the results.

For the time being, I threw in one of my old 60GB PATA Maxtors, but it's already 6 years old, loud, and slow, so I don't want to keep it in there permanantly.

Anyone with ideas? I'm off to go troll Google for an answer for now, but I haven't been finding much useful info so far. I've seen this problem a few times before, but replacing the drive always solved it.

Thanks.

I solved it not long after I posted. I found the answer in WD's knowledge base (who'da thunk it?)

PDF: http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/fattach_get.php?p_sid=8O--iM5i&p_tbl=9&p_id=1337&p_created=1126109811&p_olh=0

Apparently the mobo was not recognizing the backwards compatibility attempts of the drive. The drive wants to run at 300MB/s, but forcing it into 150MB/s solved the issue, as the above link describes. The chipset on this mobo is the VIA 8237, the first in their list of affected chipsets. And I just never thought that this little 80GB drive would have a SATA II interface, I just assumed it was a SATA I because it seemed like a relatively low-end model. Lesson learned.