I'm afraid you haven't given a complete picture of how the card worked before you moved it to the new computer, so good advice may be difficult to find.

Did the IDE drives show up in the BIOS setup of the Dimension 4700?  The system setup of the computer may not show drives attached to a controller card since the card generally has its own BIOS.  During boot you may get a chance to press a hot key combination to get to the setup screen of the card after POST has completed.

Another possibility is that the card doesn't have a BIOS but instead requires a driver in Windows to communicate with the card and any drives attached to it.  If this is the type of card you have you will not see it unless you have installed the driver for the card prior to physically inserting the card into a PCI slot.

A third possibility is that the card is incompatible with your new computer.  The Dimension 4700 was designed to be compliant with PCI version 2.2.  This version allows both 5 volt and 3.3 volt signaling on any add-on card installed into a PCI slot.  The single PCI slot in the Inspiron 560 is designed to be compliant with PCI version 2.3 which recognizes only 3.3 volt signaling.  If the card you have is not a universal card that can work with either type of signaling, it may be impossible for the computer to recognize the card.

Did the IDE drives show up in the BIOS setup of the Dimension 4700?  The system setup of the computer may not show drives attached to a controller card since the card generally has its own BIOS.  During boot you may get a chance to press a hot key combination to get to the setup screen of the card after POST has completed. Another possibility is that the card doesn't have a BIOS but instead requires a driver in Windows to communicate with the card and any drives attached to it.  If this is the type of card you have you will not see it unless you have installed the driver for the card prior to physically inserting the card into a PCI slot. A third possibility is that the card is incompatible with your new computer.  The Dimension 4700 was designed to be compliant with PCI version 2.2.  This version allows both 5 volt and 3.3 volt signaling on any add-on card installed into a PCI slot.  The single PCI slot in the Inspiron 560 is designed to be compliant with PCI version 2.3 which recognizes only 3.3 volt signaling.  If the card you have is not a universal card that can work with either type of signaling, it may be impossible for the computer to recognize the card.

Thanks for the help. I'm a little technically challenged, so I wasn't even aware that I should have checked those points that you mentioned first.

As to the first point, yes. But it may not have been necessarily because the card had its own BIOS. My old desktop - Dimension 4700 - had both SATA slots and PATA slots. So even without the IDE controller card installed, the computer's native BIOS would show PATA slots. In any event, the PATA information within the BIOS correctly showed the brands of the hard drives.

Secondly, the IDE controller card does seem to require installation of driver. Again, I don't remember installing any driver, but the box comes with a CD containing driver files, so I must have installed one.

Thirdly, the user manual says the card is PCI 2.3 complaint. But it also says it's PCI 32 bit/66 MHZ interface. Does that mean it cannot be used in a 64bit computer, like mine?

I've contacted the manufacturer and obtained a driver file for Windows 7, but during installation of the driver file, I get an error message saying that no hardware has been found. So basically back to square one. I have a driver file but the driver file thinks there is no IDE card in the system.

Any idea?

Run the installation CD like JackShack suggested. But, if your card is like the IDE ATA controller in my system, you'll probably need to disconnect both drives from the card before running the software installation. Otherwise, it might not install correctly. Been there, done that.... :emotion-10:

Once the software is installed, then connect the hard drives to the card and see what happens.

Ron

A third possibility is that the card is incompatible with your new computer.  The single PCI slot in the Inspiron 560 is designed to be compliant with PCI version 2.3 which recognizes only 3.3 volt signaling.

The manufacturer just came back to me with a reply that the card supports only up to PCI 2.2. But they also suggested that I could work around it by installing the card through "device manager". Is this a viable option?  Can it overcome the PCI compliance hurdle, which is a hardware issue in nature?

If the card shows up in the device manager, it would show as an unknown device with a yellow caution mark, that is, a yellow triangle containing an exclamation point.  Checking its properties would reveal the number of the PCI slot that it occupied.

RoHe has a good point about not having anything connected to the card when you try to install the driver.  The cards with which I'm familiar usually require either that you install the software before inserting the card into the PCI slot, or as RoHe points out, with the card inserted but having no drives attached to it.  This is mostly for Windows XP.  The procedure for Vista and later seems to allow installation of the card followed by the driver.

It seems to me that if the card was being detected you would have some indication in the system setup.  Some of Dell's older machines had a BIOS setting for Option ROM which allowed booting from devices attached to the card.  This option does not present itself unless the hardware has been installed.  Have you thoroughly explored system setup for things that might not be present without the card being present?  If you can find nothing, I feel that the card is simply incompatible with your new computer.  Windows won't see it unless the BIOS can, so the advice from the manufacturer about installing using device manager sounds as weird to me as it does to you.  If the device showed up in the Device Manager as I outlined in my first paragraph above you might be able to install the card by copying the driver to a folder on your hard drive and using the Update Driver feature in Device Manager to install it.  Again, however, if the BIOS doesn't see the card, and you have no unknown devices in Device Manager, you can't use this procedure.

Ron;

If the universal card will accept and transmit all signals at 3.3 volts, yes, it would be compatible.  The problem is that PCI 2.2 allows either one, so if the card provides or accepts some signals at 3.3 and others at 5 you still have a problem.  It doesn't help the confusion that most computers manufactured up until now have the connector to accept 5 volt cards.

Your description of how your card works coincides with how I believed them to work, so the card simply isn't communicating with the computer.

NewDaddy;

One more thing you can try, sort of in the category of grasping at straws, is to reset your CMOS (NVRAM).  I usually do this by disconnecting the power and everything else from the tower, opening the case, and removing the lithium coin cell found on the main board for about 5 minutes.  During the time the battery is out of the socket you should press and hold the power button for about fifteen seconds to make certain all electrical charge has been dissipated.  When done, reinstall the battery in its holder, reconnect keyboard, mouse, and monitor, and reboot.  This action sets the BIOS back to defaults and forces the computer to re-detect all installed devices.  If the computer is going to detect the card it should happen following this procedure.

EDIT:  Replacing the Battery

Shouldn't a 3.3 volt PCI 2.3 slot be backwards compatible with a 3.3 volt PCI 2.2 card? The card shouldn't fit the into slot if it's 5 volts or otherwise incompatible.

Neither my PCI ATA controller card nor attached drive in my PC show up anywhere in BIOS setup. But when I boot up, the card is ID'd on the screen right after the POST but before the Windows splash screen. I see the the card's name/model number and then the drive attached to it is ID'd.

Don't know what the manufacturer means by installing it in Device Manager. If the system doesn't recognize it, it won't appear in Device Manager.

I'm betting you just need to install the drivers. And JackShack made a good point that you may need to install the software before you install the card. When all else fails, read the manufacturer's instructions. :emotion-4:

You could manually set a system restore point first. Then install the card before the software. If that fails, remove the card, reboot and do a system restore to the point you set to get rid of the software. Now install the software, then shut down and install the card.  And when either of those works, shut down and attach the drives.

Ron

The situation has taken a strange turn.

1. I really can't tell what change occurs due to the insertion of the IDE card in the BIOS setup. I don't think there is any. If it's really important, I guess I'll have to write down every option before the card insertion and compare them against post-card insertion options.

2. Yes, in the Device Manager, there is a "RAID controller" with an exclamation mark in a yellow triangle.  So, the system must at least recognize the card.

3. But when I double click on the card in the Device Manager and choose "update driver" and direct it to the downloaded driver file, Windows 7 keeps saying that it can't file the driver file. I downloaded the driver from the following link, according to the manufacturer's advice.

http://sybausa.com/productInfo.php?iid=1077

4. The customer representative from the manufacturer is now saying that my card must be defective, since the new computer can't find the driver file. I don't buy that. The card worked fine inside the old computer just yesterday. The device manager even recognizes it.

So, what is the file extension for driver files in Windows 7 64bit? still .inf as before?

Sorry, I got ahead of myself.  Double click the folder labeled "Driver", and finally, IDE.  The folder in "IDE" is "NTS", and that, finally is the directory you need to point to with Update Driver.

Let's not pay too much attention to customer service just yet.

I've looked at the driver in your link and it is basically the "works" that installs not only the driver but the control program for the card.  I seem to recall that you mentioned trying to get the card driver to work by double clicking it and received an answer that it couldn't find the hardware.  I'm not sure why unless the program is not Windows 7 compatible.  Have you tried doing that with this driver?  The download page claims that it is Windows 7 compatible.  Leave the card installed since the driver seems to want to search for it, just leave the drives disconnected as per RoHe's direction.

If that still doesn't work, you have one more thing to try.  Go back to the Device manager and try the Update Driver feature again.  This time, however, you need to see if it will let you drill down to the actual drivers for the controller.  This is down about four or five levels.  You need to begin by expanding the zipped file into the directory the compressed file is already sitting in.  You will get a new folder titled "via_6410_v2.90a.  Double click that to get "VIA_Falcon_IDE_v2.90a".  Double click again to get a host of files, but locate the directory titled "VIAstor" and double click that.  You will get another, smaller mess of files, but there is only one folder labeled "Driver".  That is the directory you want to point Update Driver to that has the .inf file.