Can't boot from main drive

B

BlueDogAnchorite

Member
This problem started when I was using my old psu which was dying, I reached the desktop and my pc apparently detected new hardware (in reality it was my current dvd drive etc) and then shut itself down.

I've checked the boot.ini file and can't see anything amiss, but whenever I try to boot from it, it just attempts to boot from cd..
 
That isn't controlled by the boot.ini file there. The boot order is decided in teh bios settings or having an F8 boot device option seen on some boards before Windows even starts to load. With the sudden shutdown seen with a failing supply it sounds like it's not providing enough power for system startup. How old is the system itself? over a year? A weak battery on the board will see the loss of cmos information. Hopefully the hard drive didn't fail.
 
If you have the cd rom option set for the 1st or 2nd boot device then you will see the option to boot from removable within so many seconds. Otherwise it should default to the primary drive and search for the necessary boot information. But you are mentioning a dying supply where a dropoff of power is probably being when the demand is generally the largest at post time.

This wouldn't be an OS but most likely hardware problem. Once you install a better supply even if you borrowed temporarily you may suddenly see things return to normal. A look in the bios itself and even a swap of cable for the hard drive if not seen on the post screen are a couple of items to look into.
 
I forgot to mention I replaced the psu but still hjave the same problem now.
the drive is browsable when im boooted from another drive, ill check the fix mbr option though now.
 
Is this other drive a primary or secondary? ide or sata? Once you use either or both of the boot repair commands you may end up having to change the boot order in the bios in order to load the other OS or version of Windows.
 
Things have unfortunately gone very very weird..

First of all I forgot to mention an earlier problem, I added my backup hardrive a long time ago to restore files to my new main drive after my old primary died and didnt immediately remove it. When I tried, I found that I couldn't boot windows on the main drive without it for some weird reason.

The other drive I added after this recent problem is an old ide (the backup still has data on it)

After doing the fix mbr and boot I managed to boot up on my main drive, but only if BOTH of the others were also connected. Before posting this message I tried disconnecting both the other drives to see if it had somehow recovered, but same problem..

ANNOYINGLY when I reconneceted both, I got the same damn error, so now I'm booted up on the old ide again!

I have no idea what's going on here, please help. :eek:

Cd is the last boot option, the boot priority is for my main drive and the main drive is the third master on ch2 M, the backup is also a sata. I don't know what other imformation to include.

Cheers, Blue.
 
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That's an odd one. is the primary sata controller set for an array not master #1 and #2? That would see the two drives on the primary sata as one there. Your present mbr may also be located on one of those two explaining why you needed those plugged in.
 
I have no idea PC eye, i'm not particularly computer suave.

All I know that is, with all plugged in, the ide drive is the primary slave, (there has never been a primary master ) the dvd drive is the secondary master, the main drive is the third master and the backup is fourth master.

I tried the boot cfg /rebuild, fix mbr and fix boot options again, but im still getting the disk boot failure messages..

Thanks for helping out anyhow. :)

I was definitely having problems with the power supply before, and initially thought that was what messed up my drive but I recall being unable to boot after installing the nvidia nforce 4 system driver, I thought that this was a coincidence at the time.

Also at some points I was getting hardware configuration errors when trying to boot from the drive, I think this was before I started editing the boot file from the drives with notepad. I changed the r values around because someone recomended it.
 
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There has never been an ide master? Your problem now is that Windows looks for that especially seen more now with Vista. But with the recovery console for XP and having Windows on the ide that shouls have seen the mbr repaired or rewritten there. The boot order and in the hardware configuration seen in the bios need to be looked at. On many boards you will find a list of all hard drives installed ide or sata and can move one to the top of the list. That forces the system to look there for the mbr and load the OS installed.

At the present time here I have the primary ide with both the XP boot.ini for XP Home and the Vista boot loader seen there for that on the second ide. XP Pro on the first sata is set as the default OS. That's a good mix! :P Once you have one drive picked out for the default for Windows bring that to the top of the list in the boot order in that section. You simply highlight that drive and use the up or down arrow keys to bring it to the top. Check your board's manual for this. Once set and you know the hardware is ok you may get by with a repair install if the fixboot and fixmbr still see no results. The default drive you choose is where you want the mbr and boot information.
 
From the first day I had this PC running there was never a primary master or slave, I always found it quite odd and nobody could tell me why, but it didn't seem to cause any problems so I just forgot about it.

I couldn't find a way to switch positions within the bios and the mobo manual didn't help.

I tried a repair installation, but when it rebooted my PC to continue setup.. it would only boot from cd again..

I'm going to try to recover as much data as possible and do a complete reinstall, I still have a horrible feeling that the installation will not be able to complete though.
 
You may have a cable problem if only one drive is seen on the post screen if you had two drives in and only the OS drive detected unless the other was a sata. You would then need the correct drivers installed for that make and model board. The continued boot from cd and no seatch for a hard drive points at the cd rom type boot device as the only oone enabled.

Once you have the the ide drive set as master at the end of the primary ide cable You should be able to see Windows go right onto the ide drive. For installing XP onto a sata you first have to make up a driver floppy for that board. This is the tedious part. On most board cds you boot from that and use the format floppy option first and then create the drive disk after you load the disk while Windows is running. For some reason that copies the drivers to the floppy better without seeing errors during installation. Got another pc or a friend's for this?
 
Its all ok again, I had to resort a fresh installation though on the problem drive, man I was so afraid that when it rebooted to continue installation that it would load up the disc again, phew!

Thanks for all the help PC eye, I've got both my pc and now my brothers old one prety much working correctly finally, so I'm very happy :)

It was a pretty weird problem though!
 
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