A7M266 to A7V8X-MX-SE -- "Disk Boot Failure"

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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

I've been running an A7M266 with an Athlon XP 1700+ for nearly three years
with no trouble. My wife's machine was in desperate need of an upgrade,
so I figured I'd give her my A7M266 and I'd get something slightly newer
and faster.

So I ordered the A7V8X-MX-SE from NewEgg. I put the new CPU and new RAM
on the board and put it in my case. The first problem was that the board
would only recognize half of the RAM on the DIMM (it's a Kingston Value
RAM 512MB PC2700 stick I also bought from NewEgg) and it would lock up if
I tried to run the RAM at DDR333 with standard RAM timing. The machine
would complete the POST if I clocked the RAM down to DDR266 or ran it on
DDR333 with the BIOS configured for "SAFE" RAM timing.

I finally decided the RAM is bad and I'm RMA'ing that to NewEgg pronto,
but I'm still dealing with an even thornier problem. I have a Seagate
Barracuda IV ST380021A (80GB) that boots just fine with my A7M266, but now
the A7V8X MX SE is telling me "Disk boot failure. Insert systems[sic]
disk and press enter."

Important details:

Board is A7V8X-MX-SE with BIOS 1003.
HD is ST380021A configured as Master, connected to blue (primary) IDE
controller.

Motherboard sees drive in BIOS configuration screens and shows drive in
POST messages.

CPU is retail-packaged Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton) not overclocked in any
way.

RAM is KVR333X64C25/512

I'd try the RAM from my A7M266, but it's Registered memory, and this board
doesn't support that.

Did I just get a bad board? Or is this kind of problem something I should
be able to get around with a configuration tweak?

TIA!

--Paul
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Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Paul <nospam@needed.com> wrote:
[...]
> Did the old machine have more than one disk ? Some people manage
> somehow, to get part of the boot process on another disk, such that
> both disks are needed for the machine to boot. I cannot remember
> whether this is from installing multiple OSes or not.

Yes, it did. The OS was installed long before the second disk, though.
The primary disk is 80GB and the secondary disk is 200GB. I was trying to
keep things simple before adding in the second drive, but that's worth a
shot.

> http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=FtQ08oHpv6DY092yn%40visi.com

That's an interesting article, and I will have a look at this tonight when
I get home.

> I wonder, if your disk doesn't have "the right stuff" in the MBR,
> whether these would be the symptoms. If you have a second disk,
> perhaps your old system vectored from the MBR on the other disk ?
> (Not that I understand all the options here )

> http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=xVqFa.39445%24rO.3709611%40
> newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net

Hmmm.. That second article is scary.

> Have you tried booting from your Windows install CD ? What does it
> see on the disk ?

Not yet. I was convinced I was doing something wrong WRT to the BIOS
seeing the HD's boot loader and I was reluctant to do anything with the
install CD in case it made things worse.

> I hesiitate to recommend any "experiments", for fear of trashing
> the disk.

Agreed, and I hesitate to engage in any for the same reason.

I'll try putting my second drive in tonight when I get home. I think I'll
also try putting just the first drive back in with my old MB/CPU/RAM and
see if it boots. If it boots with one drive on the old combo, then my
guess is that something is wrong with the new MB.

--Paul
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[Guest]

Archived from groups: alt.comp.periphs.mainboard.asus (More info?)

Paul <nospam@needed.com> wrote:
[...]
> I wonder, if your disk doesn't have "the right stuff" in the MBR,
> whether these would be the symptoms. If you have a second disk,
> perhaps your old system vectored from the MBR on the other disk ?
> (Not that I understand all the options here )
[...]

Well, I tested that theory last night, and the answer is that the system
boots fine with just the 80GB Seagate drive on my old MB.

I knew I couldn't use my old RAM on the new board (it's registered ECC
PC2100 and the new board doesn't support registered RAM), but I figured
I'd try the new RAM on the old board. No luck. The thing never booted,
and all I got was a repetitive beeping from the speaker (not a sequence,
just a beep every half second or so continuously). The A7M266 is supposed
to be compatible with both registered *and* unbuffered RAM, but it wasn't
happy with the PC2700 Kingston stick.

Heavy sigh.

--Paul
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