Machine not Booting Properly

[cpres]

Had tihs issue before and it turned out the hard drives were not plugged in properly, but now its happen again.

WinXP Pro machine (SP2) that will not bootup properly. If I have a bootable CD in the drive (in thise case the XP CD) the machine boots with no problem. If I don't have a CD in the drive, the machine hangs at the Boot from CD and never goes on.

I would have to double check the BIOS, so if anything else is needed please let me know.
Two hard drives both auto detected.
Boot sequence is CD, Removable media, HDD (order has never changed since installing XP)
SATA hard drives both showing Master (I belive channel 2 and 4)

Any thoughts? Could the boot sector be corrupted? I was ready to start the recovery console and run the fixboot if needed.

 

[cpres]

Just wanted to confirm this...
Boot sequence is as stated
HDD is on Ch 2 and Ch3 and CD is on Ch 0

 

[chookman]

remove the "removable media" as a boot option. and make sure there is no cd in the drive

 

[cpres]

Thanks I will try that.

Nothing has changed at all in the machine, so trying to determine why that would be an issue.

I know the MBR can cause this issue, but all programs point to the 2nd HDD as the issue.

Fixboot did not solve the issue, and fixmbr said there is an error on the drive. Then it said if I continue I could lose data.

In addition, went and tried running a partition recovery program I have (not 100% sure of the name) and 1st HDD no issues, 2nd HDD said it can't access properly.

All the data is backed up so may just go for it...but don't want to go through all this, lose data, re-build and then find that the issue still is occuring.

Any other thoughts? (not in front of the PC now or would try the above)

 

[mike99]

Download and run drive manufacturers diagnostic. If drive is faulty you cannot 'fix' it with software.

Mike.

 

[cpres]

Well I got if fixed, now my next question is what is actually wrong.
Unplugged the 2nd HDD and machine booted up without a problem.
Plugged in the 2nd HDD into another SATA port and machine booted up without a problem.
Could it be a bad SATA port? Anything in particular that can cause that? I do have a small cooling fan on the motherboard (2"x2" or so) that runs without a problem but is a bit noisy (well more then when I first got it)
CPU showing a good temp, no other issues.
Could a SATA port just go bad for no reason?

 

[chookman]

If you move it back to the original SATA port does it not boot again?

May have just had a bad connection

 

[cpres]

Didn't even try that...figured why break what is fixed.
Before this all happen the HDD was not even found, I reseated the cable (original port) and that is when it started.
Well thanks for all the help.