hard drive order changes itself each reboot

[paladin2012]

I have an Asus M2N-E.

Each time I reboot my computer I notice the order of my SATA drives in bios has changed. So each time I reboot I have to reorder them or I get a nice boot error due to the computer not finding the os. XP Pro is on the hard drive physically connected to slot 1 on the mobo. In bios it looks like the order gets reversed, so something like

Hard Drive Priority
1 = Sata drive 3
2 = Sata drive 2
3 = Sata drive 1

I move them in bios to the correct order, save & exit. XP boots up now, but the next time I turn the computer off they will get reversed again. BIOS is keeping any other changes I make. This has been happening since I built the computer months ago.

 

[Proximon]

What if you just swap around the cable? will it always boot from SATA drive 3? If you do that and it tries to avoid it again, then I would say it has some problem with that specific drive.

 

[paladin2012]

The SATA drives are new and they work fine as far as reading/ writing. I have had 2 drives installed and had this problem of Hard Drive Priority automatically getting changed in BIOS.

When I had 2 drives it was like

Hard Drive Priority
1 = SATA 2
2 = SATA 1

So no, it is not always trying to boot from drive 3. I have tried swapping the cables, and I have tried changing jumpers to make the drive with XP the master, and the others slaves. Neither seem to help.

 

[Proximon]

Ok, need to be a bit clearer here.

-If you make your XP boot drive physical SATA drive 3, will it always boot without changing the BIOS? That seems pretty obvious, but of course I have to ask.

-Are you saying the order changes every time? If you booted twice would it just happen to work the second time?

-I have no idea if this has any bearing, but did you happen to name all three drives the same when you formatted them? (that's just a wild stab in the dark, volume name shouldn't really be an issue).

-I don't know your specific BIOS, but all of them I have ever seen assign boot order for all drives, including your optical drive. If you assign your DVD drive as the first does it stay put?

-Have you flashed your BIOS?

 

[drewpyfz6]

Hi,
I have the exact same problem with the same motherboard.

I have 1 SATA drive (newly installed for storage, backups etc)
2 IDE drives fed from a PCI card.
1 external drive.

When I set the boot order to :
IDE1, IDE2, SATA, EXTERNAL
Save and reboot, the order gets changed to
SATA, EXTERNAL, IDE1, IDE2.

Set them back to the order I want as above, reboot and it says insert boot drive (or words to that effect) - as the XP is installed on IDE1...

This is driving me crazy....

Any help would be very much appreciated.

Cheers,
Drew

 

[chookman]

RTFM:

4-38 of your manual refers to setting the removable drives, ODD and master hard drives...

Try setting these up then setting your boot priorities. I know i had an ASUS board that wouldnt even list the hdd as a boot priority if it was the "master" drive in that area.

(i wasnt being rude with the RTFM call either )