Issue with hard drive / booting windows

[GrimReaper711]

This morning i turned on my PC and got to the second screen and the computer tried to boot off the CD/DVD instead of the hard drive like normal.
I've checked the BIOS, the hard drive is detected fine, and is in the correct priority for booting.
Theres no floppy drive, and im booting without any discs in the drive.
I've run a WD diagnostic tool on the drive, run an extensive test and it reports there is 0 errors.
I can boot Knoppix and Windows XP CD - Knoppix can see the hard drive and explore it fine.
I've run a repair on the boot sect from the XP cd which completed succefully but the computer still doesn't boot off the hard drive.
I've tried using the repair mode with the XP data disc, it installs as much as it can off the disc but when it reboots and needs to start off the hard drive it can't. 0_o

Any help here would be great, i've got no idea whats causing the board to ignore my hard drive when booting.

 

[buzznut]

you didn't mention what type of drives. Are they IDE, SATA or a combination?

 

[GrimReaper711]

The disc drive and Hard drive are both SATA

 

[pshrk]

try running fixmbr from the recovery console (after booting the windows XP disc)

look at option 2 and the fixmbr command:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

 

[GrimReaper711]

try running fixmbr from the recovery console (after booting the windows XP disc)

look at option 2 and the fixmbr command:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314058

I ran the Fixmbr command on the drive, it's still continuing to ignore the drive while it's booting.

 

[pshrk]

Maybe try unplugging the computer and taking out the battery to reset the CMOS.

I don't have any more suggestions except for a personal experience that may not be related (it probably isn't but I thought I'd share it just in case):

Vista one day failed to boot, after bringing up cfdisk from a linux liveCD i noticed the partition type had changed from NTFS to NTFS(hidden). I changed the partition type back to NTFS, wrote the partition table and everything was back to normal.

 

[buzznut]

will it boot without the cd/dvd drive?

 

[vinshon]

i had your problem once, guess what was the problem?

The sata cable connected to the motherboard was loose LOL. with my loud subwoofer over long periods of time 1-2 years some connections tend to get loose, try chcking all ur cables if their connected properly.

 

[GrimReaper711]

Vista one day failed to boot, after bringing up cfdisk from a linux liveCD i noticed the partition type had changed from NTFS to NTFS(hidden). I changed the partition type back to NTFS, wrote the partition table and everything was back to normal.

Thanks, I tried resetting the CMOS but it didn't work. So I loaded up Knoppix again and ran cfdisk and the partition that windows was on was missing it's "BOOT" flag. I reflagged it and rewrote the partition table and the drive is booting again. Very many thanks

 

[pshrk]

Glad to help. I solve all my windows problems with Linux, haha

 

[buzznut]

Nice fix, pshrk!