Disk boot failure

[defiantclass1]

I was trying to install Windows 7. I have tried a number of other drives before this brand new WD 500 GB SATA drive. The installtion would not see the hard drive at all. After a while, I tried to use a Windows XP Pro install disc just to get an o/s on the drive. Nothng. The install could not see the drive. (again, I have tried a number of drives).

I put the WD 500 GB SATA drive in another computer and loaded Windows 7 on it with no problem at all. It took about 20 minutes, start to finish.

I put the drive with the new o/s back in the original computer and now have a "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter" error.

I picked this forum because I have checked the hard drive out completely using Partition Table Doctor and it is fine. I also checked the other drives and they were fine too. This drive I confirmed works perfectly in another machine and installed the o/s without issue. Two operating system installs (Windows 7 and XP Pro) could not see the drive(s) in this computer. I have no other idea of what could be the problem except the motherboard.

I have set bios setting to defaults, cleared cmos by moving jumper. Took out mobo battery and put back in. I have changed boot device orders. I have connected my different drives to yet another computer via USB adapter and they are good to go. I have even tried using a different SATA cable from the HD to mobo connector.

I have an Abit AV8 motherboard with an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor. 4 GB PC 3200 memory. I have the 2nd to most recent bios update and the most recent update does not state any fixes even close to this problem.

Does anyone have any idea what could be going on here? Thanks!

 

[Outlander_04]

have you tried any other hard drive on the system giving problems?

 

[55795642]

Does the BIOS itself see the drive? Also, if I recall, some Windows installers will not see a (large?) drive if the SATA mode is set to AHCI in the BIOS

 

[defiantclass1]

Outlander,

Yes, I have tried a total of 3 drives, all of which are good in other machines.

55795642,

The problem with seeing the drive in the bios is, I can't find where to look in this bios. It has a place for IDE drives, but these are SATA drives, not IDE. The CD roms, show up in the IDE drive spot, but that's it. There is a User Window during the boot process, but since this problem started, I never see the User Window come up to access it. There is no place in the standard bios set up area that makes reference to the SATA drives. So, no, as of now, I cannot see the drive in the bios.

Thank you both

 

[Guest]

There is no specific SATA dive area in the BIOS.
Have you checked the speed settings of your SATA drives?
The AV8 supports only SATA I and no SATA II drives.
Most SATA II drives can be downgrades by jumper settings.

 

[defiantclass1]

You know, this was interesting. I had tried to get 7 to load on this machine for a while. I eventually gave up and I upgrade the entire machine. New mob, memory, HDs, power supply, everything really. I loaded 7 on the machine just fine after that.

I took all the old components and built another custome machine and I loaded 7 on it with no problems whatsoever. It was pretty strange. This all happened over such a long period of time, I kind of lost track of some of the particulars. There may have been some important component that I changed in the new custome machine that I am forgetting about, which may have made a difference.

Thank you for responding.

 

[diddums]

Windows 7 and IDE drives - check your IDE cable! UltraATA required to boot!

I've actually managed to discover something quite surprising about Windows 7 installs, particularly relating to IDE drives. Apart from Win 7 installing it's 'system area' on 'Drive 0' (irrespective of the drive you tell it to install Windows 7 to), there IS an issue with Windows 7 and IDE drives specifically, but not one you would visibly notice unless you open up your PC.

I have been trying to 'test' Windows 7 Professional on a spare machine a work, but having some difficulty getting the install to work. The machine is a fairly standard build for us (Intel duo 2180, 2Gb ram, single 200Gb+ HDD, DVD-ROM or RW). On a couple occasions, I got an odd 'You controller may not support booting from this device', but I knew it worked with XP fine. Each time I could get it to install without a problem. However, when I went to boot from the drive, it would always fail to boot. It would boot with the DVD in the ROM drive, if I told it to look there first and not use it to boot, but not from the HDD alone. ELEVEN attempts (each trying something slightly different) and no joy. I even flashed the BIOS, etc. I began to believe that the problem was a previously unseen HDD problem (bad sectors, etc).

When opening the PC to check drive serial numbers (i.e. was it still in warranty), I noticed a old 'standard' IDE cable, not a ultraATA one. I don't know why, but I thought I would swap it for an ultraATA one, reinstalled and it worked! Nothing to do with the drive OR the controller at all.

I confirmed it was the cable by changing jumpers on the drive/DVD from cable-select to master-slave (still OK), then swapping a 'different' standard IDE cable (unused) in, which immediately failed to boot.

Who would have thought the INTERNAL cable (the type of cable, not a damaged cable) would cause a boot failure . . . but it did.

I hope anyone who reads this finds this useful.

David Lyons