Friends PC BSOD and wont boot back up. Any help?

January 31, 2011 8:56:46 PM

My sisters boyfriend just built his PC and it got a BSOD after a few days. He said it wont boot, he just gets a screen that says,

" Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key."

I'm trying to help him over the phone, but its hard without me being there to look at it. His mobo is an

Asus M4A79xTD Evo
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

I was going to tell him to reset his bios, but he said he didn't see it anywhere on the bios screen. He then said his boot sequence had his cd-rom at first priority and his HDD last. I told him to switch that but when he tried to boot they said it was telling him Primary IDE master is not detected.

Any suggestions?

More about : friends bsod wont boot back

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andyman30

January 31, 2011 9:14:26 PM

Just a long shot, but maybe try plugging the primary drive into a different SATA port, or if you have another hard drive handy install the OS on that, and see if that is the problem. This will tell you if it is the MOBO or the hard drive that is malfunctioning

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Emerald

Motherboard Expert

January 31, 2011 9:16:41 PM

Unplug the power cord, and then have him pull the Battery and wait a minute before inserting it back in to reset the BIOS.

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csquared587

January 31, 2011 9:21:25 PM

andyman30 said:

Just a long shot, but maybe try plugging the primary drive into a different SATA port, or if you have another hard drive handy install the OS on that, and see if that is the problem. This will tell you if it is the MOBO or the hard drive that is malfunctioning

Yea, I was going to tell him to do that next. He's been on the phone with MS for over an hour, I'm almost 100% sure he will get nowhere with them.

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T_T

Motherboard Master

January 31, 2011 9:54:37 PM

I'm not trying to discredit your sister's boyfriend's tech ability, but if the error message is referring to IDE and he's using a SATA interface HDD, that very well explains the mess.

Just to be sure, ask the guy if he knows the difference between IDE and SATA. If he doesn't, very nicely explain it to him. But seriously, make sure he's not connecting an IDE hdd to the same "ribbon-style" cable as the ODD. Also, tell him to ensure that if he is using an IDE interface, that the "master" connector must be connected to the primary boot drive.

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csquared587

January 31, 2011 10:48:35 PM

T_T said:

I'm not trying to discredit your sister's boyfriend's tech ability, but if the error message is referring to IDE and he's using a SATA interface HDD, that very well explains the mess.

Just to be sure, ask the guy if he knows the difference between IDE and SATA. If he doesn't, very nicely explain it to him. But seriously, make sure he's not connecting an IDE hdd to the same "ribbon-style" cable as the ODD. Also, tell him to ensure that if he is using an IDE interface, that the "master" connector must be connected to the primary boot drive.

He is using a sata drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Why would it even ask about a primary IDE if his hdd is sata?

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T_T

Motherboard Master

January 31, 2011 10:54:53 PM

Like you mentioned, this is something that may require seeing the problem (and variables) in front of you to really figure out, but my guess would be that since the mobo has IDE and SATA, the default is IDE, in terms of HDD recognition. That being said, have the guy check (and maybe even read off to you) all the boot options. Maybe something in the BIOS isn't configured correctly.

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