Boot problems

[kellamne]

I just bought a HDD Caddy for my old drive, so I took it out - and couldnt get it - the PC I mean, to boot from the SATA drive - so is propped back in at the moment (hopefully temp).

MB: Asus A7N8X - 2.0/rev. 1008
Drives: MStation CAR MP3 IDE removable Caddy (normally empty but plugged in), Sony DVD-RW, Seagate 160 SATA and - Seagate 60/7200 IDE.

I am assuming this is to do with the physical setup/jumpers of the system, and boot order - any ideas what it should be like (the MStation has to remain as master - ide channel doesnt matter).


----------------------

Insom - I have XP installed - it runs fine .. but only boots if the IDE drive is plugged in - although I have formatted this drive - so the only stuff on it is docs and music.

If i unplug, i get the system disk fail, insert disk - press enter message when I power back up.

Which why I am assuming it is to do with the boot order etc.

This isnt really an urgent issue but any pointers before i go back and play with it would be great.

Does it make more sense now??

[~* InSoM *~]

with some SATA drives, I believe, when you try and install windows on to it, when you get to the point where it asks about SCSI near the start, you have to install drivers for the SATA drive, if that not where your having probs, and you have windows installed already on anuver drive, try installing the drivers in windows itself.

[Áedán]

The error you're getting strongly suggests there's no valid bootsector on your SATA disk. I'm guessing that when you installed XP, the IDE disk was in the machine, and happened to be first in the boot order. XP writes the boot sector to the first bootable hard disk, and in your case, it was the IDE disk. Hence, when you try to boot without the IDE disk, there's no boot sector for the BIOS to hand control to, so you get the error message instead.

[kellamne]

Is there a fix for it - or am i guessing put up with it/reinstall

[~* InSoM *~]

is it booting into windows at the moment of the old IDE drive?

[kellamne]

As long as its plugged in - yes

[~* InSoM *~]

sorry i didnt see the edit or the other post.

But out of curiosity, does the IDE have to remain master because of the problem, or for another reason?

[Áedán]

You can try going to the recovery console (boot from the CD), and using the FIXMBR command to re-write the boot sector. Make sure that the IDE drive isn't in place first though!

[kellamne]

cheers - will give it in a while

-------------------

Edit:

Got it sorted eventually - I ended up plugged in only what I wanted to keep in the machine (1 SATA/DVD/MStation) and reinstalled XP etc.