This morning I turned on my computer and at boot time, at the point
where XP would normally start to boot, it started trying to boot via one
of the inbuilt network cards - something to do with PXE and nforce
network boot manager. I reset the machine, did the same again, I reset,
and the third time, I gt back into windows without any network boot
shenanigans. This was without changing anything, including the bios.

Why did it try booting from the network those two times then stop? Would
that indicate the normal boot disk wasn't present somehow (perhaps a
loose cable) those two times? (What is it that makes the A7N8X try to
boot from the network anyawy? The situation where it can't find a disk
to boot from?)

FYI, my disk setup is that I have a single 250gig SATA drive attached,
which I boot from, and a normal IDE hd attached to IDE0 (master, only
thing on it). I also have 2 CD-roms attached to IDE1.
In the bios, my first boot device is 'SCSI', and I have enabled 'enable
other boot device' (which I presume allows the SATA drive to boot). The
2nd and 3rd boot devices are disabled currently.

alex

This usually is the cause of not finding a bootable device as it goes down
the list. It looks in the order you specify in the bios, and if no boot
sector, it moves onto the next. Finally, if it finds nothing and you have
network boot enabled, it will try to find an image server to boot from. How
old is this disk you are booting to?


"Alex Hunsley" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> This morning I turned on my computer and at boot time, at the point where
> XP would normally start to boot, it started trying to boot via one of the
> inbuilt network cards - something to do with PXE and nforce network boot
> manager. I reset the machine, did the same again, I reset, and the third
> time, I gt back into windows without any network boot shenanigans. This
> was without changing anything, including the bios.
>
> Why did it try booting from the network those two times then stop? Would
> that indicate the normal boot disk wasn't present somehow (perhaps a loose
> cable) those two times? (What is it that makes the A7N8X try to boot from
> the network anyawy? The situation where it can't find a disk to boot
> from?)
>
> FYI, my disk setup is that I have a single 250gig SATA drive attached,
> which I boot from, and a normal IDE hd attached to IDE0 (master, only
> thing on it). I also have 2 CD-roms attached to IDE1.
> In the bios, my first boot device is 'SCSI', and I have enabled 'enable
> other boot device' (which I presume allows the SATA drive to boot). The
> 2nd and 3rd boot devices are disabled currently.
>
> alex

DDStech wrote:
> This usually is the cause of not finding a bootable device as it goes down
> the list. It looks in the order you specify in the bios, and if no boot
> sector, it moves onto the next. Finally, if it finds nothing and you have
> network boot enabled, it will try to find an image server to boot from. How
> old is this disk you are booting to?
>
>
Ah, that's what I thought.
The disk is quite new - under a year old - a 250gig SATA, think it's a
maxtor, can't remember exactly.
May have just been a temporary connection problem?
I did a quick disk check in XP and it found no problems.

alex

Well, there are a number of ways a disk can fail besides read/write events.
One way is the motor that turns the spindle gets week. This usuallly shows
itself in two ways. First, when the drive is cold, it has problems getting
up to speed. After it runs for awhile, it warms up and then no problems,
computer boots just fine. Second is when the drive gets warm, it fails to
get up to speed from a cold boot. This shows itself as you turn off the
computer to "reset" the sytem, or install a new chip/card. Then restart and
the computer won't boot. Same can be said for the read/write head armature
and solenoid.


"Alex Hunsley" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> DDStech wrote:
>> This usually is the cause of not finding a bootable device as it goes
>> down the list. It looks in the order you specify in the bios, and if no
>> boot sector, it moves onto the next. Finally, if it finds nothing and you
>> have network boot enabled, it will try to find an image server to boot
>> from. How old is this disk you are booting to?
>>
>>
> Ah, that's what I thought.
> The disk is quite new - under a year old - a 250gig SATA, think it's a
> maxtor, can't remember exactly.
> May have just been a temporary connection problem?
> I did a quick disk check in XP and it found no problems.
>
> alex

DDStech wrote:
> Well, there are a number of ways a disk can fail besides read/write events.
> One way is the motor that turns the spindle gets week. This usuallly shows
> itself in two ways. First, when the drive is cold, it has problems getting
> up to speed. After it runs for awhile, it warms up and then no problems,
> computer boots just fine. Second is when the drive gets warm, it fails to
> get up to speed from a cold boot. This shows itself as you turn off the
> computer to "reset" the sytem, or install a new chip/card. Then restart and
> the computer won't boot. Same can be said for the read/write head armature
> and solenoid.

Interesting insights! thanks for those DDStech.
Btw, can I ask you to please not top-post? It makes following threads
very difficult.

"Alex Hunsley" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed)...
> DDStech wrote:
>> Well, there are a number of ways a disk can fail besides read/write
>> events. One way is the motor that turns the spindle gets week. This
>> usuallly shows itself in two ways. First, when the drive is cold, it has
>> problems getting up to speed. After it runs for awhile, it warms up and
>> then no problems, computer boots just fine. Second is when the drive gets
>> warm, it fails to get up to speed from a cold boot. This shows itself as
>> you turn off the computer to "reset" the sytem, or install a new
>> chip/card. Then restart and the computer won't boot. Same can be said for
>> the read/write head armature and solenoid.
>
> Interesting insights! thanks for those DDStech.
> Btw, can I ask you to please not top-post? It makes following threads very
> difficult.

I had a very similar problem, just after updating the bios to 1008 with the
scsi boot option. It refused to boot from my adaptec scsi card or the 2 sata
drives I've got, even a boot cd failed with a blank screen. I had to switch
back to 1007 and reset the bios to default settings with all the performance
settings off before it would boot again.