A7N8X Deluxe - at boot time it tried to boot from network

[Alex Hunsley]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Pug]

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.