Not sure what happend...

[MacUser_PCtrouble]

Hope this is the place for this...

I built a PC a while back, specifically for Video Editing/Graphics. The machine has an ASUS mother board and a 2ghz processor... keep in mind this was built about 3 years ago... The main (system) drive was a Western Digital 120gig - standard IDE drive. The secondary is a Maxtor 500gig SDI drive... had no probs with it, ran like a champ up until about a year ago when the WD died. Prior to the WD's death I had given it to a friend to use, when the WD died he replaced the 120 with a 40 seagate... neither drive (500 or 40) is a slave, nor do they have the option. Anyway, one of his buddies installed linux and basically screwed the whole thing up, so I had to reinstall XP Pro and everything else, once I was finished the machine booted no prob, when I added the secondary SDI drive suddenly the machine won't boot. Going into BIOS the boot sequence is correct but it gets to a point where it asks me if I want to start in safe mode or the last known properly running windows... If I hit F8 (I think, whatever allows me to choose the boot sequence outside of BIOS) during the boot sequence then it will get past this message, boot up and I can see and access the secondary drive... thoughts?

Sorry if this is confusing, I just wanted to make sure I layed out the details as clearly as I understand them. Thanks in advance for your help!

-aaron

 

[Ian]

I'm not sure what an SDI drive is, do you mean SATA (or perhaps SCSI?).

Do you only have boot files on one drive, as it could be that your BIOS is trying to boot from the wrong drive. Sometimes the BIOS has an option to specify the order of which hard drive to boot and an option to select the boot order of all devices. You need to make sure that the correct boot drive is selected on the HDD order.

I've got an ASUS motherboard (P5Q) and had to set this up just yesterday, as I got an error telling me to select a boot drive and it would only work if I pressed F8 and selected one manually. I didn't realise that my system was trying to boot from the wrong HDD as it was in the wrong order, which seemed to change without my knowledge when replacing disks.

 

[floppybootstomp]

Neither drive is a slave, nor do they have the option.

I can only assume that there are no jumpers on both hard disks which would mean they are SATA drives. But I find that unlikely in the case of the 40Gb drive as not many 40Gb drives were being produced when SATA drives were introoduced.

On the other hand if both drives are recognised in Windows and there are no jumpers then it's likely they're SATA drives.

If, however, your disks have a row of paired pins on the back to take jumpers that means they are IDE (PATA) drives and they will have an option to be slave drives. If that is the case then it's pure pot luck both drives are recognised in the BIOS and by Windows.

As Ian said, with lots of Asus boards you have to specify the priority drive to boot from within the Bios, all three of my Asus boards have this option, the eldest board of mine is 31 months old.


If everything's set up correctly and the machine is booting from the drive with Windows on, it seems your Windows install is corrupted.

You could attempt a repair but in my experience that rarely works (in fact in all these years a Windows repair, of whatever version, has never worked for me, 'fix mbr' et al) so it's probably best to bite the bullet and reinstall Windows again.

You also might want to reconsider your choice of friends - one borrows your machine and the 120Gb drive dies while it's his responsibility so he replaces it with a 40Gb drive. Nice buddy

Then his buddy installs Linux on your machine without even asking you? The geezer needs a slap...

Good luck

 

[MacUser_PCtrouble]

Ok, first thanks to you both for your replies. I was wrong, at the time of writing this I had forgotten the type of drive (secondary) the Maxtor 500gig is a SATA drive and the other is a standard IDE (PATA) The 40gig does have an area for jumpers (sorry for the miss-information) and it is set as a Master. I'm not sure of the model of the mother board other than it is an ASUS and the processor is an AMD, I built this thing a while ago and I don't have the box anymore, guess I should've kept it.

Ian, this sounds alot like the issue I am having... tell me more, how did you solve it? As for the boot sequence in BIOS it is set properly, I had even disabled all othe options (CD/DVD, Floppy) at one point to test it, still had the same problem.


"I've got an ASUS motherboard (P5Q) and had to set this up just yesterday, as I got an error telling me to select a boot drive and it would only work if I pressed F8 and selected one manually. I didn't realise that my system was trying to boot from the wrong HDD as it was in the wrong order, which seemed to change without my knowledge when replacing disks."

Thanks again for both of your help and I look forward to your reply,
-aaron

 

[MacUser_PCtrouble]

Um, no takers? Is it just that simple? or could it be just that complicated? Unfortunately the longer the machine is down the less productive it is being. I've built this machine to help my friends ministry which feeds poor families in Mexico and he needs it to build videos to take to churches and places like that in order to get funding. I didn't really want to bring up the purpose of the machine cause I didn't think it was all that relevent but, I can't seem to get any help here... so... hopefully knowing the work this machine does may help in the decision making process... in case anyone is on the fence about helping out.

again, thanks in advance for all y'alls help!!! GOD BLESS YA!!!!

 

[Ian]

Ian, this sounds alot like the issue I am having... tell me more, how did you solve it? As for the boot sequence in BIOS it is set properly, I had even disabled all othe options (CD/DVD, Floppy) at one point to test it, still had the same problem.

There should be a setting for boot order, which includes things like HDD, CD/DVD, USB Drive and Floppy in the list. But there is also a separate setting to set the HDD order (so you'd choose the boot HDD first). However, now that I've read your first post again I'm confused by the "start in safe mode or the last known properly running windows" part. If you're getting that message it sounds like your PC has already booted off the drive but Windows isn't working quite right.