Clean XP Install -- What is the problem?

  • Thread starter Thread starter David Mills
  • Start date Start date
D

David Mills

Ok, you know when you have a new computer and harddrive and you start a
fresh XP install? Well, the CD goes thru all of that preliminary setup
stuff and eventually you get to a point where it says "This portion of the
setup is done. Remove any disks in your floppy drive. Your computer will
reboot in 10 seconds and then the setup will continue." Well, my computer
reboots and then it just goes thru its normal startup routine and I get to a
message that says "Boot From CD". Then it just sits there, if I hit "Enter"
or "Spacebar" nothing happens. I have redid this setup 5 times and the same
thing keeps happening. Any ideas what the problem could be?
 
| Ok, you know when you have a new computer and harddrive and you start a
| fresh XP install? Well, the CD goes thru all of that preliminary setup
| stuff and eventually you get to a point where it says "This portion of the
| setup is done. Remove any disks in your floppy drive. Your computer will
| reboot in 10 seconds and then the setup will continue." Well, my computer
| reboots and then it just goes thru its normal startup routine and I get to
a
| message that says "Boot From CD". Then it just sits there, if I hit
"Enter"
| or "Spacebar" nothing happens. I have redid this setup 5 times and the
same
| thing keeps happening. Any ideas what the problem could be?
|
|

David -

You're not providing enough information.

Tell us about your hardware. Specifically your hard drive(s).

Out on a limb here...

Is it a SATA drive? Do you have multiple drives defined in a RAID array?
If either of these are true, you need a driver diskette for your controller
and you must press F6 when prompted during the initial stages of the setup.

Jef
 
Ok, you know when you have a new computer and harddrive and you start a
fresh XP install? Well, the CD goes thru all of that preliminary setup
stuff and eventually you get to a point where it says "This portion of the
setup is done. Remove any disks in your floppy drive. Your computer will
reboot in 10 seconds and then the setup will continue." Well, my computer
reboots and then it just goes thru its normal startup routine and I get to a
message that says "Boot From CD". Then it just sits there, if I hit "Enter"
or "Spacebar" nothing happens. I have redid this setup 5 times and the same
thing keeps happening. Any ideas what the problem could be?
Click to expand...

Enter the BIOS setup and set the first boot device to be the
hard drive. If that doesn't work, check the drive's jumpers
(and jumpers of any other connected drives).
 
JefN said:
David -

You're not providing enough information.

Tell us about your hardware. Specifically your hard drive(s).

Out on a limb here...

Is it a SATA drive? Do you have multiple drives defined in a RAID array?
If either of these are true, you need a driver diskette for your
controller
and you must press F6 when prompted during the initial stages of the
setup.

Jef
Click to expand...

Jef,

Yes it is a single SATA drive, but I am hitting F6 during the initial part
of the install and providing the driver disk?
 
Enter the BIOS setup and set the first boot device to be the
hard drive. If that doesn't work, check the drive's jumpers
(and jumpers of any other connected drives).
Click to expand...


yea.
 
|
| Jef,
|
| Yes it is a single SATA drive, but I am hitting F6 during the initial part
| of the install and providing the driver disk?
|
|

Hi David -

Okay... how do you have your boot devices set up in your BIOS setup screens?

You need to have 1st boot device, of course, set to CD-ROM (at least until
your operating system is fully installed). Your 2nd boot device should be
your SATA drive. Some BIOS' have options for generic HDD, CD-ROM and
FLOPPY... you then have to go into a sub-menu to define exactly which drive
is to be the boot drive.

It would be helpful at this point to tell us who makes your motherboard and
what model. Helping with BIOS settings blind is nearly impossible.

Jef
 
JefN said:
Hi David -

Okay... how do you have your boot devices set up in your BIOS setup
screens?

You need to have 1st boot device, of course, set to CD-ROM (at least until
your operating system is fully installed). Your 2nd boot device should be
your SATA drive. Some BIOS' have options for generic HDD, CD-ROM and
FLOPPY... you then have to go into a sub-menu to define exactly which
drive
is to be the boot drive.

It would be helpful at this point to tell us who makes your motherboard
and
what model. Helping with BIOS settings blind is nearly impossible.

Jef
Click to expand...

Ok, I believe that right now I have them setup as 1.) Floppy Drive 2.)
CD-ROM 3.) HDD.
I did that because I am using the 6 XP startup disks that you can create
from the Microsoft website. I am only using those because I can't boot
directly from the cd.
My motherboard is the new Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 that has PCI-E.
I know when the BIOS starts, it says something about "Award Software", I
can't remember exactly right now, I will check when I get home and repost if
this is wrong. One thing though, I don't remember there being any submenus
when you choose the startup order of your devices.
 
|
| Ok, I believe that right now I have them setup as 1.) Floppy Drive 2.)
| CD-ROM 3.) HDD.
| I did that because I am using the 6 XP startup disks that you can create
| from the Microsoft website. I am only using those because I can't boot
| directly from the cd.
| My motherboard is the new Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9 that has PCI-E.
| I know when the BIOS starts, it says something about "Award Software", I
| can't remember exactly right now, I will check when I get home and repost
if
| this is wrong. One thing though, I don't remember there being any
submenus
| when you choose the startup order of your devices.
|
|

Hi David -

Now we're getting to the meat of the matter.

For some reason your optical drive isn't booting. I don't see that as a
major issue (though it may be addressed through BIOS settings).

Your boot order is fine and your use of the 6-diskette set is also fine.

You are using a generic HDD as your 3rd boot device. There definitely has
to be a sub-menu option within the same Advanced BIOS Features Setup menu
(or some such name) which you must select to specify exactly which drive to
use as the boot device.

You have an Award BIOS. Many motherboards have a BIOS built upon Award's
version 6.0 BIOS. While significant, this isn't really coming into play
here (other than I'm familiar with Award BIOS' from other motherboard makers
products).

I'll have a look at the Gigabyte website and see if I can find a manual for
your motherboard to give you more concrete advice.

Jef
 
Hi David -

Found your answer in a matter of minutes.

Yes, you do have a hard disk boot priority sub-menu within your BIOS.

The first item in the Advanced BIOS Features menu is Hard Disk Boot
Priority. Press Enter at this menu item to bring up the sub-menu. From the
sub-menu, use the up and down arrow keys to move through the available disk
options. Use the + and - keys to move items up or down the menu list. Once
you have the menu arranged so that your hard disk is the first item listed,
press ESC to go back to the Advanced BIOS Features menu. ESC back to the
main menu and select the option to save and exit setup.

I hope this is clear. The information is covered in more detail in your
motherboard manual. If you don't have a manual, pick up the latest version
(in PDF format) at http://www.gigabyte.com.tw.

Jef
 
JefN said:
Hi David -

Found your answer in a matter of minutes.

Yes, you do have a hard disk boot priority sub-menu within your BIOS.

The first item in the Advanced BIOS Features menu is Hard Disk Boot
Priority. Press Enter at this menu item to bring up the sub-menu. From
the
sub-menu, use the up and down arrow keys to move through the available
disk
options. Use the + and - keys to move items up or down the menu list.
Once
you have the menu arranged so that your hard disk is the first item
listed,
press ESC to go back to the Advanced BIOS Features menu. ESC back to the
main menu and select the option to save and exit setup.

I hope this is clear. The information is covered in more detail in your
motherboard manual. If you don't have a manual, pick up the latest
version
(in PDF format) at http://www.gigabyte.com.tw.

Jef
Click to expand...

Jef,

Wow, thanks for the help, I will try this first thing when I get
home.........I can't wait............

Thanks again bro.
 
|
| Jef,
|
| Wow, thanks for the help, I will try this first thing when I get
| home.........I can't wait............
|
| Thanks again bro.
|
|
|

Hi David -

Happy to help

Good luck with your install and post back your results.

Jef
 
If the drive does not show up in the BIOS or at POST you have a hardware
problem, nothing at all to do with Windows XP or the drivers, suggest
contacting Gigabyte or the vendor you got the board from and start there.
 
| If the drive does not show up in the BIOS or at POST you have a hardware
| problem, nothing at all to do with Windows XP or the drivers, suggest
| contacting Gigabyte or the vendor you got the board from and start there.

Hi Bob -

He's setting up his BIOS incorrectly. The original poster took this to
private email with me and we resolved it. There is no hardware error --
just a very confusing to set up BIOS.

Dave --

Your message did not sync to my ISPs news server. I am stepping on top of
Bob's reply to you in order to post the resolution the original poster and I
worked out in private email.

The BIOS defaults are causing your problem as the default assumption is that
when you use the SATA controllers you will be defining a RAID array. It is
possible to use the SATA controllers to emulate an IDE environment, but you
have to modify the defaults.

First, boot your system and press DEL at the POST screen to get into the
setup screens.

Select the LOAD OPTIMISED DEFAULTS option.

Go into the ADVANCED BIOS FEATURES menu:

.. Press Enter at the Hard Disk Boot Priority item. In the sub-menu, select
Bootable Add-in Cards. You select this item because the Award BIOS is not
aware that the SATA controller on your motherboard is built-in -- the
assumption the folks at Phoenix/Award built into the default BIOS code was
that anything SATA would be an add-in card. We'll get to how to define your
SATA shortly.

.. Set First Boot Device to Floppy

.. Set Second Boot Device to CD-ROM

.. Set Third Boot Device to Hard Disk

.. Set Boot Up Floppy Seek to Enabled

Go into the INTEGRATED PERIPHERALS menu:

.. Set On-Chip IDE Channel 0 to Disabled -- this will free system resources
if you don't have any IDE drives connected to the system (this is not the
BIOS default)

.. Set On-Chip IDE Channel 1 to Disabled -- same reason

.. Set IDE SATA/RAID Function to Disabled (this is not the BIOS defailt)

.. Set IDE Primary Master RAID and IDE Primary Slave RAID to Disabled (this
is not the system default)

.. Set IDE Secondary Master RAID and IDE Secondary Slave RAID to Disabled
(this is not the system default)

.. Set Serial-ATA 1 to Enabled

.. Set SATA 1 Primary RAID and SATA 1 Secondary RAID to Disabled (this is not
the system default)

.. Set Serial-ATA 2 to Enabled

.. Set SATA 2 Primary RAID and SATA-2 Secondary RAID to Disabled (this is not
the system default)

.. Enable or Disable the rest of the on-board peripherals as you intend to
use them

Exit back to the main menu and choose the item to Save and Exit Setup

Your system will reboot and the main POST screen will display. You'll also
see your hard drive (you will have probably never seen this before as your
BIOS will now recognise your hard drive connected to one of the SATA
controller headers).

After a moment you'll see a NVIDIA RAID message. Press F10 at this prompt
to go into the RAID setup screen.

Just look at the screen... do not change anything because we are not
defining a RAID array... we're just looking to ensure your disk is properly
detected. If you see your disk on the left side of the screen, put your
Windows XP CD in the CD-ROM drive and then press ESC to exit the screen to
continue booting.

Your Windows XP CD should now boot (you may get a message to press any key
to boot from CD-ROM ... if so, do so).

When in your XP Setup, be certain to press F6 when prompted for RAID/SATA
drivers and also ensure that the SATA driver diskette you got with the
motherboard is in the floppy drive.

Hopefully this covers everything.

Jef



|
| Saltaholicwm wrote:
|
| > Dear Jef,
| >
| > I have been having the EXACT same problems that David has beenhaving.
| > I have the same mother board (Gigabyte GA-K8NF-9) and Ibought a 74 GB
| > WD 10000 RPM SATA Raptor to go along with it. Theentire computer is
| > brand new and I'm installing the SATA drive as theboot drive. I have
| > literally spent 8 hours working on thisproblem without stopping and
| > I've done everything from flashing bios tothe latest upgrade to
| > unplugging other drives to see if that has anyeffect.
| >
| > NO WHERE in bios does my SATA drive register. Is thatnormal? Usually
| > with the IDE drives they registered by showingtheir capacity, etc.
| > Also, I have changed all enable/disablesetting concerning ALL hard
| > drives and nothing has changed.
| >
| > I have hit F6 during Win2k prelaunch and installed drivers (at least
| > 4times now, changing various things each time) but to no avail. After
| > formatting and installing, the computer restarts, and then givesme the
| > error "Couldn't open boot partition to check for signature".
| >
| > I have attempted to change the "Hard Disk Boot Priority" as
| > yousuggested to David, but it only has one item to choose from on
| > thesubmenu "1. Bootable Add-in Cards". There is nothing elsethere. I
| > have even attempted to hit + and - to see if it justscrolled through a
| > list in one box, but that didn't work. It onlygives me that 1 choice.
| >
| > I've download FDisk and DOS Boot disk in order to analyze what
| > thispartition problem might be. I haven't yet worked with them yetbut
| > that will be my next step. Do you have any othersuggestions? This is
| > becoming a real pain in the butt!
| >
| > Thanks kindly,
| > Dave
| >
| >
| >
|
 
Hi Dave -

Happy to help.

David Mills (the original poster) and I struggled with figuring out his BIOS
settings. It was dumb luck that I hadn't cleared out my Sent Items folder
so that I didn't have to completely retype our final resolution.

No Lord of the Universe here... I'm just a guy who knows how to read
techno-jumble motherboard manuals...

Enjoy your new system!

Jef


|
| JefN,
|
| I did what you said and it worked! I don't know why they made the bios
| so difficult to work with.
|
| Anyways, I'd like to thank you SOOO much. You are now my new God. All
| hail JefN- Lord of the Universe!
|
| Thank you!
|
| Dave
|
|
| --
| Saltaholicwm
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Saltaholicwm's Profile: http://forum.osnn.net/member.php?userid=7308
| View this thread: http://forum.osnn.net/showthread.php?t=51061
|
 
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