comes on but can't find the hard drive or cd-rom

B

BarbaraLasan

just put in a new ECS 848P-A7 motherboard FSB HyperThread,
p4 3.2 , 512 ram, cdrw/dvd, 60gb hard drive , floppy - the computer
will comes on but can't find the hard drive or cd-rom.

massage i get is boot failure insert system disk and press enter
 
B

bud

just put in a new ECS 848P-A7 motherboard FSB HyperThread,
p4 3.2 , 512 ram, cdrw/dvd, 60gb hard drive , floppy - the computer
will comes on but can't find the hard drive or cd-rom.

massage i get is boot failure insert system disk and press enter
Click to expand...
I guess the first thing that comes to mind is did you set the bios and
install the motherboard drivers.
 
B

BarbaraLasan

bud said:
I guess the first thing that comes to mind is did you set the bios and
install the motherboard drivers.
Click to expand...

can't do that - the pc will come on but can't find the hard drive or
cd-rom.
 
G

GHalleck

can't do that - the pc will come on but can't find the hard drive or
cd-rom.
Click to expand...

Forget about trying to find the hard drive or cdrom. Try to
get into bios setup. Might need to hold down the DEL key or
one of the F (i.e., Function) keys when powering on. Read the
instruction manual the way to do it. If not possible to get
into bios setup screens, then motherboard is probably bad and
should be replaced.

Of course, I am assuming that you know how to put together a
new system from scratch. Correct assumption?
 
P

paulmd

just put in a new ECS 848P-A7 motherboard FSB HyperThread,
p4 3.2 , 512 ram, cdrw/dvd, 60gb hard drive , floppy - the computer
will comes on but can't find the hard drive or cd-rom.

massage i get is boot failure insert system disk and press enter
Click to expand...


First thing's first.

Do you have all of your jumpers set correctly?

Are the IDE cables installed correctly? Not backwards, or flipped end
to end? Are they seated firmly?


Did you enter the Bios and check that the ide controllers are enabled?

Is the bios set to autodetect the drives?

Is the bios set to boot from the cdrom, and hard disk?

You will always get a boot failure if you have no bootable devices.

Feel free to ask if you need clairification an any of this.
 
E

esoikie

Darned Sympatico has made posting all but impossible. *praises Google
Groups* now.. onto the problem. I don't know your level of skill so
I'll run through this from beginning to end.

Step one. Double check all jumper settings on both the Hard Drive and
the CD Rom. If on the same IDE Cable, make sure that the Hard Drive is
Master, the CD-Rom Drive is the slave.

If that confirmed, you may want to try swapping out the IDE Ribbon just
to double check that isn't where the problem is coming from. Though it
probably isn't, it's the troubleshooting process.

You may also want to try having one of the two devices plugged in at a
time. First the HD, then the CD Rom, make sure there's no conflict.
If it detects them independantly, but not together, then you're looking
at a conflict, check your jumpers again.

The last thing you could do to test hardware is test the HD/CDROM in
another computer, or try another HD/CDROM in that computer and see if
you get results.

Once you get through all that, you're pretty much done testing the
hardware. (Except maybe the Motherboard and it's connectors).

Onto the software. The BIOS. Not knowing the motherboard or BIOS
information it's hard to tell you exactly how to enter your BIOS.
Usually it tells you on boot-up "Press F2" to enter system setup, or
something to that nature. If all else fails, read the manual. If you
don't have the manual, and don't know the motherboard model, it will be
printed on on the motherboard somewhere, google it and you'll find it
eventually.

Once in the bios, there's usually an auto-detect feature in the setup.
Again, I can't tell you where without knowing the exact bios
maker/version. If that fails, you can read the settings of the hard
drive off the side of the actual hard drive and try entering them
manually.

If you get through all that and it's STILL not working. Try checking
your motherboard manufacturer for a BIOS update. Create the floppy,
boot the machine with it and update the BIOS.

After all that, if you're STILL not getting it... bring it to somebody
else to play with. :)

Hope that helps.

-Evan
esoikie (at) sympatico (dot) ca
 
R

Rod Speed

ok now it finds the HD & cd-rom but the new massage is NTLDR is missing.
Click to expand...

You're not sposed to massage your PC, you're sposed to beat
it to a pulp with the largest waddy you can find if it doesnt behave.

What did you do to get it to see the HD and CD ?

NTLDR is the loader, looks like while you can see the
HD, it cant read it properly and so cant see NTLDR.
 
P

paulmd

ok now it finds the HD & cd-rom but the new massage is NTLDR is missing.
Click to expand...

You probably will have to do a clean reinstall of the OS. A repair MAY
work, but my instinct says it'll be a couple hours down the drain.
 
P

Paul

[email protected] said:
You probably will have to do a clean reinstall of the OS. A repair MAY
work, but my instinct says it'll be a couple hours down the drain.
Click to expand...

If I read the number right, that is a nice Intel 848P based
motherboard. It is the same chip as 865/875, only single
channel RAM. The Southbridge can use a Microsoft disk driver
to read the hard disk.

In short, try a repair install, and it should be set to
rights. A repair install takes you back to a point before
any Service Packs were manually added, and you'll also
have to install any Windows Update stuff as well. But at
least you won't have to reinstall your applications, and
all your email and personal stuff should be untouched.

http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

You'll be booting from the Windows Install CD, so consult
your manual on how to set up the boot order in the BIOS. I like
floppy first, CDROM second, and my boot hard drive third,
so when you pop in the Windows Install CDROM, it will boot
from that instead of trying the hard drive.

HTH,
Paul
 
B

bobmarley

GHalleck said:
Forget about trying to find the hard drive or cdrom. Try to
get into bios setup. Might need to hold down the DEL key or
one of the F (i.e., Function) keys when powering on. Read the
instruction manual the way to do it. If not possible to get
into bios setup screens, then motherboard is probably bad and
should be replaced.
Click to expand...

if it's a new mbd she should find which key it is in the manual
or.. sometimes I will rake the whole keyboard several times, left to
right on the boot
this works too
 
B

bobmarley

ok now it finds the HD & cd-rom but the new massage is NTLDR is missing.
Click to expand...

another thingi you might try before re-isntalling os
is clear the mbr (master boot record)

Fdisk has an undocumented parameter called /MBR that causes it to write
the master boot record to the hard disk without altering the partition
table information.
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=69013 (W95/98/ME 5/28/2003)
 
R

Rod Speed

bobmarley said:
if it's a new mbd she should find which key it is in the manual
or.. sometimes I will rake the whole keyboard several times, left to
right on the boot
this works too
Click to expand...

All you need to do to get it to fail the keyboard test is hold multiple keys down.
 

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