HDD problem no boot drive

[quaf_man_dan]

Hi all,

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my dad's PC - which had been working fine - but was underpowered for what he wanted to do.

he now has:

Asus M2NE SLi board
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ 2.10GHz
MSI 512MB Geforce 6600 (cant remember exact model)
2x 1GB Crucial PC2-5300 RAM
same 2 HDD's he had before Maxtor 6Y120LO and a WDC 1600JB- 00READ (cant remember capacities off hand but think one is about 80GB and one 120GB)
same AKassa PSU 500W

physical install went fine - when I tried to boot the BIOS came up fine, detected the HDD's fine, but during boot it came up with the "boot drive not detected - insert boot drive and press any key" message.

I've checked the ide and power connectors. I have booted from an XP CD and checked all the data seems fine on the HDD's. Windows had to be reinstalled since there had been "major hadware changes" but this didn't fix the issue.

sorry if that doesn't make much sense writing this in a rush.

any ideas would be most welcome.

Cheers,

Dan

 

[Abarbarian]

In bios have you got HDD set as first boot device , or is it set as CD for first boot device . If you have the OS installed then HDD should be the first boot device .

 

[quaf_man_dan]

BIOS was originally set to Floppy then HDD for boot priority - I'd tried setting it to HDD first - but it still came up with the "boot drive not detected - insert boot drive and press any key" message - the only way I can get it booting easily just now is to have it set to CDROM first and use the windows CD.


OS is installed - XP Home

 

[muckshifter]

OK, problem num one is, you can't just stick an 'original' drive containing XP in a new PC and expect it to work ... 97% of the time you will need to do a clean install, especially with different motherboards.


Not clear here if that is what you did.


Most modern motherboard now support an F key function to set boot preferences without entering the BIOS ... my MSI M'board uses F11 while my Asus uses F8, a bit annoying as F8 is also used for Safe Mode.

I usually set/check the BIOS is set to boot from HD 1st before I even attach a HD, then use the above procedure to boot from different device as needed. Can even boot from a USB device.

I suggest you unplug the ribbon & power cables from all drives, floppy, CD/DVD & HDs, and reset the BIOS to boot from hard drive ... reboot the system and check that it is first trying to boot to HD, this is without a drive, so expect to see the same error.

Also test, or check the manual, that you can use a function key to access the boot priority.

Now re-attach all drives, press the relevant function key, if it goes correctly, you can then insert the XP CD and proceed with a clean install.

HTH