how can BIOS boot priority settings change all by itself??

[Linea Recta]

That did involve physically moving the machine,
so the cable question might still be relevant,
even if the cables do feel solid. Maybe they
just feel solid but arent electrically solid.

Or maybe you have an intermittent short to case
that sees the physical movement of the system
cause a problem. How is the motherboard
mounted in the case ?

Afraid I can't check that at the moment, I don't have the PC in my place
anymore.



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[Linea Recta]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:55:47 +0200, "Linea Recta"

[snip]

Until today I had the illusion that the BIOS settings were stricktly
personal (optionally protected by passwords) to prevent people from
tampering aroud with them. But what's the use of the whole idea if things
can change spontaneously??

How is the battery? The settings might have been lost because of
a flat battery.

Bit errors can happen, too, as with any storage medium.

The battery should be fine. I mounted a new one about 4 months ago. That
should be recently enough?



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[Linea Recta]

That's an excellent question, but from the OP (quoted above), we have

"Problem is this: I did all settings in the BIOS, SAVED them before
exiting the BIOS and the PC boots fine."

But I can't recall ever seeing a SAVE button in a one-time boot screen,
which makes it sound like Linea Recta knew which screen he was looking
at. Not to mention the reference to "all settings"...

"Exit and save" after which the computer reboots.




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[Linea Recta]

Hi, Linea.


It has been years since I retired my last IDE drive - and several more
years since I added my first SATA drive to my formerly IDE-only system.
But, as I recall, many mobos, including the one I was using then, default
to always boot from SATA - and it took some magic incantations to bet it
to boot from SATA if there was an IDE drive in the mix. It was a real
hassle as long as I had both types of drives running at the same time.

I just did a search for "mix ide and sata drives boot order" and got
several hits. You might study some of those - and read the documentation
for your mobo/BIOS carefully to see if this might be your problem.

Surely BIOS writers have corrected this all-too-common problem by now!

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2012 (Build 16.4.3528.0331) in Win8.1 Pro with Media
Center

Will do, thanks.



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[Linea Recta]

Hi, Mark.

I should have included a couple of specific hits that discuss mixing IDE
and SATA drives. But it looks like they all are at least several years
old. That was the era when I was making my moves from SCSI to IDE to SATA,
so reading those messages bring back memories of problems that I haven't
had to deal with for 5 years or more - nearly as long as since I abandoned
WinXP. My only mobo now is an MSI 990FXA-GD80, installed in December 2012.
It doesn't have either FDD or IDE ports at all.

As I used to say, I'm a one-man one-computer kind of guy (plus a netbook),

That's two...

so my experience is deep (my fingerprints are all over the parts inside my
computer case)

LOL


but not wide, since I don't work on other computers, never tried an Apple
or Linux, etc.

The same goes for me I guess.

I try to keep my computer NEAR the State-of-Art. While I remember lots of
things back to my first TRS-80 in December 1977, and much of what I
learned then is still true today, lots of things have changed!

The system I mentiond is also quite old as you can estimate. It was the
transition period from IDE interface to SATA (II) so the MB supports both
interfaces. I consider this an advantage, because I can keep using my old
IDE drives as well as adding newly bought SATA drives without having to
start from scratch buying a brand new modern system.

One of the hits that I found suggested disconnecting all your IDE drives
until you've successfully installed WinXP and configured your SATA drives,

I found that out the hard way last week. After installing Windows XP the
system drive seemed to have some other drive letter than C:. After searching
on line I concluded there was no quick fix for this and I had to do the
install all over, with the other hard drive (IDE) temprarily disconnected.

But, as I recall, when I did that, it worked only until I connected my IDE
drive again. And that's the critical part that I cannot now recall: How
did I get the BIOS to NOT let the IDE drives crowd ahead of SATA. Today's
BIOS lets us do that, but the 2009-era BIOS that your ASUS came with
probably did not.

So, what is the date of your mobo BIOS? Can you download a newer one that
lets you boot from SATA even when an IDE drive is connected?

I already checked that out, it has the latest BIOS version, except for a
beta version. And I don't dare use that.





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[Wildman]

I found that out the hard way last week. After installing Windows XP
the system drive seemed to have some other drive letter than C:.
After searching on line I concluded there was no quick fix for this
and I had to do the install all over, with the other hard drive (IDE)
temprarily disconnected.

The same thing happened to me a few years ago. I install XP
on an SATA drive and later added an IDE drive. When I started
XP the added IDE drive was C: and the SATA drive was D:. It
did boot ok however. The BIOS boot order did not change. I
believe I would look closely into the possibility of malware.

BTW I fixed the drive letter problem without reinstalling. I
temporarily changed the drive letter for the IDE (C drive to
Z: to free up the drive letter C:. Then changed the SATA (D
drive to C:. Lastly I again changed the IDE (Z drive to D:.
After rebooting, the drive letters stayed put.

How to change drive letters in XP...
Start-->Settings-->Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->
Computer Management-->Storage-->Disk Management
Right-Click Drive-->Change Drive Letter-->Change

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

"Exit and save" after which the computer reboots.

In the one-time boot screen? That's a surprise to me.

If I tried to see that now, I'd lose this reply, so I'll wait a while

 

[Linea Recta]

The same thing happened to me a few years ago. I install XP
on an SATA drive and later added an IDE drive. When I started
XP the added IDE drive was C: and the SATA drive was D:. It
did boot ok however. The BIOS boot order did not change. I
believe I would look closely into the possibility of malware.

BTW I fixed the drive letter problem without reinstalling. I
temporarily changed the drive letter for the IDE (C drive to
Z: to free up the drive letter C:. Then changed the SATA (D
drive to C:. Lastly I again changed the IDE (Z drive to D:.
After rebooting, the drive letters stayed put.

How to change drive letters in XP...
Start-->Settings-->Control Panel-->Administrative Tools-->
Computer Management-->Storage-->Disk Management
Right-Click Drive-->Change Drive Letter-->Change

That's very strange! Of course I tried that approach at first. But I got a
message that the letter was a Windows (XP) system drive which could not be
changed.




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[Linea Recta]

In the one-time boot screen? That's a surprise to me.

No, before leaving the BIOS setup.
BTW I'm planning to make photo's with my cellphone of all BIOS settings when
I'm over there again.



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[Wildman]

That's very strange! Of course I tried that approach at first. But I
got a message that the letter was a Windows (XP) system drive which
could not be changed.

That is strange indeed. The only thing I can think of is maybe
it was a permissions issue. Logged in as Administrator?

 

[Rod Speed]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:55:47 +0200, "Linea Recta"

[snip]

Until today I had the illusion that the BIOS settings were stricktly
personal (optionally protected by passwords) to prevent people from
tampering aroud with them. But what's the use of the whole idea if things
can change spontaneously??

How is the battery? The settings might have been lost because of
a flat battery.

Bit errors can happen, too, as with any storage medium.

The battery should be fine. I mounted a new one about 4 months ago. That
should be recently enough?

Should be, but I have found some of the cheapest coin
cells are pretty poor quality so its possible you put in
one of those.

 

[Wildman]

Hi, Wildman - and Mark.

Remember that "drive" means a partition (aka volume), not the full
physical disk. Windows refers to a disk by number, not by letter.
In the lower part of Disk Management's display, you should see Disk
0, divided into Drives C:, D:, etc. Disk 1 should show similar
lettered "drives". Optical discs, thumb drives, network drives,
etc., are also numbered and may - although they seldom are - be
partitioned into multiple "drives".

Yes, that is true. Windows assigns a number to the drive and
a letter to the partition(s).

I'm not sure exactly how Disk numbers are assigned, but this happens
during the "enumeration" phase of startup - before Windows even
starts to load. The BIOS handles this, at least partly by detecting
the hardware - not the software - that is on the motherboard and what
is connected at startup to each hardware connector. That's why we
can change the Disk number by swapping the disk end of the SATA cable
to a different onboard SATA connector, or by swapping disks on the
IDE cable(s). So far as I know, we can't change disk numbers from
the keyboard.

The BIOS does assign a number to drives but that has nothing
to do with Windows drive numbers. I'm not sure about the
order the BIOS uses but if you have a floppy drive, it will
be assigned drive 0 and the first hard drive will be drive
128 or 80 in hex.

As least up to XP, Windows assigns drive numbers starting with
the primary drive on the first IDE channel. That drive will be
Disk0. The secondary will be Disk1. If it exists, the second
IDE channel would be Disk2 and Disk3. Then any drives that are
connected to SATA ports will be assigned next starting with the
first port.

Then Windows first will assign drive letters to all the primary
partitions of all the drives starting with Disk0. The first
drive letter will of course be C:. Then it will start back again
with Disk0 assigning drive letters to all extended partitions.
All extended partition on Disk0 will be assigned before going to
Disk1, etc. CD/DVD drives will be assigned next and USB devices
will be last.

At least, that is my understanding; I've never studied computer
science or even electronics and I'm not a techie of any kind. As
Paul Harvey used to say, "Don't ask me for details; I've already told
you more than I know."

And that is, "The rest of the story".

 

[Linea Recta]

On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:55:47 +0200, "Linea Recta"

[snip]

Until today I had the illusion that the BIOS settings were stricktly
personal (optionally protected by passwords) to prevent people from
tampering aroud with them. But what's the use of the whole idea if
things
can change spontaneously??

How is the battery? The settings might have been lost because of
a flat battery.

Bit errors can happen, too, as with any storage medium.

The battery should be fine. I mounted a new one about 4 months ago. That
should be recently enough?

Should be, but I have found some of the cheapest coin
cells are pretty poor quality so its possible you put in
one of those.

I used a Duracel costing me 4 Euros. Is that expensive enough?



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[Gene E. Bloch]

No, before leaving the BIOS setup.
BTW I'm planning to make photo's with my cellphone of all BIOS settings when
I'm over there again.

OK, I originally thought you were referring to my last paragraph about
the one-time boot screen.

Now I see you were affirming that you were in the BIOS settings.

I can be slow to catch on...

 

[Rod Speed]

"Gene Wirchenko" <[email protected]> schreef in bericht
On Mon, 22 Sep 2014 19:55:47 +0200, "Linea Recta"

[snip]

Until today I had the illusion that the BIOS settings were stricktly
personal (optionally protected by passwords) to prevent people from
tampering aroud with them. But what's the use of the whole idea if
things
can change spontaneously??

How is the battery? The settings might have been lost because of
a flat battery.

Bit errors can happen, too, as with any storage medium.



The battery should be fine. I mounted a new one about 4 months ago. That
should be recently enough?

Should be, but I have found some of the cheapest coin
cells are pretty poor quality so its possible you put in
one of those.

I used a Duracel

Those are usually fine assuming it wasn't a fake.

costing me 4 Euros. Is that expensive enough?

Should be.