initial boot problem

[Robin Imrie]

Hi,

I have created an image for my device and uploaded it to the hard disk (80Gb
SATA) using a USB-SATA adapter. I created the partition, formatted it
((NTFS), made it active using mydevelopent machine and copied the image to
the hard disk.

When i put the hard disk back in to the unit it boot and i end up getting a
flashing cursor in the top left corner of the screen. I did notice on a
previous attempt at booting the unit I got a boot failure message when the
partition was not made active.

Anyone got any ideas?

Many thanks

Robin

 

[Cornflower]

Is the machine you used to format the partition running Vista or XP? If
Vista, then you will need to change the file NTLDR on the root of the drive
to BOOTMGR. I doubt that is your problem though, because you would get an
error message claiming "no OS is installed on the boot device" if the code in
the boot sector couldn't find the loader.
You might try this:
Go into diskpart.exe and use these commands to recreate your partition:

list disk
select disk 1 (or whatever disk you want to play with. Get this wrong and
you will be unhappy)
list part
select part 1
delete part 1
create partition primary
select partition 1
active
format fs=fat32 (or whatever filesystem you want)
assign
exit

Then recopy the image to the disk and try again.

 

[Robin Imrie]

Thanks for that i will give it a go.

To make matters more interesting the boot drive was a SATA device hosted by
a silicon image SATA controler wich could run in SATA for raid mode.(it was
set to run in SATA mode). The drivers for this controler were included in
the image.

When I replaced the drive with an PATA one i had no problems getting the
machine to boot. Had the machine booting XP Pro off the SATA drive at one
point too!

Its still a mystery to me though.

Robin