MBR problem

[Billiam411]

Ok first heres my situation: (ALL of my hard drives are WD)
I've got my main computer, with a 120Gb Caviar booting Windows XP, and a 160Gb Caviar used for backup.
I've also got my webserver, with a 74Gb booting xp pro, and an even older 20Gb protege booting linux.

I just purchased an external drive enclosure, and wished to put my 74 in there. I decided, that since i never use linux on the server anymore, and that the 74 is using less then 20Gb of space, that i'll just move the partition over onto the 20 (after formatting of course) and reformat the 74 and i'll be good to go. wrong.
I first formatted the 20, with the linux on it. Only after that did i realize that the boot loader is ON that drive. I try and boot up xp pro with only the 74 installed, and i get a screen like this:
L 01 01 01 01 etc going all the way across the screen, and half way down the screen. After trying several attempts at getting this to work, i now get something to the effect of 'please insert a bootable diskette in A:' when i try and boot to my hard drive. I kindof gave up on saving the server's partition, and decided it would be easier for my just to reformat both drives and save me the trouble (i have my server data backed up on my 160). So i put the 74 on hold for a while, and go about installing xp pro on the 20Gb drive. I put the dell install disk in (its a dell computer) and i get the same 'please insert....'. I'm thinking, okkk so i try my xp home cd (retail, for my main computer) and it boots to it just fine. I go about setting xp home up, hoping that i'll be able to upgrade to dell's pro once this is over with, and after initially copying the setup files to the hard drive, it restarts, and when booting to the harddrive, i again get the same 'please....' This is starting to Piss me off, so i decide to wipe the entire drive clean with datalifeguard, writing zeros begining to end. after that i do the long scan (dont remember exact name) also in DL and it passes just fine. I go about the xp pro cd, and i have the same problem. Just for the heck of it, i put the 74 back in, since i havent formatted it yet, same problem 'please insert a bootable diskette into A:'
I'm somehow thinking that this has to do with the master boot records?
I've checked, and changed jumper settings, so i dont think thats an issue. on the server pc at the moment i've got the 20Gb drive on Primary Master, and just a cd burner on Secondary Master, nothing else. I've tried resetting the cmos but that didnt help. I think its giving symptoms of a dead drive, but the problem with that is that when installed in the external enclosure, all of the data, from both drives, show up fine, and can read/write normally.

This has me stumpted so i'm coming to you guys.
please help, thanks
Billiam

[unhappy_mage]

L 01 01 01 etc sounds like that traditional LILO problem - plugged the disk in somewhere it wasn't expecting to be. Was it originally on a different port, or on a machine where SATA is emulated into IDE? Move it to a different port, or do a "repair install" and just install LILO. That should fix the problem.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/150072.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&tm=33&id=150072)http://www.hardfolding.com/utag.php/mem/1392.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=36&id=1392)

[Billiam411]

i just tried that and it didnt work. it doesnt seem to be a software problem, i dont think. It just wont boot to the hard drive. Would putting it on a different ide channel make a difference? I'll try that now

[Billiam411]

ok when i put them both on primary (hdd on master, odd on slave) I can boot to WD's data lifeguard cd and perform it's functions, but i still cant boot to the xp pro cd.
However, when i switched the ide cables around from what they originally were, when i try and boot to the xp pro cd, i get:
cdboot: cannot boot from cd code 4

Does anyone know what this means?

[Billiam411]

anyone?

[Billiam411]

ok this seems really weird because when setting up after originally booting to the xp cd (i'm trying it right now with server 2003 as well), it recognizes the drive just fine, and formats it like normal. It also copies the files over completely normal. the problem comes to when i want to boot to the harddrive, the computer doesnt recognize the drive at all. It also recognizes the drive in the BIOS, but for some reason it wont boot to it. Might the IDE controller be dead? I dont have access to a spare PCI one if it is. Or is the drive itself just unable to boot to. Is this the result of a corrupted Master Boot Record or something?


when i put the drive into my external enclosure all of the setup files are present, so i know that the drive is able to be read and written to, just not booted from. this is very confusing.

[Bones]

Could be a drive controller issue. The first thing to check, though, is that the bootable flag is set for the partition you want to boot. Use fdisk from a linux livecd like knoppix. Since the external enclosure seems to work, keep using it for troubleshooting the disks.

If you really want to rule out the MBR being the problem (it probably isn't), boot a livecd and plug in that external enclosure. I recommend checking that none of the drive's partitions got mounted, then run this command in a terminal as root:

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/whateveryourenclosureis bs=1b count=1

This will blow away the MBR on that disk.

[Billiam411]

ok i came upon a known good drive, popped it in, formatted it and copied the windows setup files over, but the same thing happened when trying to boot to the drive. So i know that this is the controller thats dead. What should i do from here? Does anyone know of any good PCI ide controllers? budget is most important here, and since the drives are only like 5400rpm or whatever, performance isnt THAT important, plus i almost never use this computer.

Oh yeah, does this mean both primary and secondary are dead? Im gonna try putting both the odd and hdd on the secondary and see what happens.