• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Help! Updated BIOS, no boot!

J

jaykeMURD

n00b
Joined
Jun 25, 2007
Messages
19
Ok, so I just updated my BIOS, as a first step towards OCing. Used the most recent offical DFI BIOS and updated using the WinFlash Utility. Everything seemed to go fine during update. Restarted computer and got stuck at the initial load screen with this:

BOOT FROM CD:
DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND HIT ENTER.

OK, fine the BIOS update didn't work. I don't know what the flip happened.
So before I go in and do a system restore, I enter the BIOS Utility (del) and check my boot sequence. After 2 hours now, I done every boot sequence possible, all ending with the same dang error as before. So that's obviously not the problem.

So now I go to run the System Recovery using my XP CD and it loads up fine. Begins the process, asks which HDD/volume to restore/load and now I'm stuck.

I choose the appropriate HDD, but when I do I'm promted to enter an Administator Password.

W-T-F!?

I haven't made any kind of admin password any time on this system! Regardless, I've tried any possible passwords, all to no avail.

I've also tried resetting the CMOS manually, which did nothing. I also used the CMOS Reloaded utility in the BIOS setup, which also did nothing!

I really need some help.

I just want my computer back! What do I do!

Thanks!
 
Try this:

Boot off the XP CD, choose Recovery Console at the first menu (R). When it asks for the password, press Enter. By the way System Recovery and Recovery Console are two entirely different things and aren't related to one another.

Continuing on...

If you got past the password request by pressing Enter that's because no Admin password was set during the installation. Unless you specifically choose one during the installation, the Admin password doesn't exist so just press Enter. If there is a real password on it, you're a bit screwed so I'll continue on as if it worked and you're looking at the C:\Windows prompt or something similar.

At the prompt type the following two commands in this sequence:

fixmbr (and then press Enter)
Press y for Yes and press Enter again.

fixboot (and then press Enter)
Press y for Yes and press Enter again.

Type exit (and then press Enter) to reboot immediately, and remove the CD from the drive.

That should restore your ability to boot Windows. If it doesn't then there's a lot more going on than you stated, or perhaps you're just not explaining it correctly. Could be both, or some oddball combination of events and circumstances, who knows.

Hope this helps...
 
Ok bbz_Ghost I just tried what you recomended and when I exit the command promt and restart, the exact same error occurs.
 
Did you take the CD out of the drive?

Do you have more than 1 hard drive and did you restore the proper boot order?

Did you ensure the ATA and SATA controllers are both enabled as required?

Did you set the SATA controller to ATA or SATA or even ACHI mode, or RAID mode if necessary?

You have to realize when you did the BIOS update everything was returned to absolute factory defaults, which means most SATA/ACHI controllers for hard drives are disabled and need to be re-enabled. Also, the boot order is probably well outta whack with all the stuff you've been attempting.

If worse comes to absolute worst, then you can do a Repair installation of XP on top of itself (not a System Restore which won't reset the boot.ini file and other variables as well as redo the boot loader properly) so that's not really an option (the System Restore idea).

Repair Installation is basically XP being installed on top of itself to fix many issues including the loss of being able to reboot the PC as you're having.

If anyone else has advice, go for it.
 
bbz_Ghost said:
Did you take the CD out of the drive?

Do you have more than 1 hard drive and did you restore the proper boot order?

Did you ensure the ATA and SATA controllers are both enabled as required?

Did you set the SATA controller to ATA or SATA or even ACHI mode, or RAID mode if necessary?
Click to expand...

Yes
Yes, 2 SATAII hard drives
Yes, all controllers are enabled
No. I don't even see an option to do that in my BIOS. Unless I'm misunderstanding the question.


Now I'm thinking I may have "restored" the wrong drive....I'm trying the other drive now.

Thank you very much for your help so far.
 
I think that when you updated your bios the sata naming scheme changed completely

so by the time you rebooted your PC was expecting a bootable sector at your 1st SATA driver which now is not what you were expecting

my suggestion is to try and reconfigure your SATA drives so you have your OS drive listed as SATA number 1
 
EvilNando said:
I think that when you updated your bios the sata naming scheme changed completely

so by the time you rebooted your PC was expecting a bootable sector at your 1st SATA driver which now is not what you were expecting

my suggestion is to try and reconfigure your SATA drives so you have your OS drive listed as SATA number 1
Click to expand...

EvilNando, you solved my problem!
I had a feeling it was something simple I was overlooking.
LOL
I just switched around my SATA cables and now everything is good!

Thanks so much!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top