New Rig Wont Boot

L

lohkie

n00b
Joined
Jul 13, 2004
Messages
57
All recourses result in "DISK BOOT FAILURE, PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

CD's wont prompt boot. (On either of a CD-Rom or DVD-RW)
USB boots wont boot, or hangs if no failure.
Boot from LAN properly attempts to boot, but fails expectedly.

I've done every combination of Boot options, and am seriously boggled.

I've even disconnected the hard drive to see if I could simply get the machine to boot on something, but there's no change whatsoever.

Reset the CMOS, nothing.

If it matters, in the BIOS, there is no evidence of an optical drive at all, but it'll show up on the POST, or something akin to it (if I hit tab to see the post it blips so fast it's impossible to see)

A professor of mine insists it's a MBR problem, but it persists without the HDD present.

If it matters the HDD is SATA, and it and the X-ROM are alone in their respective SATA/IDE connections.


If anyone has any ideas, it'd be awesome...

I can't find anything anywhere or from anyone.
 
Throw up some system specs so we know what you're working with.

Off the top of my head at 2am.

Floppy disks?
Unplug USB devices?
Unplug the optical drive.
Is there a boot-to option? Some Asus boards (probably all) allow you to hit F8 at POST to choose what you want to boot to.
 
Not entirely sure the mobo... Big huge Foxconn on it though

Pentium D 2.8, 2 GB ram, 200 GB SATA

No floppies to work with, unfortunately.
All USB are disconnected except when attempting USB boot.

I've tried reseating the opti drive, even changing it, but I need one of them at the least or I have nothing to boot from, except the USB which hasn't done anything yet... though that is one thing I haven't tried, disconnecting everything and just booting the usb.'

The only two prompts it gives during POST are Del ->BIOS and Tab -> POST (which just flashes for a split second, not long enough to hit pause.
 
I think the bios has to have a setting for USB boot, not sure if yours has it though. I don't want anything connected usb though when you try to boot. Not sure if you did that. Try disconnecting everything, HDD, Optical, no usb, and see what comes up.
 
It recognizes the ram per normal, finds no drives, finds no ide devices, otherwise boot is identical.

Removed all non-essential hardware components, repeat, no change.
 
Do you have another system you can try the hdd in?

Also, just curious how you went about resetting the bios.
 
1) Make sure the IDE controller is enabled and the BIOS detects the optical drive.
2) Try another optical drive.
3) Try another IDE cable.
4) Try another bootable CD

A) Does the BIOS detect the HDD?
B) What's on the HDD?
C) What CD are you trying to boot from?
D) Do you press a key when it asks "Press any key to boot from CD...", or does it not even ask?
 
BIOS reset was by removing the battery.

1) Boot process detects the opti drive, bios shows no record
2) Did, same result
3) -Working on it-
4) Did, no go.

A) Yes
B) -nothing what so ever-
C) Any of 3
D) This prompt never appears
 
Which 3 bootable CDs? Did you try a Linux Live CD?

Its looking like your IDE controller. Those optical drives are IDE, right?
 
If it doesnt detect any drives, its certainly abnormal behaviour.

Its possible a faulty PSU (ie noisy or bad 5V) could make your drives misbehave so see if you can borrow another to test with.
This might affect your USB controllers depending if they are powered by 12V or 5V.

Borrow a floppy drive and if it does work, try blowing the latest motherboard BIOS.
As the machine is in a bad way, a BIOS flash might fail which could render the motherboard dead so make this your last option.

Other than that, its looking like a faulty motherboard.
 
Yeah I'm leaning toward faulty MOBO.

Retailer says it works fine, but new developement.

HDD has Windows XP installed on it, no change in boot behavior.

Both "Failsafe" and "Optimized" settings fail.
 
is the HDD IDE or serial? If IDE, make sure the jumpers are set right. If its IDE, make sure its enabled in the BIOS.
 
Serial.

All serial related things are Enabled or Auto.

The BIOS detects it both manually and automatically as Channel 1 Master in BIOS, Channel 2 Master in all on screen text walls.

Also now that I look at it, boot priority references "Ch0 M. ST3200B20AS" as the primary boot disk if in SATA mode.

So, basically, the POST/Boot and BIOS have three different references to the same drive between them.

In enhanced mode, the reference is Ch2 M., while it's still a Channel 1 Master
 
Also update, the system I Installed XP on now can't boot and has two boot options.
 
Update

Will boot from startup floppy disk.

Going to attempt to boot CD from DOS...

Failed, can't change to opti drive
 
Anyone have drivers for Samsung SH-S182 DVD Burner?

It seems to be my final glitch to overcome
 
OK, I managed to run the windows setup disks, but it claims it can't find a CD-ROM

The POST or something like it lists the CD/DVD ROM as Drive 0....

Any takers? :(
 
Last and easiest thing I tried worked.

Moved the CD-ROM IDE cable from the one it was in to the blue one... insta fix
 
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