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harddrive start up problem

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by baxt76

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I have rebuilt my computer, reloaded windows all well and good, I then re connected the other two hard drives I have one for music, one for films ect...
after resarting the system I am receiving an IDE boot system error load cd, I've checked the jumpers allthough I haven't changed anything from taking them from old pc.
Why wont it boot from the drive I've loaded and haven't un pluged since?
Have I missed something or am I just over loading the power supply or something as simple?

18 replies

by peconet tietokoneet

Somewhere along the way something is missing. If you give us more details then we can help more. I:E, what kind of connectors are your hdd's (SATA or IDE, or both). Make of motherboard, ASUS, Gigabyte etc. Power supply, make and wattage. Memory, 2gb, 4gb etc. Operating system, XP, Vista etc etc.

by baxt76

My PC has; Intel pentium 4 2033MHz (20x102), 502MB (PC2100 DDR SDRAM) (soon to upgraded), Maxtor 40GB ATA HD (running the OS), Combo ATA CD drive, 350w power supply.
The other 2 HD's are 160GB & 250GB (currently not connected), cant tell the make without pulling my system apart again, all connections are IDE. There's a multi card reader and a bottom range PCI sound card. The OS is Vista Media Center SP1 with DirectX 9.0c. The thing I dont get is that all this worked on my old motherboard which was an AOpen 1800+ with a 300w power supply, the only thing different is the upgrade from XP to Vista larger power supply and because the old power supply wasnt big enough to cope the introduction of the multi card reader. All the jumpers are set correctly (they came from my old PC and I havent changed anything), leads are connected etc... everything works perfectly until I connect the 2 HD's then it wont boot, it just asks for the system disc. The only thing I can think of is the change of OS, but surly that shouldnt be an issue changing within Microsoft OS's, all formatting done previously would work on either?

by oh smeg

Not necessarily. It depends on which version of XP was used and how old it was. What is more important here is the SP level of the Original Install. For instance Partitions Formatted with XP Original will not be read by Vista as the Security protocols are different but Partitions Formatted with XP SP2 will be read by Vista.

Not sure about SP1 for XP if that will allow Vista to read the Drives but I don't think so.

by willcomp

Card reader may the the fly in the ointment. What drive letter is assigned to the Vista drive? Was card reader connected when Vista was installed?

If Vista is installed on drive H: or I: or such, disconnect card reader and reinstall Vista. Then connect hard disks one at time -- with card reader still disconnected.

Also check jumper settings on hard disks and verify that Vista (boot) disk is connected as primary master. Please don't respond with they worked before so they are still OK.

by thechas

My first suspect is that your boot drive is NOT connected as the Master drive on the primary IDE interface.

You may be able to correct this by entering BIOS setup and changing the boot order to make the drive you have your OS installed on the boot drive.

Or, you may need to change which drive is connected to which interface.

You also might have knocked a cable loose when installing the other drives.

As to your power supply, if it was working before, it should still work. "IF" you did not add or change any hardware.

Depending on your system configuration, a good 500 watt supply should be more than enough for your system.

Chas

by oh smeg

If it is a SATA Drive when you connected the IDE Leads you changed the Boot order to the Primary Master IDE then the SATA. As the hardware looks at the Primary Master first always and is not finding any files to boot with it is spitting up the Error message.

You may be able to change this in the BIOS but may be not depending on who made the M'Board and it's Model. If you can not change this in the BIOS you'll need to install the OS again but this time with the Primary Master connected so that the initial Boot up files get written to it instead of the SATA Drive.

Col

by sraghu1329

hi guys

atlast am able to solve this. i changed bios settings to IDE .now i installed xp in one drive and windows 7 in another drive

thanks a lot

raghunathan

by snuffy09

What HD is it set to boot from first?

Maybe set the Bios back to default settings and reconfigure?

by rob miners

were originally in the old PC. Where did the drive that you just installed the Operating System come from. Are the jumper settings on the Music and Films drives set as Slave?

by baxt76

I cant actually remember wether I formatted before I loaded my XP sp2 or after.
Either way the system wont boot with the HDD's pluged in, so I cant even format them again.

by larry.foote

When using multiple drive in a system each eide drive must be correctly jumpered. example on EIDE port one the primary or first drive must be set as the master and the second drive set as a slave. If you did not change jumer settings on the drives from the other system this could be part of your problem. also check the settings in your BIOS

by baxt76

I'm not ruling out the card reader its never been used til now, could be faulty.
Some thing I did think about was the security settings I set up on the previous system, you dont think I'v actually locked myself out by upgrading the OS, they were set with special permisions for each user and only the admin could alter the contents.

by willcomp

According to your question, there's a boot error with drives connected. That occurs prior to XP loading and has nothing to do with any XP security settings.

by baxt76

Does that mean I dont need to worry about the security settings from the previous install?

So if the jumpers are set right, BIOS config is all correct, drives in right order on IDE cables and (if they were config'd on XP sp2), why wont the bloody thing boot :-) ?
My apologies for the figure of speech.

I havent had chance to disconnect the card reader yet (kids), thats my mission this week.

by i.med1

an old pc,that's mean differents motherboard:the old harddrive,no formated,will not be reconized by the new configuraton.
Burn music on another support and formate the old hd.

by baxt76

Turned out to be a corrupt HDD, I unplugged all drives (including CD drives), card readers and slowly connected each one individually. When I connected one of the HDD's the system showed the error msg. I loaded into another tower unit and got the same prob so I set the jumpers to master and tried to load the OS onto it. I then ended up with a blue screen telling me the drive was corrupt, its now retiring in the metal recycling :-(

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