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SATA drive error, can't even boot setup menu in BIOS

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by sean_hendrickson

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I'm having problems after trying to create a dual-boot on my SATA drive, that is having Vista, and adding XP. So after creating an XP partition, the computer will boot into the auto-detecting BIOS screen and freeze up. I cannot even enter the setup in BIOS or boot menu to change my boot device. I uninstalled the drive and changed my boot devices, but it still freezes up after reinstalling the SATA drive. I know the hard drive is causing the boot problem. Temporarily I have installed XP on a small IDE hard drive for now. If I could, I would try to delete the XP partition on the SATA and repair Vista, but I can't get past the frozen BIOS screen even if the IDE drive is the 1st boot device. How safe is it to plug in the SATA hard drive after booting into Windows? Would Windows even detect it for the purposes of deleting a partition? Any other ideas? I know I messed probably messed up creating the dual boot, I won't try it again. I'm not concerned about saving data, I already backed it up, I just don't want to shell out another 120 dollars for a new hard drive.

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by Former member

DO NOT CONNECT ANY HARDWARE TO YOUR COMPUTER WHILE IT IS ON (unless it is external). I would update the bios if possible. Is this a new motherboard?. If you have updated the bios then you can revert it back to default by the jumper pins on your motherboard please look at your manual for the jumper and go step by step with this. Please have a wrist strap on other wise you will/could kill off your memory as well as your processor. After you have done this go into the bios and select your ide drive as the bootup drive. If you can download the sata raid drives from your motherboard manufacture. Install the sata raid drivers and hopefully you should have access to your sata harddrive. You might have to log into the bios to set up the sata raid.

by sean_hendrickson

Resetting cmos and updating BIOS didn't work. While I waited for a reply, I decided that if I didn't give connecting hard drive after boot a go, it would be a dead drive anyway. So I decided to risk killing it for good. The risk seems to have paid off. Partition Magic said the partitions were bad(I was expecting that). I deleted them, but I did manage to save what little data was on the drive before doing so. Using just one partition only, I reloaded Vista. I scanned the hard drive for errors and none were found. Operating normally. May not have been the wisest move, but I've got the drive back in working order. Now dual-booting with two different drives. Don't know why I didn't do that before, it is MUCH safer to do it on two different drives.

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