Help, Dual P4 rig wont boot without removable hard disk

JimboraeJimborae Newbury, Berks, UK New
edited September 2003 in Hardware
Help, Dual P4 rig wont boot without removable hard disk.

This is a work pc that should boot off the scsi op system hard disk. But once a removable hard drive has been added & then removed it will no longer boot up off the scsi controller. It errors saying no operating system present. i.e. its trying to boot off the removeable drive even though in the bios settings its set for booting of the scsi drive.

Anybody got any ideas, also while i'm competent with normal non scsi systems, scsi & removeable hard drives are new to me so please keep things simple.

Also please dont ask me for detailed system specs as I didn't build it so I dont know the motherboard make. All I can tell you is that its a HP Workstation XW8000, running windows XP pro.

The bios boot options are limited. Surprisingly there is no option to boot first from scsi. All the boot options are in a list called boot order. From there you place to top of the list the order in which you wish to boot whether it be on scsi controller or ide.

In this case the order is :

Fujitsu 36gb scsi (OpSystem disk)
Seagate 137gb scsi
Seagate 137gb scsi
Seagate 137gb scsi
Seagate 137gb scsi
CdRom
Network
Maxtor 251gb (this is the removeable drive)

The wierd thing is that when the removable hard drive is out & it wont boot, the Fujitsu drive disappears from the boot list but is still detected in the bios boot up sequence.

Wierd nes pas??

Thanks


Jim

Comments

  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited September 2003
    If the OS was installed with the removable disk in place it put the 5 or 6 boot files onto the removable drive. Make sure folder options are set to show hidden and system files and you will see them sitting on the removable is my bet with what little you can post here. You can install the OS anywhere but depending on the boot optionbs it putrs those 5 files needed to boot on the first drive available. Same deal if you stick a normal IDE on teh IDE headers and install the OS to a raided drive on the HPT's. The five boot files sit on the ide not teh HPT even though its supposed to be the boot drive and is setup that way in the bios etc.. You gotta install without teh ide and plug it in after the install.

    Depending on the OS you can probably fix it from recovery console or by doing a repair install with the removable disk OUT.

    Tex
  • JimboraeJimborae Newbury, Berks, UK New
    edited September 2003
    Hi Tex,

    Thanx for the reply but I can confirm that the os was installed without the removeable hard drive in place.

    I think theres some sort of conflict or option I'm missing in the bios.

    If you clear the cmos without the ide removeable hard drive in place it'll boot fine. Stick the romoveable hard drive in it'll still boot fine. Shut down & then remove the hard drive then reboot and it cant find the os.

    Does that make sense?

    Regards


    Jim
  • TexTex Dallas/Ft. Worth
    edited September 2003
    Who made this MB? Have you looked for a bios update?

    Tex
  • JimboraeJimborae Newbury, Berks, UK New
    edited September 2003
    The motherboard is an Tyan s2663 which I think was made for HP as its not listed on Tyans site. I've already flashed the bios to the latest version on the HP site, no change I'm afraid.

    Regards

    Jim
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