Strange Vista problem

RMF

I had to reinstall Vista on my desktop today after experiencing some issues.

Everything seemed to go well, got everything installed and up and running, went into my bios and changed the boot priority back to boot first from the HDD and saved it.

System reboots and I get an error that the bootmanager cannot be located or something along those lines. I reboot same error.

I then went back into the bios and set it to boot from CD, but instead of pressing any key to boot from CD I let it run and the system boots up fine. I can remember thinking how weird that was and then I forgot all about it.

I have since then proceeded to reinstall all of my other applications, changed the bios back to boot from HDD first and I'm met with the same error again. The PC will absolutely not boot unless the Windows DVD is in the drive...even though it's not doing anything.

What the hell could be the problem? Please help!

kryyst

Do you have your jumpers set correctly on your drives?

RMF

Yep my jumpers are all fine. This sytem has been working without issue up until now with the same hardware and version of Vista.

I actually just did another little test and took the Vista DVD out, and put my XP CD in and if you leave it it boots up fine. Without a bootable disc in the drive it's like it doesn't even try to look for the HDD at all.

EDIT: Maybe this is worth mentioning, but the reason for the re-install was that sometimes my DVD-RW would disspear, rebooting would solve the issue. Sometimes it would be my secondary HDD that would dissapear from in my computer but a reboot would always bring them back.

Your-Amish-Daddy

Sounds like the board's controller is flaking out.

CB

If it only boots when the Windows CD is in the drive, and set to boot from it, then you might be missing some needed boot files, which the computer is drawing from the CD when it boots. If it was a jumper or controller problem, then it wouldn't matter if the Windows CD was in the drive when you try to boot up.

Kentigern

Have a look here might help
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927391/en-us

RMF

CB Droege wrote:

If it only boots when the Windows CD is in the drive, and set to boot from it, then you might be missing some needed boot files, which the computer is drawing from the CD when it boots. If it was a jumper or controller problem, then it wouldn't matter if the Windows CD was in the drive when you try to boot up.

Problem is, that it boots reggardless of which bootable CD or DVD is in the drive. It doesn't have to be Vista.

I'm at work now so I can't do anything until later but I'll try repair install and see where that gets me.

Kentigern

What happens if you disconnect the dvd drive ?

RMF

Kentigern wrote:

What happens if you disconnect the dvd drive ?

It doesn't boot.

Same error.

RMF

Repair install did not help. The system simply will not boot unless the bios is set to boot from cd and I have a bootable disc in the drive.

EDIT: I've not taken the IDE DVDRW drive out that I was using and my secondary drive is not connected. I only have my Primary sATA drive connected and a SATA DVD RW drive. It made no difference at all.

Motherboard M2N-SLI deluxe
AMD 64 5400+
WD Raptor 150 GB
LG DVDRW

Would it be worth clearing the CMOS to see if it makes any difference?

RMF

Problem solved. The fact that I had a primary IDE HDD and a SATA HDD connected seems to have been confusing Vista. Now that I have reinstalled with only 1 HDD connected it all worked fine.

Thanks anyway guys.