Curious boot problems on Windows 7

[Englander]

The issue started once I had finished tidying up the cables in my case and plugging everything back in. Everything was behaving as expected as I turned it on, it POSTed successfully. Then, it comes up with a line of text saying words to the effect of "Boot error, load system disk and press enter". Very annoying indeed. So I ran start up repair which managed to get me to the desktop and from there I told the C drive to do a Check Disk (my new SSD). I thought that would be the end of it but the problem persists. The SSD was booting flawlessly just this morning.

I decided the next course of action was a quick reinstall of Windows, but that didn't fix it either.

I have however come up with a fix... If I change boot disk priority to CD ROM first and HDD second, when I boot it will ask me "Press any key to boot from CD ROM". After it times out (about 5 seconds) it then goes on to boot from the C drive perfectly normally. So the only way for me to boot to desktop is to use this weird workaround.

Checkdisk found nothing wrong with the C drive and given that it can boot from the C drive if it tries to use the CD ROM first, we can rule out a dodgy SSD.

Does anyone have any suggestions about how I can go back to booting normally without having to wait for the "press any key" business to be over with?

Thanks,
Michael

[TAKTAK]

Does anyone have any suggestions about how I can go back to booting normally without having to wait for the "press any key" business to be over with?

Remove the bootable disc from the disc tray?

[golwg]

He did say that the only way he can get to boot into windows was by leaving the Win dvd in the pc and waiting for it to time out. Removing the dvd looks like it makes things worse!

Have you tried re-setting the bios? Or cmos?

[Englander]

He did say that the only way he can get to boot into windows was by leaving the Win dvd in the pc and waiting for it to time out. Removing the dvd looks like it makes things worse!

Have you tried re-setting the bios? Or cmos?

Just tried taking out the disk and it didn't like that at all. Went straight back to boot error.

Haven't tried resetting the CMOS, how does one go about doing that? I'll go and hunt down the latest BIOS now.

[TAKTAK]

try putting the HDD on a different SATA port on the mobo

[Englander]

Updated BIOS - no use (but thanks for making me get around to updating it anyway!)
Changed SATA port - problem solved!

Thanks everyone.

[golwg]

Great. Glad it is sorted.

Does it mean that the other sata port is faulty?

[Ulti]

I doubt it was faulty, more like it was perhaps a dodgy connection which prevented it from booting first hand. e.g. it may not have been plugged in correctly

[Englander]

I doubt it was faulty, more like it was perhaps a dodgy connection which prevented it from booting first hand. e.g. it may not have been plugged in correctly

The thing is that it had been plugged in days ago and the problem only arose this afternoon!

Still, it's all worked out for the better because my DVD drive and HDD are in SATA ports no. 1 and 2 but my SSD was in no. 6. Now I've moved the SSD to port no. 3 so I'm much happier

[kalniel]

I doubt it was faulty, more like it was perhaps a dodgy connection which prevented it from booting first hand. e.g. it may not have been plugged in correctly

I've seen exactly the same problem with some controllers interpretation of AHCI, which was fixed by either moving to a port controlled by a different chip, or better, switching to IDE.