New computer build problems. Wise guru sought...

Have just built a new computer, but am having a bit of a major headache getting Windows installed so the machine will boot: The setup is:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum board
FX-53

Floppy drive connected to FDD port
160GB PATA HD connected to IDE1
80GB SATA HD connested to SATA1
CDRW connected to IDE2 (master)

What I want is Windows to boot from the SATA drive, and have the PATA drive as an additional storage drive (documents etc).

I have installed Win2K onto the SATA drive, and the machine boots to that perfectly when the 160GB drive is not connected. The moment the 160GB drive is, I get a No Boot drive detected error.

So I disconnected the SATA, and installed Win2K onto the 160GB drive, then rebooted. Still get the same error. :angst:

Can anyone step in and point out what I am doing wrong?

Also is the 160GB drive supposed to be a MASTER or SLAVE. I expect it to be master as it is the only thing on that IDE channel.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vk2003

Have just built a new computer, but am having a bit of a major headache getting Windows installed so the machine will boot: The setup is:

MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum board
FX-53

Floppy drive connected to FDD port
160GB PATA HD connected to IDE1
80GB SATA HD connested to SATA1
CDRW connected to IDE2 (master)

What I want is Windows to boot from the SATA drive, and have the PATA drive as an additional storage drive (documents etc).

I have installed Win2K onto the SATA drive, and the machine boots to that perfectly when the 160GB drive is not connected. The moment the 160GB drive is, I get a No Boot drive detected error.

So I disconnected the SATA, and installed Win2K onto the 160GB drive, then rebooted. Still get the same error. :angst:

Can anyone step in and point out what I am doing wrong?

Also is the 160GB drive supposed to be a MASTER or SLAVE. I expect it to be master as it is the only thing on that IDE channel.

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Should be master so it should be at the end of the cable.

You can set hard disk boot priority in the bios, make sure it is set to the sata disk over the IDE one.

I had a similar issue when i added a sata disk and just ghosted across, but a proper reinstall sorted it, im on XP pro though.

Herulach

I have looked in the bios, for exactly that, but changing the choice of drive for starting up seems to make no difference. Hmmm. Any other suggestions?

Change the jumpers on the PATA HDD to Slave?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by vk2003

Herulach

I have looked in the bios, for exactly that, but changing the choice of drive for starting up seems to make no difference. Hmmm. Any other suggestions?

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Bright spark idea, you havent got raid turned on by any chance? It might be trying to create an array across both boards.

Failing that, is the 160gb known good? Have you had the manufacturers tools to check it?

OK so I have managed to take one step forward, but then very rapidly back! Someoe on another forum (Thanks Wolfman) with the same m/b pointed out that SATA3&4 were more stable on the m/b than 1&2 which I had been using. Once I switched to channel 3 I was able to install and boot from the SATA drive.

Only problem was that as soon as the machine completed booting, BSOD occurred. I suspect this is because the bios needs updating, as well as Windows to SP4.

I am unable to update the bios, because win2k has no means to make a bootable floppy (required), and all my partitions are ntfs. I have tried converting to FAT32 but the format fails each time (drives are new).
I did try installing partition magic but it needs a more recent version of Windows Installer! AArrgghh

I did check the raid, and that was off by default. Also the PATA drive did need to be Master as opposed to slave.

So can anyone spy a path forward from here? I have a bootable SATA drive which gives a BSOD as soon as it completes booting, but need to update the bios and the drivers which i can't do unless I get a stable install and a boot disk + a FAT32 partition.

If you can get into Windows, can you use the MSI Live Update program? That SHOULD flash the BIOS.

Otherwise, find another machine, make a bootable CD with the flash tool and BIOS on it.

Boot off CD, flash, reboot.

Dougal

Just borrowed a friends XP notebook, and made a boot disk. Bios is now flashed.
Has made sod all difference to the BSOD I get when booting from the SATA drive. I get an error message saying incompatible driver, and "if this is the first time you are seeing this message...."

On the plus side, I can boot from the pata drive, and am in the process of running windows update there, so the machine is slowly becoming functional, but not in the way I wanted it to be.

So, any other suggestions as to how to get the machine to boot from the SATA drive without barfing?

Thanks to all of you who have made suggestions so far. You help is truly appreciated.

Does it need SATA drivers installing? OR have you installed sata drivers for one controller and you meant to install them for the other (ie Silicon image + youre using nforce or vice versa)

Herulach

I went through the MSI website, where it is mentioned that the floppy disk that comes with the MB contains the SATA drivers. These are the ones that I have installed, to no avail...

Have managed to get a network running having booted from the PATA drive, so now have 'net access, and am about to run MSI liveupdate...

Check for teh Latest SATA drivers, may be a problem.

Looked around on this one.

The problem is you need to make a win2000 cd with SP4 ON THE CD

not seperate, use something like nLite (www.nliteos.com) to burn it with the SP4 on it.

yes, you got it. A windows XP CD with SP2 will work too :)

In case you end up google-ing this, the process of integrating a service pack on a windows CD is called slipstreaming. Some messing around wiht boot blocks/loaders for the resultant CD is required, but its a reasonably painless process.

Is something on the PATA-drive? No, then you can work around the LBA-problem with creating a single partition equal or lower the critical 120GB in the setup. Eg a 20GB for the OS, adding the app. 130 later as a second partition (after SP4).
(but it would be new to me that missing support for big drives results in a crash after install...it will just broke your data if trying to access data beyond 120GB on the disk)

Just asking: what's your graphics card? If it requires a power connector be sure that (best case) no other device besides the psu(;)) is connected to that cable - esp. not the SATA drive.