Major Boot-up Prob....please help!

[psychy]

Hi guys,

I went to put in another DVD writer in my pc....and something serious i think had been done instead.

My mobo (MSI K8N Neo Platinum) i think is the prob....cos went i tried to boot up, the bios was reset. I didn't clear the cmos or anything.

Windows didn't boot but instead the screen which allows selection of safe mode, last working config and normal start-up screen was up. Which ever selection I made, the pc just reboots as normal. I tried using the XP disk to try and repair, but it freezes after a certain time...all the time.

I've tried to manually clear the cmos but the same end result(s).

Anyone can shed some light??

[BUFF]

Check that all your cables are properly plugged in (you may have disturbed 1 unwittingly) & the drives are properly jumpered for Master/Slave etc.

[psychy]

Check that all your cables are properly plugged in (you may have disturbed 1 unwittingly) & the drives are properly jumpered for Master/Slave etc.

Deffo ckeced and rechecked all cables,jumpers ec. Still the same without all optical drives, only one stick of ram, the main HD.

On the bios start-up, the following message come up very briefly....never seen ti before:
"Warning: Have Option ROM can not be invoke (Vendor ID:10DEh, Deivce ID:00DFh) - (NOTE: Deivce is not spelt wrong).

[Thorsson]

Looks to me that it's trying to invoke a bootup LAN ROM. Has something been turned on in the BIOS?

[kalniel]

How many hard drives and how many cd/dvd drives etc. do you now have in the machine?

[dave87]

It could be that your Bios battery is on the wrong side of dead, and as such it didn't save the settings when you unplugged it to install the dvd writer. Try temporarily disconnecting the DVD writer and booting, going into the bios and reset the common settings such as boot order. If this doesn't work you may have nudged the hdd cable - if your using SATA that is pretty easy, so check those.


Dave

[psychy]

Hi guys, the same thing happens whether or not there are dvd drives connected or not. I've tried booting up with only one HD and nothing else but still the same.

How can the battery be dead? It was working perfectly prior me opening the whole thing up to fit another drive. Plus all bios settings are saved fine, so i assume thebattery is a-ok.

Anyone else wanna stab at this? Really need to fix this damned thing promto.

Thanks guys.

[kalniel]

At what point does it freeze exactly?

[psychy]

i'vde tried it all morning now. It doesn't freeze anymore.

It used to freeze on the windows setup page (when i try to repair windows) at the point where the blue page says "windows starting up"

Now i am able to get to the point where i can select windows but the blue page now says there is no hard disk on my system. Which is total BS cos it shows in bios, i am able to load windows on another pc using the same HD.

This is deffo a Mobo issue....have i shorted it or screwed it in one way or another??

[psychy]

Anyone??? Very desperate.....

[kalniel]

Have you got an active partition set on the hard drive?

Is the other PC using another HD apart from this one?

What happens when you put this as the *only* hd in the other PC?

[psychy]

the other pc boots fine with this HD as the only one.

The HD has two partitions, 20gb and 140gb. The 20gb partition is for the os. The larger for files etc.

[psychy]

Finally managed to sort it out....through chance more than anything. I stripped everything, tested everything. It was the settings on the mobo. I had to load optimal defaults for some strange reason for it to work.
None of the settings were changed from my usual, so i dont know what was wrong.

At least its a-ok now. Phew! Never gonna touch this thing EVER!

Thanks everyone for your help.