I found out that the problem with my pc is not the hard drive. It is the motherboard. I can turn on my pc and I can open up BIOS. I have also updated my motherboard with the EZ flash utility included. I have never used this motherboard before and apparently it worked on other pcs. I do not know why I cannot boot from cd/hard drive or anything like that. After the full screen Asus logo white text is visible on a black background every 2 seconds. It says: Award Medallion BIOS v6.0 An Energy Star Ally Copyright Award Software, Inc ASUS A7V600-X ACPI Revision 1009 AMD Athlon (TM) XP 2500+ Memory Test: 524288K OK Award Plug and Play BIOS Extension v1.0A Initialize Plug and Play Cards... PNP Init completed Detecting primary Master ... _NEC CD-RW NR-9100A Detecting primary slave ... none Detecting secondary Master ... none Detecting secondary slave ... none PCI_READ_DWORD: 30-000000000 Then I receive a listing. The top part of the screen contains a (double-lined) white framed box that has a list of my bootable (well what should be bootable) components. Under the bok there is: PCI device listing... Bus No. Device No. Fuc No. Vendor ID Device ID Device class IRQ Then there is a list of devices. Update ESCD Successfully The motherboard is an Asus A7V600-X The CPU is an AMD Athlon XP 2500+ The hard drive is a 6V080E0- Maxtor DiamondMax 10 80GB SATA 3GB/s 7200 RPM 8MB RoHS Hard Disk Drive The BIOS is ASUS A7V600-X ACPI Revision 1009 I do not know what to do aout this. Can you guys help?
Hi, Have you tried a different hard drive in this computer just to rule out that your hard drive hasnt died, or, is there another computer you can try your questionable hard drive in just to see if it works?
Yes i did. I connected an IDE hard drive and it was recognised by the motherboard but the same thing happened. I cannot even get into the WinXP setup because the motherboard will not boot from cd.
Have you made sure that its set as master or slave? It could be that the IDE cable is damaged so if possivle, try another IDE cable. I would try the above if you havent allready. Also did it work ok untill you flashed your motherboard bios? if so i would try flashing back to the previous bios.
Well yes it is currently being used by another pc as the sole (master) drive and the same cable is fine. It is working the same as before I flashed the BIOS.
So before you flashed the bios it did not work too? Could you tell me when it actually stopped working properly? what were you doing on the computer at time?
Ok. Here's what happened in chronological order. I plugged everything in and made sure the cables were all in properly. I started it up and got a familiar "BOOT DISK ERROR, INSERT SYSTEM INSTALL DISC" type of message. I sorted this out on a different computer by inserting the Windows XP install disc and then reinstalled the OS. I did this and by the time it had found all of the drivers for everything it said "you do not have a hard drive installed. Press ESC to reboot, etc,etc" I rebooted and I found that a new problem arised. This was the above described flashing white text. I have set the jumpers on my SATA hard drive to the force150 position. Even though a SATA drive was being used on it before I doubt the drivers need to be installed. And if the drivers do need to be installed, this problem needs to be sorted out first. This alteration caused no difference. I tried various (3 different) SATA cables. I have experimented with many of the various BIOS settings. I made sure that SATA is enabled. I plugged in an IDE hard drive that works as a primary master hard drive on another pc. It was recognised by the BIOS as a QUANTUM FIREBALL hard drive or something like that. I put this first in the boot line-up and I could not boot from it either. I also installed a floppy drive that was also recognised. When I had it plugged in this part: Award Plug and Play BIOS Extension v1.0A Initialize Plug and Play Cards... PNP Init completed Detecting primary Master ... _NEC CD-RW NR-9100A Detecting primary slave ... none Detecting secondary Master ... none Detecting secondary slave ... none said something like: Award Plug and Play BIOS Extension v1.0A Initialize Plug and Play Cards... PNP Init completed Detecting primary Master ... QUANTUM FIREBALL (something along this line, either way it is the type of hard drive I was using.) Detecting primary slave ... Legacy floppy Detecting secondary Master ... _NEC CD-RW NR-9100A Detecting secondary slave ... none So my parts are recognised and are working, but for some reason I can not boot from them. Even though the BIOS seems to be working I decided to flash it just in case. I decided to remove the CMOS battery for a bit to reset the BIOS. This made no difference and then I proceeded to flash the BIOS. I managed to successfully use a bootable floppy to load the new BIOS successfully. Now I am running revision 1009 (before it was 1008.) This update did not help. I tried to boot from a live cd but this did not work either. So essentially I have: Made sure the hardware I am using (floppy drive, hard drives, cd drive, BIOS) is working. checked all cables and connections. Which part of a motherboard makes a pc boot from a drive. What is the whole boot procedure? I do not know what the problem can be as I am currently running a tri-boot OS system (2 different versions of windows xp and 1 version of Linux) on my laptop and a dual boot system on another desktop at home. I have checked all of the hardware and it seem that the only problem can be the motherboard. Does anyone know what this screen is associated with? Could it be a problem with my CPU or somehting else?
I am not sure what makes the PC boot from the drive, i would like to know now though, i should know by now aswell, hopefully someone like BigB will be able to inform you on that. Have you tried a different drive on this motherboard? got anymore IDE hard drives, it does seem like the motherboard is faulty, if you did have other hard drives connected such as a sata drive, remove it temporerely.
Hi, The BIOS is responsible for starting the operating system for the computer. When you first turn on the computer, it runs the POST. After the POST, it initializes all the hardware on the computer. Once it completes that step, it then looks for an operating system to load, usually in the device order that you have set in the BIOS. It looks on the first sector of the disk (the boot sector) for the operating system to load into memory. On a hard drive, the first sector of the drive is the Master Boot Record. There is a program in the MBR that loads the OS from the first sector of the partition into memory. Hope this helps :chk:
