[Tech] Help: New o/s won't boot without cd

Xylak

Xylak

New Member
OK, so, here's an odd one...
I have a new hdd - one of the Seagate SSD/HDD Hybrids - and I can install an O/S onto it (Win7 or XP) which will boot to the first desktop and all appears fine.
Then I reboot... if I leave the install CD in, it's fine and boots as expected. If I take the CD out, it won't boot and I get a "no system disk" error.
This is repeatable and I have tried multiple installs with the same result.

The hdd appears to work apart from not booting unless the CD is in - can see it as a slave if I boot from old hdd etc.

Has anyone experienced this before?
Any ideas/suggestions?



/I bought this from Scan and they say that if I send it back and no fault found, they'll charge me £15. I told them if they ask for it back and no fault found I'm not paying anything. They told me to check it with Seagate's diags which will only detect my IDE drive :p
Then they tell me to try another diag tool which is not free and the trial version doesn't really tell you much.
This is my first dealings with Scan and I'm not impressed with their support so far.
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
Sounds like slow disk detection by the BIOS to me. When the CD spins up it slows the boot process down enough that the BIOS has time to detect the SSD. When it doesnt ... it doesnt.

Check your BIOS settings, be sure to ACHI for your sata ports if available. Check for motherboard bios updates as well.

I'd say its not the Hard Drives fault but rather a motherboard issue from what you've described.

Failing all that ... leave the CD in the drive.

Xylak said:
OK, so, here's an odd one...
I have a new hdd - one of the Seagate SSD/HDD Hybrids - and I can install an O/S onto it (Win7 or XP) which will boot to the first desktop and all appears fine.
Then I reboot... if I leave the install CD in, it's fine and boots as expected. If I take the CD out, it won't boot and I get a "no system disk" error.
This is repeatable and I have tried multiple installs with the same result.

The hdd appears to work apart from not booting unless the CD is in - can see it as a slave if I boot from old hdd etc.

Has anyone experienced this before?
Any ideas/suggestions?



/I bought this from Scan and they say that if I send it back and no fault found, they'll charge me £15. I told them if they ask for it back and no fault found I'm not paying anything. They told me to check it with Seagate's diags which will only detect my IDE drive :p
Then they tell me to try another diag tool which is not free and the trial version doesn't really tell you much.
This is my first dealings with Scan and I'm not impressed with their support so far.
Click to expand...
 
waterproofbob

waterproofbob

Junior Administrator
At a guess either you got a funky master boot record. Or your system doesn't like whatever boot order the bios currently has setup. Try poking the order of the HDDs and the boot order in your bios.
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
Doesn't sound like the hard drive iself is at fault - and scan aren't really obligated to help you with a software issue.

As bob says, sounds like you may have something funky going on with the master boot record or the location of said information - double check the boot order in your BIOS and ensure that your hard drive is selected. Failing that, ensure ALL other drives are disconnected and then do the OS install.
 
Xylak

Xylak

New Member
Appreciate the quick replies chaps :)

Haven said:
...be sure to ACHI for your sata ports if available. ...
Click to expand...

Not sure what this means or how I check.
I used to be hot on tech stuff but it all left me behind a few years ago :(

My motherboard is this one: http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/AMD_AM2/M2NSLI_Deluxe/

There's some BIOS updates listed but nothing mentions hdd support (that I can see). Plus I'm always scared to update a BIOS in case it goes spoons and I'm left with a dead PC :(

I can change the boot order as I've still got my original SATA drive with XP and that will boot up fine. It's only the new one that's causing grief.

I'm also unsure as to how to de-funk a funky MBR.
 
Xylak

Xylak

New Member
OK, I found the AHCI bit but that makes no difference.
The drive will only boot if I have a bootable CD in (boots to Win7 with XP CD in).

Why is every upgrade I do a pain in the wassname? :p
 
Haven

Haven

Administrator
Staff member
Xylak said:
OK, I found the AHCI bit but that makes no difference.
The drive will only boot if I have a bootable CD in (boots to Win7 with XP CD in).

Why is every upgrade I do a pain in the wassname? :p
Click to expand...

Do what bloke said - make sure that your hard drive is set to boot first in the Bios, make sure you unplug all non-essential USB devices (phones,camera's and USB sticks). And try again. If your boot order includes USB before Hard Drive then you could have a peripheral device messing it up for you (my work system wont boot when my mobile is plugged into it via usb for example).
 
Xylak

Xylak

New Member
Haven said:
Do what bloke said - make sure that your hard drive is set to boot first in the Bios, make sure you unplug all non-essential USB devices (phones,camera's and USB sticks). And try again. If your boot order includes USB before Hard Drive then you could have a peripheral device messing it up for you (my work system wont boot when my mobile is plugged into it via usb for example).
Click to expand...

OK, I'll disconnect my other drives and see what happens (when I get home).
The bios allows me to set the boot device priority (CDROM / HDD) then which device of those to boot from (lists drives which can be re-ordered). Using this I have tried setting it to HDD only and had the new drive as the first to boot. Same result.

I have no other devices attached apart from the usual keyboard/mouse/monitor.
 
Traxata

Traxata

Junior Administrator
Xylak, which SATA port did you connect it to on the M2N?

One of the ports you have on there are not native to the chipset driver and are controlled by an extra IC, I had problems with my SSD in a non chipset SATA port. It will usually be the last one on the board and probably an ASMedia chip.

Also, which version of the Seagate MomentusXT Hybrid did you pick, as not sure if SATA ii / iii backwards compatibility would cause a problem
 
Xylak

Xylak

New Member
IT LIVES! and no cd required...

After much being angry and some time trawling the Google, I found a thread that sounded like my problem... followed the instructions there and, to my mild surprise and immense joy, it worked like a good'un :)

Solution found


Thanks again for all the suggestions etc
 
Xylak

Xylak

New Member
thatbloke said:
yea, what those instructions have done, is un-funked a funky MBR :)
Click to expand...

Well why didn't they say that in the first place?
It would have been easier as my search for "how to unfunk a funky mbr" didn't return any results of worth.

But I'm curious to know how it got all funky in the first place. Brand new drive with a fresh o/s install. And at no time did I ever play any James Brown or George Clinton while I was installing it.
 
thatbloke

thatbloke

Junior Administrator
what i have found in the past is that if your other drive already had some sort of boot information from a previous windows install, then when installing a new windows os onto the new drive, for some reason it keeps that boot information the same, or it doesn't work right.

For example, i had win xp on one drive and installed vista onto a second drive. I then booted into it, then powered off and removed the xp drive. I then got the "insert system disk" error bwcause the boot info the bios needed was on the other drive. I then had to manually create a new MBR on that drive, which was a bit more complicated back then. The windows repair thingy has automated for you a lot of what i did manually back then.

I suspect that for some reason, something similar has happened here...
 
Xylak

Xylak

New Member
Makes sort of sense. But strange that it's supposed to be new :S
Never mind, Scan will be happy their moany know-nothing arsey customer won't be hassling them much more.
 
Xylak

Xylak

New Member
waterproofbob said:
Yay I love being right :D.

Glad you managed to get it sorted. Windows MBR are a bit of a mystery tbh.
Click to expand...

You so clever :)


Thanks again to everyone who offered help, it's always appreciated.

Bonus edit: as a thanks, here's something that is intentionally funky (unlike my mbr)
 
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