Unable to Boot from Disk

[artyziff]

The Specs:

Biostar TF520 A2+ Motherboard
AMD 2.4Ghz Processor
2 GB Ram
500GB WD Hard Drive


Okay, here is what has happened:

Yesterday I went to turn on my tv with the HTPC setup, but the screen was black and it would not wake from sleep. So, I reset the computer and got the "Disk read error occurred" message.

I have updated the BIOS, checked the ram, and all the cables, but it still will not boot from the hard drive or the vista start up disk when the hard drive is connected.

If I disconnect the hard drive or set it as a "raid drive" (so it won't read the drive) the vista disk will boot up, but I have no hard drive to work with at that point.

I connected another hard drive with XP on it to see if it would load up, but that gives me the same error.

So, at this point I am thinking the Motherboard is the problem. I can still see everything in BIOS and it recognizes the HD, but it won't boot up.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be great.

 

[eyeCpc]

Was the XP drive seeing Windows installed when in the current system or from a previous build? If the XP was from a previous build the mbr and boot information would need to be rewritten.

On some occasions here since I've been dual booting XP along with Vista lately the boot from the Vista installation disk will stall. I have to repeat the process and even shut the system off at times to then see it load up where the automatic startup repair tool can be used.

Besides a possible need to keep trying to get to the Vista repair tools how long has the board been in use? If over a lengthy period of time the battery on the board not the board could be the problem if the boot information simply hasn't become corrupted on you.

 

[Baez]

Sounds like a motherboard controller issue so you're correct in suspecting your motherboard. Try repairing the MBR in XP like eyeCpc said first.

 

[artyziff]

The XP drive was from another computer, so that may have been the issue with the motherboard, but of course, I do not have the XP install CD to work with. The motherboard itself is only a month old.

 

[Baez]

Have you called up Biostar yet? They will probably want to take a look at it.

 

[artyziff]

I have sent in a technical support message to Biostar, so I will see what they have to say. I am wondering if it might be a boot sector error on the hard drive. But it is really strange that I cannot boot into the vista cd when the Hard Drive is connected, but I can without the hard drive.

 

[wicked23]

what is the boot device order in bios?
It should be floppy, cd, hdd?
Do you havea floppy drive

 

[artyziff]

I do have a floppy, but the boot order is reversed. I had read in different forums that it should be HDD, CD, Floppy


Should I switch that around? Could it really make that big of a difference, especially in not being able to boot from startup disk when the hard drive is attached?

 

[wicked23]

Well there you go. when it is set to floppy, cd,hdd. Bios checks the floppy( you could boot from a dos boot disk and use tools like Fixmbr, Chkdsk to check HDD), then it checks the cd drive to see if you have a bootable disk in it, ie your vista disk, then it goes to your hdd. That is why you can not boot from a disk to reinstall os.

Change your order and when you boot you will see a message to hit anykey to boot from disk and whola happy reimaging.

 

[artyziff]

I will try that as soon as I get home, but I am relatively pessimistic. However, if that works, I will literally jump for joy!

If I still can't get it to boot from the vista cd, what is a good freeware program to put on a floppy disk to boot to dos?