it wont boot...

[raza]

I have set as first boot device my cd-rom, then i restart. After it searches for IDE devices a message appears: "A bootable CDROM was found" but it wont boot from it... Instead the PC will ask for a bootable.. FLOPPY DISK! Any ideas why is that happening?
Thanks.

 

[smartech]

Do you have any floppy drive in your PC?
If not, go to the BIOS and set the floppy device to "None".

 

[jeremy]

i assume your refer to the windows cd , it doesnt boot automaticly it displays this message: "press any key to boot from cd" then you have about 5 seconds to press a key if you wanna boot from it. if you dont press no key then it wont boot from it

 

[silence782]

So... Let me get this straight... You want it to boot off of the CD-ROM first? If not, simply change the BIOS to boot off of the HD first.

 

[raza]

Well forget about the first prob, i kinda fixed it. It now boots well, BUT once it boots and loads some things to start the windows installation it claims that i have no hdd installed! (#$&^#*(&*$)
though i have 3 of them
Any ideas?
If this helps: i have 2 SATA drives and 1 IDE
my mobo is gigabyte

 

[jeremy]

does the bios identifies em? if not then check the sata controller setting maybe its disabled and as for the IDE its probably a jumper issue, read here on on jumpers http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96217
its on optical drives but its basicly the same for hard drives except for the master/slave position but that info is printed on your hd or its sticker , if the sata controller is alredy enabled then you probably need to press F6 right after the windows setup starts and then after a min it will ask for the driver floppy (if you didnt recieve sata driver floppy with the motherboard then you should find it in your motherboard cd and copy to a floppy or download it from the motherboard manufacturer site) most current chipsets support sata compatbility mode so no driver is needed unless your using raid, but maybe the chipset your mobo is based on dont support sata compatbility mode , also if your windows cd dont have sp1 or sp2 integrated i highly recommend integrating it before installing. you can read at this thread http://www.techist.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=96848 why its important and how you can find out if your windows cd have it alredy integrated and of course theres links to a guide on how to slipstream sp2 and also to ryanvm sp2 update pack

 

[raza]

BIOS identifies all of the hdd, this is my main prob:
I used to have 1 SATA (slave) and 1 IDE (master) running nicely. I have installed many times windows XP on my IDE master without having the same prob. Now i have got one new SATA drive and want this one to be the master (running the OS), but after trying installing it i got the prob i described in my previous post.

Regarding the F6 button: When am i suppost to press it? After it appears "Please wait while Windows XP are preparing.." (or something like that) or before?

Now that I have connected my new SATA hdd as a slave, it got recognised by windows but it does not apper in "My Computer" like the others. I had the same prob before, but i cant remember how i solved it then.

Any ideas?
Thanks.

 

[jeremy]

just to make it more clear for everyone , you were refering to "slave" as the hd thats used for data storage and "master" as the hd that runs the operating system ,sata drives dont have master/slave jumpers as you can connect only 1 device to an sata cable

as for the F6, about 2 seconds right after it loads when you see this message "Press F6 if you need to install a third party SCSI or RAID driver." however it wont ask for the floppy after youll press F6 that part will happen about 2mins after , btw you can use nlite to integrate the sata driver to the windows installation it will make it easier for you on future installations

hd's come out of the factory with no partitions defined , this is why you dont see it in "my computer" , goto start-->control panel-->administrative tools-->computer management-->disk mangment , from there youll be able to create new partition/s from the unallocated space

 

[raza]

Thanks for helping me out. I can now "see" the new hdd, I'll try to install windows using ur tips later. Thanks!