Drives aren't recognized and disc boot error shows up

[jf3]

Hello everyone. I bought a 160 GB Maxtor Hard Drive and I was going to install it in my computer. Well, little did I know that it didn't fit in my bay. So when I hooked up all the cables back, i turned on the computer and it said "disc boot failure, press enter to continue. When I did, it didn't do anything. Well after like 2 or 3 different cable placements, it worked again,but the cd rom, dvd+r drive and floppy disk drive isn't working. When I go to drive manager, it says that everything is working popular, but my computer doesn't recognize anything. Is it something with the cables? I've tried different combinations and the best I can do is get it to go to Windows. Most other times it won't even let me get to Windows. If any of you could help this situation, it would be greatly appreciated. If everything goes back to good, I'd happily send $10 through paypal to fix this problem. Thanks

I'm using a Compaq Presario computer with 120 GB, 512

correction, my floopy disk drive does work. it's the others that don't. I hope I didn't mess up my computer when I messed with the installation

 

[powerdude5000]

have you looked in the bios to check that it's all set right

 

[Elite Bullet]

also check your CMOS setting to see wether it detects it all

 

[bla!!]

There's a couple of different things to try.

First off, I'm assuming the boot error in windows happened when you have the boot drive on the secondary position on the IDE Cable.

Ok, try this out.

First, disconnect all of the IDE Cables.

Plug one into the first IDE connector on your mother board. Hook up your HD into the end connector on that cable. Plug anything else into the other one (or leave it empty if you don't want anything else on that IDE channel).

Second, check the jumper settings on your CD drive and DVD+r drive. Usually it will tell you what pins to jumper to make it master or slave. Connect the 2nd IDE cable to the second IDE connector on your motherboard. Then connect the other end of the cable to the optical device you found to be master and the middle of the cable to the one that was slave.

If this still doesn't work, go into your bios and refresh the auto detect fields of IDE 1-4.

 

[jf3]

thanks guys for your responses, but in all honesty, I don't know what the hell you guys are talking about. I know a little about computers, but as far as cables and all that, I'm not sure. What I have is a blue end that has cpu board on the cable. I put that into the blue spot. Then there's a white slot underneath that which doesn't have any cable. Then besides the blue one, there is a black slot where I put a black cable (it was the only one that fit) and it said CPU board on it too. This cable is actually working because it came from the floppy disk drive. I put the black end of a cable that came from the DVD+R drive in the white slot. It has CPU board on it too.

That's what I have.

Where do you find the jumper settings?
Where do i to get my bios?

Sorry for sounding stupid, but that's all I know right now. I will definitely send $ through paypal. I will send it to bla if i get it to work. To the others, thank you too.

 

[jf3]

I'm so stupid

Oh my goodness. I just figured out what the problem was. When I plugged in that black cable to the white slot, I restarted the computer and my drives showed up. I hope it doesn't say disc boot error again, but at least the drives work. A question I have is that we bought a Dell computer and sent it back today because of 2 reasons:
-It said disc boot error and it would never go to windows
-Even if it got fixed, we needed it now for business so i got something lese.

why does that happen?
Is it a hard drive thing, installation or what?

Bla, since you tried to help and listed some steps, I'm going to send you $5 if you provide me with a paypal address. Even though I figured it out, I still should pay some. Thanks man.

 

[intercodes]

jf3,

why does that happen?
Is it a hard drive thing, installation or what?

If you get a disc boot error ,then your disc cannot find the 'boot' file that it needs to load to start up the computer. This maybe due to various reasons

* cables are plugged wrongly
* loose cables or worn out cables
* HDD failure
* Corrupt operating system
etc etc

 

[EricB]

don't hook the cable to the floppy disc cable, it is the wrong cable

hook it up to the second part of the regular ide cable, make sure the first hard drive, the pin is set to master on the back of it

 

[EricB]

now set the second to slave.

open windows

install maxblast 3 and you will have 2 options, copy your first hard drive to the second hard drive or

use the second hard drive as a storage disc (recommended)you will have to formatted it. you can use maxblast


go to control panel and (switch to classic view) pick adminstrative tool, then computer manament to format the drive. just clicking on the empty drive will give you the option

 

[EricB]

if your computer don't have service pack one

add this to your registry so it recognize hard drives bigger than 137 gig

you have to unzip it

if you download it and the zip extension doesn't show up, add .zip to the end of the name