Problem: When I try to boot Win XP from harddisk, I get an error message: DISK BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.
I'm running Win XP professional on a Soyo Dragon Plus mainboard carrying an Athlon Palomino 2100+ and 2*512 Infineon DDR RAM. BIOS is Award v6.00PG. Two WD 60GB harddisks (same model) are currently Master/Slave on the primary IDE channel, with the OS installed on HD-0 (Master). On the secondary IDE channel there are a BTC DVD rewriter (Master) and a Cyberdrive CD rewriter (Slave). HD-0 contains one primary partition for Win XP Professional (active) and one extended partition with two logical drives, HD-1 one extended partition with three logical drives. All partitions are formatted to NTFS.
Funny thing is, the computer will boot into XP without any problem when I set the BIOS boot sequence to CD ROM as first and HD-0 as second boot device, leave my XP installation disk in a CD-ROM drive and refrain from pressing a key when asked to do so in case I want to boot from CD ROM. In fact, the machine does not really seem to care about the BIOS boot sequence, as long as CD ROM is selected as the first boot device - it will boot into my XP on HD-0 even if HD-1, HD-2, HD-3 or even SCSI is selected as the second boot device.
Once past the boot phase, the system runs like a charm and is rock-stable - no other glitches, no hang-ups, and I even can't remember when it last went BSOD on me.
What I've tried up to now, to no avail:
1. Playing around with the boot sequence in BIOS setup.
2. Rewriting the MBRs and the boot sectors using FIXMBR and FIXBOOT, both from the recovery console.
3. Switching the two harddisks on my primary IDE channel from Master/Slave to Cable Select, and back again.
4. Clearing CMOS ram.
5. Letting the BIOS re-detect the harddisks.
6. Setting HD-1 to None in BIOS Setup.
7. Temporarily removing the data cable from HD-1.
8. Looking at the HD MBRs or the boot records with a hex editor does not reveal anything out of the ordinary. These structures, including the partition tables, appear quite straightforward and clean.
And oh, BTW - I also run the latest Soyo BIOS which was published for my mainboard.
Now, I'm fresh out of ideas. Judging by the error message I get I suspect I'm dealing with a BIOS-related problem - the message is a BIOS error message, not generated by Windows. What I don't understand is how the BIOS can see my two harddisks well enough to identify them correctly during POST and on the BIOS Setup screen but obviously fails to recognize them at boot time without external help from the XP installation disk.
Anyone out there think of something elso I could try?
I'm running Win XP professional on a Soyo Dragon Plus mainboard carrying an Athlon Palomino 2100+ and 2*512 Infineon DDR RAM. BIOS is Award v6.00PG. Two WD 60GB harddisks (same model) are currently Master/Slave on the primary IDE channel, with the OS installed on HD-0 (Master). On the secondary IDE channel there are a BTC DVD rewriter (Master) and a Cyberdrive CD rewriter (Slave). HD-0 contains one primary partition for Win XP Professional (active) and one extended partition with two logical drives, HD-1 one extended partition with three logical drives. All partitions are formatted to NTFS.
Funny thing is, the computer will boot into XP without any problem when I set the BIOS boot sequence to CD ROM as first and HD-0 as second boot device, leave my XP installation disk in a CD-ROM drive and refrain from pressing a key when asked to do so in case I want to boot from CD ROM. In fact, the machine does not really seem to care about the BIOS boot sequence, as long as CD ROM is selected as the first boot device - it will boot into my XP on HD-0 even if HD-1, HD-2, HD-3 or even SCSI is selected as the second boot device.
Once past the boot phase, the system runs like a charm and is rock-stable - no other glitches, no hang-ups, and I even can't remember when it last went BSOD on me.
What I've tried up to now, to no avail:
1. Playing around with the boot sequence in BIOS setup.
2. Rewriting the MBRs and the boot sectors using FIXMBR and FIXBOOT, both from the recovery console.
3. Switching the two harddisks on my primary IDE channel from Master/Slave to Cable Select, and back again.
4. Clearing CMOS ram.
5. Letting the BIOS re-detect the harddisks.
6. Setting HD-1 to None in BIOS Setup.
7. Temporarily removing the data cable from HD-1.
8. Looking at the HD MBRs or the boot records with a hex editor does not reveal anything out of the ordinary. These structures, including the partition tables, appear quite straightforward and clean.
And oh, BTW - I also run the latest Soyo BIOS which was published for my mainboard.
Now, I'm fresh out of ideas. Judging by the error message I get I suspect I'm dealing with a BIOS-related problem - the message is a BIOS error message, not generated by Windows. What I don't understand is how the BIOS can see my two harddisks well enough to identify them correctly during POST and on the BIOS Setup screen but obviously fails to recognize them at boot time without external help from the XP installation disk.
Anyone out there think of something elso I could try?