Reboot and select proper boot device error

[csmeeson]

Hello

After transporting my desktop home from school for Christmas break, upon startup I'm getting an error message saying "Reboot and select proper boot device, etc." I'm sure most of you know about the message.

The odd thing about the message, however, is that I can see the hard drive in the BIOS, and if I hit F8 before the error pops up, I can manually boot from my main hard drive without any problem and everything works just fine.

Also, in my BIOS, I have the boot sequence set up correctly, and I have tried other combinations as well. Currently it's set to boot from my CD drive, then my main hard drive (I have no floppy installed).

Basically, I'm stumped as to what the problem could be. I've read that some people's hard drives need to warm up first and mess up like this from a cold boot, but this isn't the case for me, my computer will never boot up properly unless I hit F8. It's not a huge inconvenience obviously, I'm thankful my hard drive still works, but I'm wondering if maybe my hard drive is starting to fail on me, and if I should get a new one asap. The one I currently have isn't old (probably a little more than a year), which I find even more perplexing.

I appreciate any insight anyone can give on the matter. Here are some system specs.

Asus K8V-X SE motherboard
AMD Athlon 64 Processor
Radeon x1600 512 mb
Master Drive- Western Digital 80 gig
Slave- Some other company, 60 gig
CD Drive- Samsung DVD Rom
1 gig of Kingston Ram

 

[Fragrant Coit]

Have you tried setting the Main Drive as the ONLY bootable device?

Check all the cables & jumpers are firmly inserted

Make sure there's no CD in the drive

Run the WD Diagnostic to check the HDD isn't on it's way out.

http://support.wdc.com/download/

merry Christmas

Steve

 

[csmeeson]

I just tried setting my main drive as the only boot device, and I got the same message. I triple checked that all the wires and cables are securely attached, and I also ran the recommended diagnostics test, which it passed.

I appreciate the help. Any other suggestions though?

 

[Fragrant Coit]

Run the Diagnostic ???

At least that'll rule out the Drive itself...

It's not set to boot from "Removable" or LAN anywhere?

Have you moved the Jumpers on the 2 HDD's at any stage?


I'm off to stuff myself on Turkey {it's 10 in the morning here}, my replies this afternoon may be a bit garbled!!!! Full of Christmas beer - oops, Cheer...

Have a nice XMas

Steve

 

[eljan81]

I don't want to hijack csmeesons topic, but I'm having the exact similar issue. Plus, he has the same company H/D I purchased.

I'll try and list the specs of my computer as best as possible.

ASUS: 1333FB Motherboard
Intel P4 3.0 processor
Western Digital hard drive. IDE 80gig
Video Card: the minimum to run Call on Duty 4.

Basicly I know nothing about my computers. But, my brother will get the gist of any suggestions.

With my brother as my builder, I set out to build a new pc. He got all the parts installed before he went to work, but couldn't do anything else with it. He didn't even have to time to test it.

I hooked everything up, and after the typical startup messages, it goes to the black screen and message,

Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key.

After I tried to restart the computer, I noticed it said something to this affect: Massive Storage Unit not detected. I can only imagine this means the Hard Drive.

When we(my brother) goes into the bios, all of them say not detected.

He thinks the WD H/D I got was defective. So he spared me his lesser capacity Hard drive, and still had the same boot error message.

While, egging him on to try a few more things he fiddled with the wires, and finally made some decent progress. It got to the Windows screen. The spared H/D was done so, so that maybe we wouldn't have to bother with installing XP. Well for about 10 minutes windows ran, and then it went back to the boot message.

I don't know what else I need to tell you, to help you help me. If you can help, I'll try and find out answers to the questions you ask me.

Thanks in advance to any who can help. I really will be appreciative of the info.

Eljan

 

[csmeeson]

The diagnostics test, both the quick one and the thorough one, reported that my hard drive was fine and in good condition. I haven't messed with the cables besides making sure they were secure, and I've tried every combination with the jumpers (jumpers being the pins, right?).

I'm positive I have the boot properties and order set up correctly in my BIOS, and it's not set to removable hard drive.

I'm wondering if it's possibly my mobo that is the problem? I actually just ordered a new mobo, cpu, ram, and video card, so when I get that stuff in the mail and get it working, we'll see if that fixes it.

Any other thoughts from anyone?

Also Eljan, obviously I don't know everything, but it sounds like you have a bad hard drive to me. But then that also means the back-up one your brother had is also bad, which seems like a really unlucky coincidence.

So, you can get your computer into Windows, but then after a few minutes it just craps out? If you can get on windows for an extended period of time, try running that WD Diagnostics test (the link is posted above, and the model number [or at least my model number] was WD800JD). That should tell you whether or not it's a hard drive problem. I don't know what other advice to give, sorry!

Merry Christmas!

Curt

 

[garreg_ddu]

Just a passing thought, have you checked that the cables are intact and that you can hear the HD spinning up straight away when you power on. If you have spare cables I'd try swapping them and testing again. There are conditions where the PSU may have problems which would lead to the HD seeming to perform OK but not reading correctly under load.

 

[eljan81]

It got to the windows desktop 1 time, and never again. The hard drive from my brother's computer is good, it was taken from his computer while it was being used as a secondary HDD. It has no problems. Taking it out of my tower and putting it back in his, HDD is 100% operational.