Boot Problem: K8n Neo2 Platinum MOBO, SATA & IDE HDs

[ChessPieceFace]

I posted this in an existing thread, but it seems to be lost in the shuffle... hopefully it's not just that no one knows the answer.

This weekend, my friend and I assembled a new PC... AMD Athlon 3500+, 1gig RAM, ATI AIW 9800pro, etc. But there's a problem that's stumping us both, and I'd really appreciate any help you guys can offer.

I have an MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum MOBO, which seemes to have gotten great reviews. I have my old 120-gig IDE HD in there for storage, and WinXP Pro installed on the new Serial-ATA 200gig HD, which I want to be my primary drive. I set the boot order in the BIOS to Floppy, CDROM, then Hard Disk, and then set the new SATA drive to first on the list for hard disks. Problem is, it only seems to want to boot from the IDE devices. So every time I boot, one of three scenarios unfolds:

1. If any disc is in the CD-ROM drive: I get a message that says "Boot From CD?", it thinks a bit, then "Press Any Key To Boot From CD......", after another 15 seconds or so, WinXP finally successfully boots.

2. If no disc in the CD-ROM drive: I get a message that says "Boot From CD?", then everything freezes.

3. I hit F11 during boot to change the Boot Order: the SATA HD is magically last, even though as I said, I set it to first in the BIOS. I scroll down, select it, hit enter, and it boots into WinXP.

In the other thread, for a similar issue, mechBgon suggested changing Hard Disk boot order to include SCSI, since SCSI just translates to "not-IDE". Problem is, I don't see anywhere to select between SATA, SCSI, IDE, or any of those options, just "Hard Disk" "CDROM" Floppy" "ZIP" etc.

So. That's it. There has to be some stupid little setting I'm missing that will allow me to boot normally. I'm afraid to really do much else with the box, like load programs and such, until this is resolved. Any ideas? Please?

 

[MainframeGuy]

Guess what ? I have same mobo, in my case with a couple of IDE and one SATA HD.

In my case for various reasons I have XP installed to an IDE drive, but I would like to change this and boot to SATA for obvious reasons - so did you ever get this resolved, and if so could you advise how?

My IDE drives also seem to run slower than the UDMA6 which they should manage being ATA 133 drives - in my case the slave drops to UDMA2, which is slowing down the master too I am sure and the result is a painfully bogged system.....

Hope you (or someone) can help!)

 

[ChessPieceFace]

Nope, no idea how to resolve. I'm hoping someone else has an idea, because I really don't know what to do...

 

[ChessPieceFace]

Please? Anybody? Anything? Suggestions of things to try, or other resources to check? Please?

 

[spunducky]

my cousin has same board we just put it together we couldnt get windows xp to boot from disc said disc error or something guess what the fix was?????????? he had to turn his a: floppy cable around and then it booted up go figure. i dont know what that had to do with anything but it fixed it we still had a problem setting up a raid 0 array but finally got windows to see 2 raptors as 1

 

[spunducky]

you must not be looking at all ur bios options i remember having to setup sata in the bios and also press f6 right before winxp loads up to install the sata drivers from the floppy (load all files on disc) then i think u need to get sp1 for winxp to recognize the raid.

 

[ChessPieceFace]

It's not Windows that's the problem... once it gets past the "Boot From CD:" issue, Windows loads up fine.

During boot, it checks all IDE devices first, then looks for a CD... if it doesn't find one, it freezes. If it does find a CD, any CD, it boots into Windows.

 

[westman0603a]

I have the same problem:

If I leave the cd in, and don't select boot off the cd, I can boot from from scsi drive I:

There is no hardware problem, I've reinstalled xp and there is no freezing or hangs and I know my memory and drive configuration is fine. I know my floppy config is fine, I read a glopy using it.

I am thinking it may be because there was a message during winxp install telling me to remove the cd before rebooting and I didn't then the boot.ini was screwed up.

The other idea I have is maybe to upgrade the mobo firmware (didn't check what release I have yet). Also, I will play with the BIOS, maybe turn off the sata settings in advance bios settings, because it works when the cd stays in the drive, seems like a bios problem..

Anyone have ideas

THX ahead

 

[ChessPieceFace]

I haven't checked this thread in a while, but am still having the problem. I've been trying to reach MSI tech support, but they refuse to answer the phone or respond to the voicemail message I was instructed to leave, and their email support people just ran me around in circles ("Change the BIOS." "I know, that's what I want to do, what setting do I need to change??" "Change the BIOS.")

Westman, did you have any luck?

 

[ChessPieceFace]

Excellent! I finally reached MSI tech support by phone yesterday. It seems my problem was primarily a hardware conflict. The tech guy had me play with some configurations, but the only thing that made it boot normally was yanking the IDE cable from the DVDRW. I had the following IDE cable config:

IDE 1/Master: DVDRW (the one it kept trying to boot from)
IDE 1/Slave: Old IDE HD

IDE2/Master: CDRW
IDE2/Slave: Zip

Now, the two CD drives are in IDE2, and IDE1 is the HD and Zip. I even set the boot order to floppy-CD-HD, which he'd suggested I change to HD only, and it still works. Now by the time the monitor comes on, XP is loading. Finally I feel it's safe to install software on my computer!