Boot Problems

[sighlentz]

Shut system off yesterday and tried to turn system on today and no boot. Inserted system disk, ran repair, and disk said no hardrive available or not working.

Removed SATA HDD and instered in another PC and HDD works fine. Also, system disk won't recognize IDE drive in problem PC. System disk doesn't recognize any HDD.

Tried new cables and different SATA ports, still no boot capability. System disk for new install freezes on Windows welcome screen.

What's the problem? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[mfenn]

Does the BIOS recognize the drive? Does the BIOS recognize an optical drive?

 

[sighlentz]

Yes it recognizes both drives. It doesn't recognize the SATA drive in SATA 1 or 2 but it does in SATA 3. There is also no bulging capacitor.

Under Windows Boot Manager it says Info: An error occurred while attempting to read the boot configuration data.

File File: \boot\bcd
Status: 0xc000000f

 

[mfenn]

Yes it recognizes both drives. It doesn't recognize the SATA drive in SATA 1 or 2 but it does in SATA 3. There is also no bulging capacitor.

Did you change the BIOS between Compatibility mode and AHCI?

 

[sighlentz]

I did not change anything. I shut it off last night and cannot get it to boot now. The PC config has remained the same for months.

Under System Disk Startup Repair it says Root cause found: a hard disk could not be found. If a hard disk is installed, it is not responding.

 

[mfenn]

I did not change anything. I shut it off last night and cannot get it to boot now. The PC config has remained the same for months.

Under System Disk Startup Repair it says Root cause found: a hard disk could not be found. If a hard disk is installed, it is not responding.

Two possibilities:
(A) The SATA controller is busted and the OS is just getting garbage from the drive
(B) The bootloader has somehow been corrupted.

 

[sighlentz]

can the sata controller be replaced?

 

[mfenn]

can the sata controller be replaced?

Not without replacing the whole motherboard. You could potentially get an PCI or PCIe SATA controller though.

Before going down that route, I would try to do a clean install of Windows onto a spare HDD. If that works, you know that it isn't a problem with the controller.

 

[sighlentz]

Did the clean install on spare hdd. Using the problem PC now. Though the spare hdd is IDE not SATA

 

[betasub]

Motherboard probably has IDE on a different controller to the main SATA controller.

 

[sighlentz]

Plugged SATA HDD into MB today, wouldn't boot, even when selecting IDE drive as default. After disconnecting SATA drive, I had to repair windows startup.

I know the HDD is good, works fine in other pc's here. Maybe time for new MB? Don't really need to invest alot of $ into new system..This PC is used for basic internet use.

Where can I get a cheap MB for my Pentium 4, 540 with HT, 3.2ghz, 800mhz FSB, 4gb ram, 4 SATA ports, PCI express setup?

 

[mfenn]

Since you have a Prescott, I'm assuming that you have DDR2?

If so, then this GA-P43-UD3L will work. You should really look into getting a new CPU though. Even something as cheap as this E3300 will be much faster, quieter, and cooler than your P4.

 

[sighlentz]

The PC has DDR PC3200 RAM

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://3btech.net/motherboards-socket775.html

Find a replacement motherboard there for cheap.

 

[mfenn]

The PC has DDR PC3200 RAM

Wow, interesting. Was the CPU an upgrade to an existing system?

At any rate, the fact that it uses DDR instead of DDR2 means that a replacement motherboard will be harder to find. Larry posted a good site though.