PC won't boot

[Unlearning]

1. Overview of the problem
   Same as title, won't boot up. So I ran out of HD space and made a quick trip out to BestBuy and picked up another SATA drive. Installed the new drive in the PC and now it will not boot.
   
   
2. Full description of the problem and symptoms
   
   After installing the drive the PC will turn on, I get lights, fans, DVD and Original Hard Disk spool up. It will give the single beep when it gets power, however it will freeze on the MSI MOBO screen and won't proceed to boot at all. I don't even get to the RAM load screen so that I can enter BIOS.
   
3. Did it work normally at one time, or has the problem always existed?
   
   Just happened now
   
   
4. Is the problem consistent and repeatable, or entirely random, or semi-random?
   
   Consistent and repeatable on every startup.
   
   
5. I already tried these steps:
   
   Took out the new SATA drive and still wouldn' t boot from the old drive. I took out the old drive and tried booting straight from the new drive and same symptom.
   
   
6. My software:
   • 
     
     XP SP2
     
     
     
   • My hardware
     • MSI K8T Neo
     • AMD 3400+
     • BFG Geforce 6800 vanilla
     • 2 Sticks of Crucial 512mb Ballistix, 1 stick of Corsair 512mb
     • Antec 480w True PSU
     • Original: WD 74gb Raptor
     • New: WD 320gb Black SATA
       
     • Other information that might be relevant
       
       When we first set up the computer there was something funky about the MOBO and the SATA/IDE boot order. If you had anything in the first IDE slot, which we originally had the DVD drive in, the pc wouldn't boot from the SATA drive. To correct the problem we had to move the DVD drive to the second IDE slot and reformat and repartition, reload XP onto the Raptor. Don't know if this is of any relevance, but I did also try disonnecting the DVD drive all together after the problem to see if it would force a boot from the raptor.
     [/quote]
     

 

[mpilchfamily]

Well the optical drive is suppose to be in the secondary IDE anyway. Also the Bios needs to be configured to point to the specific SATA drive where the OS is.

 

[Unlearning]

Yeah, that's how the computer was set up and that's how it had been working.

After repeatedly restarting the computer, it eventually reboot a couple times, a few times I got something like "CMOS Order Invalid" error or something to that effect, when I went into BIOS setup is seams as though the HD with the OS on it now says [RAID] in front of it where as it had not before. I reset the boot order and everything rebooted fine WITHOUT the second HD in. Tried formatting and partitioning te new drive from DOS with a boot diskette and the program says that it couldn't format with no specific reason given.

Now once again the PC won't boot at all, not after resetting for over an hour, and the one time I did get it to boot past the MOBO screen and I recieved the message "Checking NVRAM...No NVRAM" During the RAM check screen and the computer froze once again.

Lovely!

 

[Unlearning]

Alright, Found out 2 sticks of RAM went bad. Took out the two sticks of Crucial RAM and the PC now boots up fine.

Still have the problem with the computer not being able to partition and format the new HD.

When both HDs are connected and I let it boot to windows the PC will freeze just as the Windows logo and load screen come up and all I see is the faint outline of the windows logo. PC will auto reboot.

If I boot from a floppy and try to set up the new HD through DOS Data Lifegaurd, it will go through all the confirmations of partition size and ect, however once you select to partition is skips over the partition and says "the drive you wished you partition is unable to be partitioned most likely due to inadequate hardware" or something to that effect.

Anyone familiar with a problem like this?