Windows Will Not Boot From HDD

[TalonOP]

Recently, my dell crapped out so I built a completely new system with the dfi as the mobo. The HDDs from the dell are all in perfect condition, so I assumed all I had to do was to run a windows repair installation (because the of the new parts and mobo) and bootup would be easy. Not so.

I booted from xp cd and installed windows after it detected my old windows on my old HDD. After i ran the repair everything seemed to be going smoothly, and the system restarted in order to complete installation. here's where things started not working. At first, windows booted up again and basically acted like nothing happened, asking me whether or not i wanted to instal windows.

So i switched to the bios and booted from the HDD where windows was repaired. I get an error message and "enter system disk." Obviously windows has not been correctly installed, but i cant get it to complete installation. Any Idea?

Cliffs:
-using old HDDs with previous windows
-mobo: dfi ultraii m2
-repaired windows
-windows doesnt compelete installation
-computer wants to perpetually boot windows and install a copy of xp

 

[SparkyJJO]

Did you use the XP CD that came with the dell? It won't work on anything but a dell and since the mobo is not a dell board it won't work.

 

[imported_nocturne]

NEVER REPAIR INSTALLATION IF YOU CHANGE HARDWARE (heck, I'd never run repair on XP period).

What you need is a full reformat and re-install.

 

[corkyg]

As Nocturne says, and, you might also need a retail copy of XP as well.

 

[mechBgon]

Furthermore, when you do install, make sure that

1) you have plenty of snacks on hand

2) you have exactly ONE hard drive in the system, the one you want to be the boot drive (add your other drive after Windows Setup is done)

3) you first unplug any memory-card readers or USB drives, even thumb drives, so your hard drive does in fact get drive letter C:\ (add these after Windows Setup is done).

 

[travisray2004]

Try this first,

Make sure your hard drive partition with you windows os is set active.. I would suggest using partition magic 8.

Other the other note, i dont see where using a dell installion disc would hurt anything, since it has the same files as a regurlar windows xp cd. Just has extra files ie. background, screensavers, and drivers. Since i have used my Dell XP reinstallion on my HP, since hp didnt have a disc, and it worked like a charm..

 

[TalonOP]

im not using the dell CD since i bought windows XP. going to try unplugging the other HDD and trying again. What is the reason behind not repair installing noctourne? Hell maybe i should just partition magic, reinstall a fresh copy of windows to salvage my data to another hard drive, and then formatting. Not looking forward to installing all of my programs again thoug....

 

[TalonOP]

ok i just formatted the entire disk and tried a fresh install of windows. No good. Same problem, I'll have windows installed but my PC refuses to boot from disk to complete the installation. I have no idea why.

 

[btcomm1]

Is the hard drive listed as a master or a slave? I thought that HD's had to be masters in order to boot from them.

 

[wanderer27]

SATA or IDE Hard Drives?

If IDE make sure the boot drive is stapped as Master and make sure it is listed in your BIOS boot sequence.

If it's a SATA drive, there may also be some other menus in your BIOS you need to set so that it will be recognized in the Boot sequence.

 

[TalonOP]

yes HD is listed as master and these are IDE drives. I've made sure everything is correct in the bios, and ive even tried changing the boot sequence throughthe boot sequence screen. The computer just refuses to boot from hd.

 

[btcomm1]

When does it prompt you to enter the system disk? Is it a black screen? Also do you have any other HD's you could test in the system? Maybe it's an issue with the motherboard and not the HD. Also do you actually have the jumpers on the HD set as master or just cable select? I would make sure the jumpers are set to master and the other IDE device connected with the HD is set to slave with it's jumpers.

 

[TalonOP]

No, no black screen. It goes through all the tests and displays the drives connected, etc, a normal boot. except for instead of booting windows it says "insert system disk" as if I had a floppy disk inserted. The HD is set to Master and the other one is on cable select. I tried another HDD without luck, but that could be the result of a faulty hard drive. It's really weird because everything seems so normal except for the fact that it simply will not boot from the hard drive.

 

[dfuze]

Reinstall windows, but this time with only one hard drive in the box. Unplug the power cord for the other drive. When you leave more than one drive in there, Windows puts some files on each drive, thus when it tries to boot, it can't find them all. If you don't unplug the 2nd drive, this will continue to be the same result.

 

[TalonOP]

tried this. same problem. PC refuses to boot from HD

 

[btcomm1]

Have you tried setting the HD as master on it's own cable, formatted it then installed windows on it?

If you haven't done all of that I would try that. If you have already done that and it still says enter system disk then I've heard that you might want to remove everything as a possible boot device in the bios except the HD and see if it will boot off the hd.

If it still will not boot off the HD after all that then I'm thinking it might be the motherboard. Not sure what else it would be. The motherboard bios does play a significant part in telling the computer what to boot off of and if the hd's are fine and it won't boot off of them what else would it be, I guess if you haven't tried it already you could try 1 stick of ram at a time and see if that makes any diff. Also if you have another computer, you could try putting the HD that is in this new install in the other computer as a primary master and see if the computer will start to boot of the hd to compelete the install of the OS, if so then I think it would be the motherboard.