Win XP boot issue
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Win XP boot issue
Just started getting boot failure on a SP3 setup: much 'clicking' of hard drives, Default BIOS setttings 'restored', and what appears to be happening is that the 'master' boot drive seems to be getting 'forgotten' as when I reset it (ESC, select drive to hard and appropriate disk) to the drive with boot.ini on, I get a normal bootup. At first I thought it was a dodgy power feed to the boot drive, but now I am not convinced. What can affect the ?BIOS? settings for boot drive?
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It might just be a little slow telling the system it's ready. This might be time to download a tool that will report the drive's SMART status to you: it will check several items and give you an estimated time to failure. Most drives support SMART, but unfortunately XP ignores all the warnings over many months, only acknowledging the "I'm dedded" status. There are various free utilities out there, including from the various drive manufacturers. Wikipedia will point you in the right direction if you want to read more.
You may also want to simply wiggle the data and power cables to the drive, in case it's a micron of crud in the wrong place.
You may also want to simply wiggle the data and power cables to the drive, in case it's a micron of crud in the wrong place.
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I've done the 'wiggling' etc and checked the volts at pins while 'wiggling' and all seems ok - also have been running HDD Health which shows all ok on the boot drive. It seems as if the system is 'forgetting' which is the boot drive.
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If the BIOS settings are being reset whenever the machine is powered up it may be that they are being corrupted due to a loss of CMOS power.
Try changing the CMOS battery - usually a CR2032 watch battery, that should fix it.
--rob
Try changing the CMOS battery - usually a CR2032 watch battery, that should fix it.
--rob
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Rob - it is 'irregular - started yesterday with a blue screen shutdown and then 2 boots, one reboot yesterday and a cold start today. No rhyme nor reason.
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I would go with Rob If the battery is getting low it could well only be intermittent at this stage. Having said that I had a similar problem with an old m/c of mine, took the battery out to find out what it was and found it a bit corroded, cleaned it up along with the contacts and it was fine. The only other possibility is low volts from the PSU to the bios chip making reading it a lottery.
The above is assuming its not a drive problem, I've also had problems mixing SATA abd IDE drives, the conclusion reached was occasionally it was seeing the IDE before the SATA one and the bios was then trying to boot from that.
As another thought, if you've got "auto-detect" on for the disk, try turning it off.
The above is assuming its not a drive problem, I've also had problems mixing SATA abd IDE drives, the conclusion reached was occasionally it was seeing the IDE before the SATA one and the bios was then trying to boot from that.
As another thought, if you've got "auto-detect" on for the disk, try turning it off.
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I've had a similar problem - twice, on two different machines - caused by the IDE cable being faulty. Yes, the big ribbon thing that costs about £2. I now keep a couple of spares 
How many hard drives?
Another thing I learned the hard way. Two ATA connectors, 2 SATA connectors. Soooo,
Two hard drives plugged to SATA, two DVD writers to ATA '0'. Gave me a spare ATA for my old drive with all the archives on.
Worked!
Next day, didn't work. Disconnected ATA drive, all ok. Plugged in ATA again. Ouch. ATA drive had been killed, fortunately after giving me the archives.
Responded to a low-level format on er-indoors' machine - but haven't dared use it again in my machine.
But why did it work in the first place?
Two hard drives plugged to SATA, two DVD writers to ATA '0'. Gave me a spare ATA for my old drive with all the archives on.
Worked!
Next day, didn't work. Disconnected ATA drive, all ok. Plugged in ATA again. Ouch. ATA drive had been killed, fortunately after giving me the archives.
Responded to a low-level format on er-indoors' machine - but haven't dared use it again in my machine.
But why did it work in the first place?
Oho!
...makes 5 channels overall?
Did I read somewhere (think I did whilst scratching my head & Googling) that some motherboards can only reliably manage 4 ATA channels of whatever flavour? Just maybe...
Did I read somewhere (think I did whilst scratching my head & Googling) that some motherboards can only reliably manage 4 ATA channels of whatever flavour? Just maybe...
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OK! Not sure what to do about that. I have 2 IDE conns and 2 SATA on the mobo. I assumed that would give me up to 6? A bit of a grey area for me.
Same problem this am on initial boot - it had 'lost' the boot seqeunce.
Same problem this am on initial boot - it had 'lost' the boot seqeunce.
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ATA is up to 2 devices per channel, and on most motherboards there are 2 channels. Hence the cable with master & slave devices. So, 4 devices without adding another controller. SATA is one device per channel, hence one cable per device; motherboards commonly support 2 to 6 channels. All things being equal, the ATA and SATA hardware don't know/care about each other. There are exceptions, but they don't creep up on you unannounced. In your case, 2 ATA connectors + 2 SATA connectors = (4+2)=6 devices.
I still think you're in "wiggle every cable and run a SMART utility" territory at the moment. Swap out Since you've got 2 ATA cables in there, try swapping them over. I guess change the motherboard battery if it's trivial, but they're usually not CR2032 these days, and the sign of a dying battery is usually incorrect clock time when you boot rather than boot order, since boot order is set, on the ATA bus, by cable/drive connection. It's unclear from you previous messages, but have you recently changed to booting from SATA?
I still think you're in "wiggle every cable and run a SMART utility" territory at the moment. Swap out Since you've got 2 ATA cables in there, try swapping them over. I guess change the motherboard battery if it's trivial, but they're usually not CR2032 these days, and the sign of a dying battery is usually incorrect clock time when you boot rather than boot order, since boot order is set, on the ATA bus, by cable/drive connection. It's unclear from you previous messages, but have you recently changed to booting from SATA?
From BFiva: " since boot order is set, on the ATA bus, by cable/drive connection. "
Not quite. Hierarchy is set by cable/drive connection. Boot order is set by bios. On my MoBo, and on 'erindoorses, too, I've used the bios to boot from channel 0 device 0 and/or channel 0 device 1 when installing new op system, thus making my former 'c' drive the new 'd' drive. Then I can copy my docs across at my leisure... or not, when I was playing with Vista in beta - what a terrible experience that was. But then I could go back to '0-0' again without losing anything.
And that of course is the sort of thing I was trying to do when using a fifth drive. I'm always trying to be too clever.
Not quite. Hierarchy is set by cable/drive connection. Boot order is set by bios. On my MoBo, and on 'erindoorses, too, I've used the bios to boot from channel 0 device 0 and/or channel 0 device 1 when installing new op system, thus making my former 'c' drive the new 'd' drive. Then I can copy my docs across at my leisure... or not, when I was playing with Vista in beta - what a terrible experience that was. But then I could go back to '0-0' again without losing anything.
And that of course is the sort of thing I was trying to do when using a fifth drive. I'm always trying to be too clever.
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Not quite
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BF - I appreciate your sheltering me from the rough bits of computing, but what about the 'correct' clock time I have? It is relevant to know where the boot order is coming from.Normal start this am
