A7M266 to A7V8X-MX-SE -- "Disk Boot Failure"

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Paul Wylie

I've been running an A7M266 with an Athlon XP 1700+ for nearly three years
with no trouble. My wife's machine was in desperate need of an upgrade,
so I figured I'd give her my A7M266 and I'd get something slightly newer
and faster.

So I ordered the A7V8X-MX-SE from NewEgg. I put the new CPU and new RAM
on the board and put it in my case. The first problem was that the board
would only recognize half of the RAM on the DIMM (it's a Kingston Value
RAM 512MB PC2700 stick I also bought from NewEgg) and it would lock up if
I tried to run the RAM at DDR333 with standard RAM timing. The machine
would complete the POST if I clocked the RAM down to DDR266 or ran it on
DDR333 with the BIOS configured for "SAFE" RAM timing.

I finally decided the RAM is bad and I'm RMA'ing that to NewEgg pronto,
but I'm still dealing with an even thornier problem. I have a Seagate
Barracuda IV ST380021A (80GB) that boots just fine with my A7M266, but now
the A7V8X MX SE is telling me "Disk boot failure. Insert systems[sic]
disk and press enter."

Important details:

Board is A7V8X-MX-SE with BIOS 1003.
HD is ST380021A configured as Master, connected to blue (primary) IDE
controller.

Motherboard sees drive in BIOS configuration screens and shows drive in
POST messages.

CPU is retail-packaged Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton) not overclocked in any
way.

RAM is KVR333X64C25/512

I'd try the RAM from my A7M266, but it's Registered memory, and this board
doesn't support that.

Did I just get a bad board? Or is this kind of problem something I should
be able to get around with a configuration tweak?

TIA!

--Paul
** Note "removemunged" in email address and remove to reply. **
 
Paul Wylie said:
I've been running an A7M266 with an Athlon XP 1700+ for nearly three years
with no trouble. My wife's machine was in desperate need of an upgrade,
so I figured I'd give her my A7M266 and I'd get something slightly newer
and faster.

So I ordered the A7V8X-MX-SE from NewEgg. I put the new CPU and new RAM
on the board and put it in my case. The first problem was that the board
would only recognize half of the RAM on the DIMM (it's a Kingston Value
RAM 512MB PC2700 stick I also bought from NewEgg) and it would lock up if
I tried to run the RAM at DDR333 with standard RAM timing. The machine
would complete the POST if I clocked the RAM down to DDR266 or ran it on
DDR333 with the BIOS configured for "SAFE" RAM timing.

I finally decided the RAM is bad and I'm RMA'ing that to NewEgg pronto,
but I'm still dealing with an even thornier problem. I have a Seagate
Barracuda IV ST380021A (80GB) that boots just fine with my A7M266, but now
the A7V8X MX SE is telling me "Disk boot failure. Insert systems[sic]
disk and press enter."

Important details:

Board is A7V8X-MX-SE with BIOS 1003.
HD is ST380021A configured as Master, connected to blue (primary) IDE
controller.

Motherboard sees drive in BIOS configuration screens and shows drive in
POST messages.

CPU is retail-packaged Athlon XP 2600+ (Barton) not overclocked in any
way.

RAM is KVR333X64C25/512

I'd try the RAM from my A7M266, but it's Registered memory, and this board
doesn't support that.

Did I just get a bad board? Or is this kind of problem something I should
be able to get around with a configuration tweak?

TIA!

--Paul
** Note "removemunged" in email address and remove to reply. **
Click to expand...

And you were thinking, just jamming the system disk in there is
going to work ? It is a different chipset... If you read this
newsgroup regularly, this question is asked frequently.

One thing you can try (no guarantees), is put the disk back in
the A7M266 machine. Change the IDE driver to the standard MS
driver. The theory is, the standard MS IDE driver will work with
both Southbridges, and will allow the disk to be read during boot.
Do update driver in device manager, and see if the OS offers
the MS IDE driver as an option.

If the disk still has the driver for the A7M266 in it, that
driver isn't going to work with the Southbridge, and apparently
Windows won't use BIOS calls to access the disk that far into the
boot sequence, so Windows cannot figure it out for itself.

Now, there are probably plenty of motherboard combinations this
won't work on, but it worked for me going from a P4B to a P4C800-E
Deluxe with Win2K. Initially I was getting a blue screen, until I
loaded the MS IDE driver on the original machine and tried again.
( Of course, I clone the disk as a quick means of doing a backup.
That is in case the disk is ruined by the attempt. Do you have
a backup of that disk ? It pays to have a spare disk handy at
all times - cheaper than losing all your data/email :-) )

A second option is to do a "Repair Install". What this does, is
access an existing Windows install, and "redo" the system files.
It is supposed to leave your applications and settings alone.
You will need a working CDROM drive and your hard disk, for
this to work. Any service packs and Windows updates will be
lost, as the files on the Windows CD will be used instead.
You will have to install any service packs that weren't
incorporated in your Windows install disk.

Many people will tell you to do a fresh install, and
reinstall all your applications. And, they just might be
right. Only time will tell whether this transition is a
happy one (for example, if the hardware abstraction layer
isn't the one you wanted, that is something you might not
be able to fix without a clean install). The Win2K drive I
used didn't have ACPI HAL (because the P4B BIOS at the
time had a broken ACPI implementation and it had to be
turned off), so on the new machine I cannot have ACPI
either, without doing a fresh install.

HTH,
Paul
 
Paul said:
And you were thinking, just jamming the system disk in there is
going to work ? It is a different chipset... If you read this
newsgroup regularly, this question is asked frequently.
Click to expand...

No, I wasn't thinking it was just going to work, but I hoped I would least
get as far as the OS starting to load. I know this question is asked
frequently (I did Google the group before asking), but the solutions seem
to vary and none of the solutions I saw posted for others worked for me.
One thing you can try (no guarantees), is put the disk back in
the A7M266 machine. Change the IDE driver to the standard MS
driver. The theory is, the standard MS IDE driver will work with
both Southbridges, and will allow the disk to be read during boot.
Do update driver in device manager, and see if the OS offers
the MS IDE driver as an option.
Click to expand...

How will that help if I'm getting this message from the BIOS? The error
isn't a Windows error. The BIOS never passes control to the OS boot
loader on the HD.

I'd assumed that I'd have a problem getting the OS to boot once the MS
boot loader took control, and that I'd perform a repair install to get the
drivers squared away. However, I can't get that far because the OS boot
loader never even runs.
If the disk still has the driver for the A7M266 in it, that
driver isn't going to work with the Southbridge, and apparently
Windows won't use BIOS calls to access the disk that far into the
boot sequence, so Windows cannot figure it out for itself.
Click to expand...
[...]

I'm not getting that far into to the boot sequence. There's not a chance
in hell that "Insert systems[sic] disk and press enter" is a Microsoft
message. That smacks of something that came from Award or ASUS. Besides,
just to be sure, I put HDD-1 first in the boot sequence and the floppy
drive third (behind the CD-ROM) and you *can* here the floppy drive rattle
just before the "Insert systems disk" message. That tells me the BIOS
isn't even finding a boot loader on the HD and is trying the CD-ROM and
the floppy.

--Paul
** Note "removemunged" in email address and remove to reply. **
 
Paul said:
And you were thinking, just jamming the system disk in there is
going to work ? It is a different chipset... If you read this
newsgroup regularly, this question is asked frequently.
Click to expand...

No, I wasn't thinking it was just going to work, but I hoped I would least
get as far as the OS starting to load. I know this question is asked
frequently (I did Google the group before asking), but the solutions seem
to vary and none of the solutions I saw posted for others worked for me.
One thing you can try (no guarantees), is put the disk back in
the A7M266 machine. Change the IDE driver to the standard MS
driver. The theory is, the standard MS IDE driver will work with
both Southbridges, and will allow the disk to be read during boot.
Do update driver in device manager, and see if the OS offers
the MS IDE driver as an option.
Click to expand...

How will that help if I'm getting this message from the BIOS? The error
isn't a Windows error. The BIOS never passes control to the OS boot
loader on the HD.

I'd assumed that I'd have a problem getting the OS to boot once the MS
boot loader took control, and that I'd perform a repair install to get the
drivers squared away. However, I can't get that far because the OS boot
loader never even runs.
If the disk still has the driver for the A7M266 in it, that
driver isn't going to work with the Southbridge, and apparently
Windows won't use BIOS calls to access the disk that far into the
boot sequence, so Windows cannot figure it out for itself.
Click to expand...
[...]

I'm not getting that far into to the boot sequence. There's not a chance
in hell that "Insert systems[sic] disk and press enter" is a Microsoft
message. That smacks of something that came from Award or ASUS. Besides,
just to be sure, I put HDD-1 first in the boot sequence and the floppy
drive third (behind the CD-ROM) and you *can* hear the floppy drive rattle
just before the "Insert systems disk" message. That tells me the BIOS
isn't even finding a boot loader on the HD and is trying the CD-ROM and
the floppy.

--Paul
** Note "removemunged" in email address and remove to reply. **

This post was revised to correct a typo.
 
Paul Wylie said:
Paul said:
And you were thinking, just jamming the system disk in there is
going to work ? It is a different chipset... If you read this
newsgroup regularly, this question is asked frequently.
Click to expand...

No, I wasn't thinking it was just going to work, but I hoped I would least
get as far as the OS starting to load. I know this question is asked
frequently (I did Google the group before asking), but the solutions seem
to vary and none of the solutions I saw posted for others worked for me.
One thing you can try (no guarantees), is put the disk back in
the A7M266 machine. Change the IDE driver to the standard MS
driver. The theory is, the standard MS IDE driver will work with
both Southbridges, and will allow the disk to be read during boot.
Do update driver in device manager, and see if the OS offers
the MS IDE driver as an option.
Click to expand...

How will that help if I'm getting this message from the BIOS? The error
isn't a Windows error. The BIOS never passes control to the OS boot
loader on the HD.

I'd assumed that I'd have a problem getting the OS to boot once the MS
boot loader took control, and that I'd perform a repair install to get the
drivers squared away. However, I can't get that far because the OS boot
loader never even runs.
If the disk still has the driver for the A7M266 in it, that
driver isn't going to work with the Southbridge, and apparently
Windows won't use BIOS calls to access the disk that far into the
boot sequence, so Windows cannot figure it out for itself.
Click to expand...
[...]

I'm not getting that far into to the boot sequence. There's not a chance
in hell that "Insert systems[sic] disk and press enter" is a Microsoft
message. That smacks of something that came from Award or ASUS. Besides,
just to be sure, I put HDD-1 first in the boot sequence and the floppy
drive third (behind the CD-ROM) and you *can* hear the floppy drive rattle
just before the "Insert systems disk" message. That tells me the BIOS
isn't even finding a boot loader on the HD and is trying the CD-ROM and
the floppy.

--Paul
** Note "removemunged" in email address and remove to reply. **

This post was revised to correct a typo.
Click to expand...

Sorry, I thought you'd got into the boot phase, and then it stopped.

Did the old machine have more than one disk ? Some people manage
somehow, to get part of the boot process on another disk, such that
both disks are needed for the machine to boot. I cannot remember
whether this is from installing multiple OSes or not.

http://groups.google.com/[email protected]

I wonder, if your disk doesn't have "the right stuff" in the MBR,
whether these would be the symptoms. If you have a second disk,
perhaps your old system vectored from the MBR on the other disk ?
(Not that I understand all the options here :-) )

http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=xVqFa.39445$rO.3709611@newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net

Have you tried booting from your Windows install CD ? What does it
see on the disk ?

I hesiitate to recommend any "experiments", for fear of trashing
the disk.

Paul
 
Paul said:
Did the old machine have more than one disk ? Some people manage
somehow, to get part of the boot process on another disk, such that
both disks are needed for the machine to boot. I cannot remember
whether this is from installing multiple OSes or not.
Click to expand...

Yes, it did. The OS was installed long before the second disk, though.
The primary disk is 80GB and the secondary disk is 200GB. I was trying to
keep things simple before adding in the second drive, but that's worth a
shot.
http://groups.google.com/[email protected]
Click to expand...

That's an interesting article, and I will have a look at this tonight when
I get home.
I wonder, if your disk doesn't have "the right stuff" in the MBR,
whether these would be the symptoms. If you have a second disk,
perhaps your old system vectored from the MBR on the other disk ?
(Not that I understand all the options here :-) )
Click to expand...
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=xVqFa.39445$rO.3709611@
newsread1.prod.itd.earthlink.net
Click to expand...

Hmmm.. That second article is scary.
Have you tried booting from your Windows install CD ? What does it
see on the disk ?
Click to expand...

Not yet. I was convinced I was doing something wrong WRT to the BIOS
seeing the HD's boot loader and I was reluctant to do anything with the
install CD in case it made things worse.
I hesiitate to recommend any "experiments", for fear of trashing
the disk.
Click to expand...

Agreed, and I hesitate to engage in any for the same reason.

I'll try putting my second drive in tonight when I get home. I think I'll
also try putting just the first drive back in with my old MB/CPU/RAM and
see if it boots. If it boots with one drive on the old combo, then my
guess is that something is wrong with the new MB.

--Paul
** Note "removemunged" in email address and remove to reply. **
 
Paul said:
I wonder, if your disk doesn't have "the right stuff" in the MBR,
whether these would be the symptoms. If you have a second disk,
perhaps your old system vectored from the MBR on the other disk ?
(Not that I understand all the options here :-) )
Click to expand...
[...]

Well, I tested that theory last night, and the answer is that the system
boots fine with just the 80GB Seagate drive on my old MB.

I knew I couldn't use my old RAM on the new board (it's registered ECC
PC2100 and the new board doesn't support registered RAM), but I figured
I'd try the new RAM on the old board. No luck. The thing never booted,
and all I got was a repetitive beeping from the speaker (not a sequence,
just a beep every half second or so continuously). The A7M266 is supposed
to be compatible with both registered *and* unbuffered RAM, but it wasn't
happy with the PC2700 Kingston stick.

Heavy sigh.

--Paul
** Note "removemunged" in email address and remove to reply. **
 
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