A7N8X-Deluxe Perplexing Boot Issues.

  • Thread starter Thread starter sean
  • Start date Start date
S

sean

Long story short - my system refuses to boot from SATA, IDE or CD-ROM
reporting "no system disk found."

My system was hideously clogged with dust so I decided to strip it right
down for a good clean. Having re-assembled it, it would no longer boot from
the SATA drive (this was the only drive in the system) - the bios was
reporting no system disk found.

The Sil bios driver would load correctly and the drive appeared in the Sil
bios screen and correctly showed it's size. I checked the raid bios screen
to double check and it also correctly identified the presence of the drive.
The bios boot sequence was correctly set (i.e primary SCSI).

I tried resetting the bios by removing the battery - no effect. I figured
there must be something wrong with the SATA drive and so removed it and
tried an old IDE drive instead. Strangely I get the same scenario again,
everything appears fine in bios and post screen but then it reports "no
system disk found". Exact same scenario trying to boot from a bootable
CD-ROM - "no system disk found"

Any ideas please?

TIA
 
sean said:
Long story short - my system refuses to boot from SATA, IDE or CD-ROM
reporting "no system disk found."

My system was hideously clogged with dust so I decided to strip it
right down for a good clean. Having re-assembled it, it would no
longer boot from the SATA drive (this was the only drive in the
system) - the bios was reporting no system disk found.

The Sil bios driver would load correctly and the drive appeared in
the Sil bios screen and correctly showed it's size. I checked the
raid bios screen to double check and it also correctly identified the
presence of the drive. The bios boot sequence was correctly set (i.e
primary SCSI).
I tried resetting the bios by removing the battery - no effect. I
figured there must be something wrong with the SATA drive and so
removed it and tried an old IDE drive instead. Strangely I get the
same scenario again, everything appears fine in bios and post screen
but then it reports "no system disk found". Exact same scenario
trying to boot from a bootable CD-ROM - "no system disk found"

Any ideas please?
Click to expand...

Is there a non system disk in drive a: ?
 
sean wrote:

No I actually have drive a: disconnected and disabled in the BIOS atm.
Click to expand...

It could be interesting to see whether the system would boot off a floppy,
if you tried.
 
Egil Solberg said:
sean wrote:



It could be interesting to see whether the system would boot off a floppy,
if you tried.
Click to expand...

I'll give it a go tomorrow. Don't have bootable floppies here atm.
 
Long story short - my system refuses to boot from SATA, IDE or CD-ROM
reporting "no system disk found."

My system was hideously clogged with dust so I decided to strip it right
down for a good clean. Having re-assembled it, it would no longer boot from
the SATA drive (this was the only drive in the system) - the bios was
reporting no system disk found.

The Sil bios driver would load correctly and the drive appeared in the Sil
bios screen and correctly showed it's size. I checked the raid bios screen
to double check and it also correctly identified the presence of the drive.
The bios boot sequence was correctly set (i.e primary SCSI).

I tried resetting the bios by removing the battery - no effect. I figured
there must be something wrong with the SATA drive and so removed it and
tried an old IDE drive instead. Strangely I get the same scenario again,
everything appears fine in bios and post screen but then it reports "no
system disk found". Exact same scenario trying to boot from a bootable
CD-ROM - "no system disk found"

Any ideas please?

TIA
Click to expand...

Something appears to be amiss with the SATA driver, reinstall drivers
from the CD that came with the MB. This is almost always the problem.
 
bowse said:
Something appears to be amiss with the SATA driver, reinstall drivers
from the CD that came with the MB. This is almost always the problem.
Click to expand...

These being the special drivers loaded by the Bios ??
 
Something appears to be amiss with the SATA driver, reinstall drivers
from the CD that came with the MB. This is almost always the problem.
Click to expand...

How does one install drivers, when the machine won't boot into any
operating system?

I'd think that the SATA drives MBR had become corrupt except for the
fact that the machine won't boot from other drives, either. That
raises these questions:
1 -- is OP positive that the IDE drive he tried had an OS installed on
it?
2 -- what bootable CD was tried in the CD drive? Has it been proven
to be bootable by putting it in a different computer? Was a different
bootable CD tried to make sure that the first wasn't flawed, damaged,
etc.?
3 -- Since the CMOS battery was removed, is it possible that the CD
drive was taken out of the boot order altogether so that the BIOS
doesn't even look for a bootable disk there?

If the machine completes it's POST, it should be OK as soon as it sees
an MBR somewhere. When blowing dust out of a machine, it's possible,
almost likely, that a cable could be dislodged. I once had a machine
that wouldn't boot because the power cable (not the data cable) had
been loosened on the floppy drive. The point is that reseating every
card and cable is an easy troubleshooting step to do.

Ron
 
sean said:
Long story short - my system refuses to boot from SATA, IDE or CD-ROM
reporting "no system disk found."

My system was hideously clogged with dust so I decided to strip it right
down for a good clean. Having re-assembled it, it would no longer boot
from the SATA drive (this was the only drive in the system) - the bios was
reporting no system disk found.

The Sil bios driver would load correctly and the drive appeared in the Sil
bios screen and correctly showed it's size. I checked the raid bios screen
to double check and it also correctly identified the presence of the
drive. The bios boot sequence was correctly set (i.e primary SCSI).

I tried resetting the bios by removing the battery - no effect. I figured
there must be something wrong with the SATA drive and so removed it and
tried an old IDE drive instead. Strangely I get the same scenario again,
everything appears fine in bios and post screen but then it reports "no
system disk found". Exact same scenario trying to boot from a bootable
CD-ROM - "no system disk found"

Any ideas please?

TIA

In the system BIOS you have to tell it to boot from SCSI
Click to expand...
 
Long story short - my system refuses to boot from SATA, IDE or CD-ROM
Did you try changing the drive boot order so that the hard drive or
optical drive is first and not the floppy? A floppy cable problem
could cause that. I also suggest disconnecting the floppy cable
from the motherboard just in case.
 
sean said:
Long story short - my system refuses to boot from SATA, IDE or CD-ROM
reporting "no system disk found."

My system was hideously clogged with dust so I decided to strip it right
down for a good clean. Having re-assembled it, it would no longer boot from
the SATA drive (this was the only drive in the system) - the bios was
reporting no system disk found.

The Sil bios driver would load correctly and the drive appeared in the Sil
bios screen and correctly showed it's size. I checked the raid bios screen
to double check and it also correctly identified the presence of the drive.
The bios boot sequence was correctly set (i.e primary SCSI).

I tried resetting the bios by removing the battery - no effect. I figured
there must be something wrong with the SATA drive and so removed it and
tried an old IDE drive instead. Strangely I get the same scenario again,
everything appears fine in bios and post screen but then it reports "no
system disk found". Exact same scenario trying to boot from a bootable
CD-ROM - "no system disk found"

Any ideas please?

TIA
Click to expand...
Might not hurt to have a check see if any of the boards jumpers got
knocked/sucked off the board during cleaning!
Rob
 
sean said:
Long story short - my system refuses to boot from SATA, IDE or CD-ROM
reporting "no system disk found."

My system was hideously clogged with dust so I decided to strip it right
down for a good clean. Having re-assembled it, it would no longer boot
from the SATA drive (this was the only drive in the system) - the bios was
reporting no system disk found.

The Sil bios driver would load correctly and the drive appeared in the Sil
bios screen and correctly showed it's size. I checked the raid bios screen
to double check and it also correctly identified the presence of the
drive. The bios boot sequence was correctly set (i.e primary SCSI).

I tried resetting the bios by removing the battery - no effect. I figured
there must be something wrong with the SATA drive and so removed it and
tried an old IDE drive instead. Strangely I get the same scenario again,
everything appears fine in bios and post screen but then it reports "no
system disk found". Exact same scenario trying to boot from a bootable
CD-ROM - "no system disk found"

Any ideas please?

TIA
Click to expand...

Thanks for all the replies.

I did make some progress. Having reconnected the floppy drive I was suddenly
able to boot from a DVD - very odd. But it would only boot from the DVD some
of the time. I then realised that the IDE drive I had connected probably had
no MBR. So I started installing Win XP on it. However, whenever the Win XP
installer wanted to reboot it could no longer access the files on the DVD.
Hmmn strange.

I connected another IDE drive with Win XP on it and was able to gain access
to the SATA drive in Windows and retrieve all the data from it thankfully.

So I suppose I must have done some damage to MB or shifted some dust
somewhere important.

I'll strip it down again and start from scratch.
 
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