Bizarre boot problem with new WD 120 gig drive. Help, please.

  • Thread starter Thread starter mrsfixit
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mrsfixit

I recently purchased a WD1200JB 120 gig drive. It is to replace a WD 80 gig as
the boot drive on my P4 machine.

P4 1.9 ghz
MSI Ultra-C mainboard
768 megs Crucial DDR 2700 ram
Win2000 Pro

I never had a problem setting up a hard drive. I've done it several times in
this machine. No other hardware has been changed.

I partitioned and formatted using the W2K disk, and set up 5 NTFS partitions.

After installing W2K, I began experiencing a bizarre boot problem.

I am getting the error message "System32\NTOSKRNL.EXE is either missing or
corrupt", and the machine won't boot. However, if I give it the 3 finger salute,
it reboots just fine. I can't seem to reproduce the problem except on the very
first boot up of the day, after it has been sitting all night. After that the
hard drive works fine.

I don't leave my computers running at night. On in the a.m., off at night.

I am using an 80 connector cable, and jumper is set at cable select as stated in
the directions. Drive is the only device on the primary IDE channel on the
motherboard. I have never experienced any problems when installing other hard
drives on this or any other machine.

I also ran the extended test using the Western Digital WinDLG utility, and it
found no problems.

Please, can anyone shed some light on this? I don't know what to do.

P.S.- I am leaving tomorrow for Montreal- so anybody that answers or emails- I
won't be able to get back to you until Tuesday.

Thanks for any help.

Email addy below, easy to figure out... <g>

Candy Nilsson
Tannersville, PA

mrsfixit3

at

yahoo

dot

com
 
After installing W2K, I began experiencing a bizarre boot problem.
I am getting the error message "System32\NTOSKRNL.EXE is either missing or
corrupt", and the machine won't boot. However, if I give it the 3 finger salute,
it reboots just fine. I can't seem to reproduce the problem except on the very
first boot up of the day, after it has been sitting all night. After that the
hard drive works fine.
Click to expand...
Sounds like the computer is ready for data off the hard drive before it is
up to speed. Doubt that it is the power supply as you said it was working
fine on the other drive. You amy be able to go into the cmos setup and set
it so that it counts the memory when you start it up (disable fast startup).
This will slow it down somewhat on the startup and give the dirve time to
get up to speed.
 
Sounds like the computer is ready for data off the hard drive before it is
up to speed. Doubt that it is the power supply as you said it was working
fine on the other drive. You amy be able to go into the cmos setup and set
it so that it counts the memory when you start it up (disable fast startup).
This will slow it down somewhat on the startup and give the dirve time to
get up to speed.
Click to expand...

Ralph,
I will certainly give this a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

I just checked my BIOS, and it is listed as Quick Boot. I disabled it.

However, I won't get a chance to test it until Tuesday.

I'll let you know if it works.

Candice

mrsfixit3
at
yahoo
dot
com
 
in news:[email protected]:
Ralph,
I will certainly give this a try. Thanks for the suggestion.

I just checked my BIOS, and it is listed as Quick Boot. I disabled it.

However, I won't get a chance to test it until Tuesday.

I'll let you know if it works.

Candice

mrsfixit3
at
yahoo
dot
com
Click to expand...

Might also want to check if your primary hard drive (for booting) is at
the *end* of the IDE cable if you are using cable select. Otherwise,
configure the drives as master and slave if they are on the same IDE
port, or both as master if on different IDE ports. Make sure the boot
order in BIOS matches your hardware configuration (so the OS isn't
trying to boot off the second physical hard drive and the first just has
data files).
 
in news:[email protected]:

Might also want to check if your primary hard drive (for booting) is at
the *end* of the IDE cable if you are using cable select. Otherwise,
configure the drives as master and slave if they are on the same IDE
port, or both as master if on different IDE ports. Make sure the boot
order in BIOS matches your hardware configuration (so the OS isn't
trying to boot off the second physical hard drive and the first just has
data files).
Click to expand...

Hi all,
I'm back from Montreal (and boy was it cold there...<g>) and this is how things
stand right now.

The machine was able to boot ok this morning, see details below.

Yes, it's an ATA drive, and at the end of the cable. And WD is very specific
about the jumper being set to cable select when using the 80 wire cable,
regardless of whether there are 1 or 2 drives on the cable.

I took Ralph's suggestion about disabling Quick Boot.

I also installed Service Pack 4 on my W2K.

While futzing about in the BIOS I also noticed that the setting for the 3rd boot
device was set to disabled.

I had a Promise TX2 133 controller card in the machine, which was removed in
order to install the new drive.

The previous drive was booting off the 80 gig on the Promise card with no
problem.

It didn't occur to me that when removing the card, the BIOS was going to reset
itself and disable the third boot device.

It was set to seek other boot devices, which is why it still eventually booted
from the hard drive. I have the boot configuration set to:

1st: CDROM
2nd: Floppy
3rd: Hard drive

I only have the one drive attached to the IDE cable.

Now, whether the successful boot today is due to changing the setting in the
BIOS for 3rd boot device, turning off Quick Boot, or installing SP4 I don't
know.

I am going to set Quick Boot back to enabled, and try it again tomorrow morning.

I will keep you all posted.

I'd like to say thanks for all the good suggestions!!!

If it still works tomorrow morning perhaps the problem is solved.

Quick question- in the BIOS, 32 Bit Transfer Mode is set to disabled. Is this
correct? I am using W2K and NTFS. Just wondering.

Thanks again.

Candice

mrsfixit3
at
yahoo
dot
com
 
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