boot up problems

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

recently (a few weeks ago) I bought new hardware for my pc.
almost everything but a case, power unit and harddrives.

hooked almost everything up, including my new SATA harddrive, where I wanted
to make a fresh install of windows on, and excluding my 120 gig ATA HD
because of limited ata connections on my new motherboard.

Installed everything and everything is running (for a day of 10 I had a
'disk boot failure' problem that wanted my windows disk in the cd-tray. when
I did this it stopped complaining. and just recently it stopped asking for my
windows cd.. (knock on wood))

so I wanted to get my stuff of the 120 gig HD drive. I found a way in my
setup where I borrowed the ATA cable of one of my 2 cd-drives.

I try to start the pc and it says: '<windows>\system32\hal.dll is missing'

so I disconnected everything but my cd-drive, my sata disk with a fresh
windows install and the 120 gig disk and it starts saying 'disk boot failure'
again. but this time it won't accept my windows cd. I tried rearranging boot
settings in the bios settings but nothing will work. then I tried
disconnecting everything but the sata disk, but still disk boot failure.
connected the cd drive again but still a disk boot failure, even with windows
cd in it. (can windows boot of a sata disk???)

has anybody got a solution to this? I can't find any info on the web that is
specifically for this problem.
 
You might have tweaked the boot.ini file. I've always been cautious when
connecting two drives to the same system that have OS on both drives. When
doing this, you must make sure that both drives are on different controllers.
This may or may not be your problem. What you could do is find another
computer that you can stick your primary drive in, on a secondary controller
(disconnect cd-rom drive), and take a look at the boot.ini and see if the
path is correct.

Hope this helps!
Troy
 
I would start from scratch...reset the BIOS...hook up only the SATA and CD
drive.check the jumpers on the back of the CD drive for master/slave and
hook it to the appropriate location on the cable
Place the Mobo SATA drivers on a floppy............Set the CD as 1st boot
device in BIOS...SATA as 2nd
Start the system with the XP CD in Place and watch for the message "press
any key to boot from CD"
After this the XP installation should start.Go for a new Installation and
watch for "press f6 to load drivers...at which point the floppy needs to be
inserted and XP will load the SATA drivers.
During the new installation you should be able to format the SATA
drive....do so and continue to follow the prompts to finish the
installation.
Once XP is installed and running hook your ATA drive back up ..dont know
about your limited connections,if only One IDE connector hook the HD up as a
slave to the CD..middle connection on the cable and dont forget to change
the jumpers to slave
if you still experience problems..get back to us
peter
 
Back
Top