Can't install or boot Vista without an IDE drive present

  • Thread starter Thread starter Ray Costanzo
  • Start date Start date
R

Ray Costanzo

Hi group,

I built a new computer for Vista (specs below) that has two SATA drives.
Prior to installing Vista, I installed XP Pro 64 on a partition on SATA
drive #1. Everything went fine with that installation, and I did not have
to do the "press F6 to install drivers" during the installation. XP
recognized the drives and installed to one without issue.

I then tried to install Vista 64 Ultimate on a second partition. When I
booted with the Vista disc, I got the intitial "loading files" message, and
then got the black screen with the Microsoft logo and the moving color bar
at the bottom. There it just sat and sat. I left it overnight to verify it
wasn't just being slow at that point. Long story short, I discovered that
when I hooked up an IDE hard drive to the one IDE port my motherboard has, I
was able to install Vista without any problems. AND, I was able to install
it on the SATA drive I wanted as well, #1, partition 2. The IDE drive
itself wasn't touched at all during the installation; the boot files are on
the SATA drive as they should be.

After getting it installed, I removed the IDE drive, and Vista hung at the
same black screen as it did during the installation. When booting in safe
mode, I see it hang as it loads crcdisk.sys. I read the one KB article that
seemed relevant (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/922976) and applied the
change in there, but the result was the same. As it stands now, I'm just
going to leave this ancient 3.2 GB IDE drive plugged in, as that is the only
way I can get the OS to boot. This isn't a big deal, but I would love to
find out what this is all about. I've played with just about every relevant
setting I can find in the BIOS, and no matter what I do, I must keep that
drive plugged in if I want the OS to load. My natural instinct would be to
do the F6 during a reinstall to install the SATA drivers for the hell of it,
but as I described above, I don't even get that far in the installation to
get that option, nor can I get a command prompt with F10.

Thanks for any info!

Ray at home

Computer info:

Motherboard: MSI K9N Platinum
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 3800+
RAM: 2 GB of Corsair XMS2-6400
Videocard: XFX GeForce 7900GS
SATA Drives: 120 GB, 250 GB Seagate Barracude 7200.9
Crutch: 3.2 GB IBM hard drive from 1939 or something
 
Hi Ray,

Yep, seen this happen. Vista likes to enumerate on the IDE drive if it finds
one, then install to the SATA drives. While the bulk of everything is
written to the SATA drive, it wants the IDE to boot from (guess where it
thinks the master boot loader is?). The solution is generally to install
without an IDE drive installed using manufacturer supplied drivers
(particularly if this is a hardware RAID).

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org
 
I at least feel validated, thanks Rick. What was so odd was that there was
no IDE drive for it to enumerate. Although, actually, now that I think
about it, I did have a DVD drive on the IDE cable. Perhaps if I had removed
that... If I hadn't already activated Vista, I'd reinstall it tonight.

Thanks,

Ray at work
 
This is going to be a recurring problem for the do it your selfers! (yeah -
I know there is no such word) <grin>

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Same here. My own computer helped me through the learning curve.

NOW, if I could just remember to disconnect the extra drives when working on
someone else's computer.........



--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
Yes it is. I am running at the 32 bit level.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
What about if I have XP running on a bootable SATA and I do an upgrade to
Vista on tha same drive.
 
To be on the safe side, disconnect any IDE drives before you begin the
upgrade. Trust me on this. If Vista begins to write code to the IDE drive,
instead of 100% to the SATA drive, you may lose "everything" on the IDE
drive.

I have seen this now 4-5 different times. It is reproducible. I can make it
happen at will (though you really don't want it to happen to YOU).

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

Quote from George Ankner:
If you knew as much as you think you know,
You would realize that you don't know what you thought you knew!
 
A bootable SATA drive appears to the computer the same as one installed
internally. The outboard connector works just like a SATA 5 on my system (I
have four SATA solo connectors on the mobo). I did upgrades from XP to
Vista on just such a drive all through the beta program.
 
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