help: my system is hosed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dave Lilly
  • Start date Start date
D

Dave Lilly

Hi all,

I am really struggling here, I have been a bit gung ho and its coming back
to haunt me.

Essentially I have totally fdisked my boot drive and erased the MBR using
the MBRTool on Ultimate Boot CB thinking this would be a good starting
position from which to do a clean install of Vista Beta 2.

With the DVD drive set to be the primary boot device I have restarted with
the Windows disk in the drive.
My CD/DVD drive is found on IDE Channel 1 Master with nothing on Secondary.
My boot drive is found as the Channel 2 Master, again, there is no secondary
drive on that channel.
I have a couple of RAIDED drives on SATA.

After the DMI pool data is verified I get the BOOT FROM CD option, I choose
it by hitting Enter. At this point the screen goes blank and the cursor
hovers in the top left of the screen, I get a couple of flashes from the CD
drive LED and then, nothing. Weirdly though the hard drive LED is
continually lit. After a few minutes I get a warning beep, I get scared and
I shut the system down!

Now, I am a lowly app developer, I have no knowledge of hardware or OS
internals and I am completely stuck.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks
Dave
 
Dave said:
Hi all,

I am really struggling here, I have been a bit gung ho and its coming back
to haunt me.

Essentially I have totally fdisked my boot drive and erased the MBR using
the MBRTool on Ultimate Boot CB thinking this would be a good starting
position from which to do a clean install of Vista Beta 2.

With the DVD drive set to be the primary boot device I have restarted with
the Windows disk in the drive.
My CD/DVD drive is found on IDE Channel 1 Master with nothing on Secondary.
My boot drive is found as the Channel 2 Master, again, there is no secondary
drive on that channel.
I have a couple of RAIDED drives on SATA.

After the DMI pool data is verified I get the BOOT FROM CD option, I choose
it by hitting Enter. At this point the screen goes blank and the cursor
hovers in the top left of the screen, I get a couple of flashes from the CD
drive LED and then, nothing. Weirdly though the hard drive LED is
continually lit. After a few minutes I get a warning beep, I get scared and
I shut the system down!

Now, I am a lowly app developer, I have no knowledge of hardware or OS
internals and I am completely stuck.

Can anyone help me out?

Thanks
Dave
Click to expand...

Why is your optical drive on Channel 1 and you
hard drive on Channel 2? I had a problem with a
configuration like that once and had to switch
things around.

Which drive do you want to install Vista to?
The IDE or your SATA RAID? I have seen posts
here where people could not Vista to install to
a RAID, or, the RAID had to be
disabled/disconnected to install to an IDE drive.
 
Why is your optical drive on Channel 1 and you hard drive on Channel 2?

Because that's how it came!! The builders deviated from my specs on a couple
of points, I have never really had much confidence in the build quality and
now it seems this is another issue they have introduced that I will have to
put right.

I want to put the OS on the IDE drive, is there anything I need to know?

Thanks for the tip.
 
Dave said:
Because that's how it came!! The builders deviated from my specs on a couple
of points, I have never really had much confidence in the build quality and
now it seems this is another issue they have introduced that I will have to
put right.

I want to put the OS on the IDE drive, is there anything I need to know?

Thanks for the tip.
Click to expand...

Maybe the 1st step should be to disable the RAID
in the BIOS so it is not visible to Vista.

If that doesn't work, then you'll have to open
up the computer and switch the cabling of the
IDE drives. Either switch them at the
motherboard connectors or switch the cables at
the back of drives. You may need to look at
your BIOS settings for your drives afterwards to
ensure the channel 1 is "Auto" detect and not
"CD/DVD".

Other settings to check for Channel 1, or
Primary Master, if applicable to you BIOS settings:

LBA/Large -> Auto
Block -> Auto
PIO Mode -> Auto
DMA Mode -> Auto
SMART -> Auto
32Bit Data Transfer -> Enabled
 
Dave said:
Hi all,

I am really struggling here, I have been a bit gung ho and its coming
back to haunt me.

Essentially I have totally fdisked my boot drive and erased the MBR
using the MBRTool on Ultimate Boot CB thinking this would be a good
starting position from which to do a clean install of Vista Beta 2.

With the DVD drive set to be the primary boot device I have restarted
with the Windows disk in the drive.
My CD/DVD drive is found on IDE Channel 1 Master with nothing on
Secondary. My boot drive is found as the Channel 2 Master, again,
there is no secondary drive on that channel.
I have a couple of RAIDED drives on SATA.

After the DMI pool data is verified I get the BOOT FROM CD option, I
choose it by hitting Enter. At this point the screen goes blank and
the cursor hovers in the top left of the screen, I get a couple of
flashes from the CD drive LED and then, nothing. Weirdly though the
hard drive LED is continually lit. After a few minutes I get a
warning beep, I get scared and I shut the system down!

Now, I am a lowly app developer, I have no knowledge of hardware or OS
internals and I am completely stuck.

Can anyone help me out?
Click to expand...

Did the Ultimate Boot CD boot OK in the same DVD drive? If it did then
something is wrong with the Vista DVD or the drive isn't working properly
with DVD's. Is there data you need to keep safe on the RAID array? If there
is then I recommend you physically disconnect the SATA drives while
installing Vista. My recommendation would be to set the IDE hard drive as
the master on the primary IDE controller, set the DVD drive somewhere else,
disconnect the SATA drives and install Vista. Once Vista is installed you
can try to install the RAID drivers and reconnect the SATA drives if you
want. If the data on those drives is important to you then I recommend you
leave them disconnected while testing Vista.

Make sure you have backups of any important data before doing any of the
above suggestions.
 
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