self build system with (new) msi motherboard, boot from cd, install os, on reboot fails to find ntldr. hard disks fine (verified by another pc and ntldr is there. cables fine (taken from another machine).

can do everything with hard disks except boot from them. no raid, bios virus detection turned off, plug and play os set to yes.

HELP....

out of date firmware or knacked mobo ?

 

What OS are you using? MS recommends P & P set to OFF for Win 2K and XP especially due to ACPI.

 

xp and 2000 tried. already tried turnin that off thanks....

[Edited by Riftzone - 11/25/2002 11:05:28 AM]

 

Hi Riftzone, hmmmmm good question.

Have you checked to see if the boot partition is set to active or not ??

 

Really silly one that I'm sure you've covered but

Bios set to boot off HDD not CD?

 

partition is active as another pc boots from it fine.

set to boot from harddisk0 thanks PTMW

just to make clear - i'm a systems administrator lookin after the microsoft infrastructure on arguably the worlds biggest network, so i'm fine with th o/s side of thangs.

it was more a pc builder angle i was lookin for - incompatible firmware/drive issues etc. known issues with motherboards, specific bios settings etc

cheers

 

LBA mode & geometry issue?

 

This normally happens if there is a floppy left in the drive, though Im sure in this case youve checked. Try using you hdd jumper on cable select.

I had a few problems with an MSI motherboard a while back, have you tried using the jumper on the bios to reset? they actually have quite a good support number if you get really stuck.

 

think i know, if you ran it on another pc + installed on another pc it wont work!

its needs the OS installing on that PC alone!

just a thought...

Si

 

silly things like iffy PSU, CPU, Mboard or RAM can also manifest themselves in this kind of way... can't assume its either component unless you can check on seperate machine...

 

super-si - this is when trying a build on this pc. when it gets to the reboot point and fails to find ntldr, putting that disk into another pc confirms that it can find ntldr and does continue.

its specific to this pc booting off any disk - once booted off floppy or other, it will use any disk quite happily until it tries to boot from it....

 

Ive had that error, i fdisk it, re build partition, then re format and install OS

Si

 

...ever thought of applying for a firefighter job.
do you know:
a) how to climb a ladder.
b) what a cat looks like.
BB

 

I'd also go for the bios reset on the motherboard, or reset of ESCD via the bios, even just to eliminate it. Had similar problems booting from CD with an ASUS board recently, had to disable all other devices for boot before it would work. Maybe also worth a try, although you have the hdd set as bootable it may be looking at another drive first and erroring before looking to the hdd.

What chipset and bios comes with the motherboard, which board is it ?

 

Is it an Athlon????

If so, try dropping the CPU Speed down in the bios from 133 to 100 and see if it boots...

 

one other thing, does the system recognise the disk as a primary drive ?

if it is not recognised then it could be you have the jumper setting incorrect on the hard disk. Should be set to master.

if the cdrom/dvd device is also on the same ide controller then it should be set to slave. if it is on the secondary ide controller then it should be set to master, assuming no other ide drives installed.

 

Riftzone , i think the issue is now a bit confused.
(well i am, i know it doesnt take much)
If you say that, the hard disk boots ok on another machine; then
its probable that when you insert the disk in the non-working
pc; it is something to do with this disk is no longer seen as hard disk 0. You could try swapping the hard drive to different connectors on the ribbon cable, to IDE 1 as primary/master disk.

 

Whoops didnt read Ken's post.

 

The symptoms suggest geometry problems. The error message stating 'Can't find NTLDR' tell us that it's finding the physical disk correctly and loading the MBR, but that it can't bootstrap the kernel. If another machine can find the kernel on the disk, it suggests that the motherboard isn't looking at the correct physical block to load the kernel. Either the LBA mode isn't set up, or if it's a very old MB, it mayn't like the boot partition being beyond 2, 8 or 32 GB.

 

cheers folks. an fdisk on the new mobo sorted it. most odd...