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SOLVED Computer *always* tries and displays " Boot from CD : " messsage no matter what

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c627627

c(n*199780) Senior Member
Joined
Feb 18, 2002
Computer *always* tries and displays " Boot from CD : " messsage no matter what

It's an old nForce2 motherboard Shuttle AN35N Ultra v1.1. Basically, it always displays and tries to
Boot from CD :

NVIDIA Boot Agent ...

option at boot regardless of boot order you choose in BIOS, even if you remove CD from Boot order.

It actually hangs complaining there is no system disk unless.... unless you put a Windows installation CD which has "press any key to boot from CD...." when you insert it...


now if you do not press any key it actually bounces off to actually boot on already installed Windows. But if there is no Boot CD in there to "bounce off of", it will complain there is no system disk, etc, and will not boot.


I tried to Fix a corrupt Boot.ini, I tried to Fix a corrupt partition boot sector, I tried Fix a corrupt master boot record, nothing, still displays
Boot from CD :



EDIT: SOLVED!


Negative. Tried all of that. That's what made this so interesting. But you are not going to believe this:

It was the IDE cable (!)

I had to do it twice to confirm. It was the IDE cable. As soon as I used a different IDE cable - it went through.
 
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Clearing CMOS did not help. Even Flashing CMOS did not help.

It's not the BIOS, I have a feeling it has something to do with the boot sectors of the hard drive. I will try to nuke the drive's Master Boot Record and reimage everything back to it.
 
I have a feeling that youre going to have to write zeros to the entire drive and reinstall fresh to get rid of that... Hopefully not though, good luck
 
Why the entire drive? The problem is present at boot up.
 
I've just never had luck with the boot sector... you're probably more expirenced with that sort of thing though, let me know how it turns out.
 
Yeah, zero out the drive, not entirely, because the MBR/track 0 gets written first. I'd run killdisk and let it get to 1% and then shut it off.
 
1. What OS?
2. Is the drive recognized in bios as primary master?
3. Under primary master, is the drive set to auto and is the access mode auto also?
4. How is the drive identified in the boot order? (hdd-0, hdd-1, etc)
5. If PATA, have you checked the jumper to see if its set for primary or secondary?
6. Is there more than one hard drive plugged into the system?
7. Is there an option during boot to press a key to select a temporary boot device? F12 maybe?
 
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Windows XP. Yes, recognized as primary master, Auto, boot order accounted for, PATA, jumpers accounted for, all other drives are disconnected while this is going on, as for other boot options:

Remember as long as any CD with windows install is in the drive (Windows XP installation, or even Norton Ghost boot CD, since it is based on Windows), as long as any CD is in there with Windows boot on it, since the boot massage is

Boot CD :
It goes to CD first, then since you have to press any key to actually boot off of CD and you don't then it bounces off right into the hard drive booting of Windows, it all works!


But if there is no Windows boot CD, it stops, complaining there is no system disk.
Remember all boot orders, devices were enabled/disabled to test that part of it.

I just ran killdisk for 5% and am testing it now all nuked like that.
 
I did that with no luck. fixmbr and all related commands were run, no change.

The reason I wasn't specific was because I tried setting every hdd-x as first boot drive in Bios. It is the one and only primary drive connected correctly.

I am diskkilling it now and will retest to see, then I will place a drive from another nForce2 system in to see if it will pass through. This will tell us if it really is the original drive itself that is causing the problem.
 
I did that with no luck.

The reason wasn't specific was because I tried setting every hdd-x as first boot drive in Bios. It is the one and only primary drive connected correctly.

I am diskkilling it now and will retest to see, then I will place a drive from another nForce2 system in to see if it will pass through. This will tell us if it really is the original drive itself that is causing the problem.

Wow, yeah, that is wierd. But it's definitely an issue with the boot sector on the drive. The disc actually loads it's own boot loader whether you press any key or not. The disc automatically boots like it or not, the press any key is just a "do you want me to do MY thing" option. So the issue is 100% on the boot loader. Try installing grub on the drive and setting it to boot windows that way! Though, not sure if that'll work or not. I think grub may still depend on the windows bootloader.
 
It is definitely the hard drive. Put in another drive of same size, same number of partitions, and it went right through!


Here's what we have with the problem drive:
1. Drive was killed using killdisk.
2. Partitioned using O&O Partition Manager then when that didn't work and since this is a 120GB drive on nForce2, I used the old Partition Manager 8.05 - still same problem.

3. Can it be the image used? When I Ghosted, I made sure I unchecked anything that had to do with mbr or disk signature.


I think my only choice now is to try a different drive image (the same as the image the drive which went through used) to address that suspect.
 
Negative. Tried all of that. That's what made this so interesting. But you are not going to believe this:

It was the IDE cable (!)

I had to do it twice to confirm. It was the IDE cable. As soon as I used a different IDE cable - it went through. Wow.
 
Anything odd about the IDE cable?

One connector rather than normal primary master? Were you connecting it in a weird way or anything?

Sweet fix though, thanks for the update.
 
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