[Preacher3487]

I am currently working on someones Dell XPS 600. It's been having some serious Raid 1 problems and now we are going to install Vista on one drive and do away with the Raid array.

My question is simply what would cause the pc to not boot from the disk drive no matter what or how I set the boot order to?

Please help!

[CGR]

Did you break the raid? If so you should be able to boot from either drive, unless the raid set was damaged.

[Preacher3487]

I didnt make myself very clear. The raid set is no longer functioning. We are simply trying to install Vista on to the HDD but it is not booting correctly.

The error I receive when the computer boots is:

Floppy Diskette Seek Failure
Press F1 to continue

After pressing F1 the following error appears

No Boot Device Availible

[CGR]

Got it now..

If you were using an onboard raid controller and SATA drives, you may need to plug the cable into a different port. Some controllers have ports only for raided drives.. usually they are color coded.

[Preacher3487]

I did see the color coded SATA ports you were referring to (3 black, 1 blue). I tried both color ports on both hard drives in the machine, the error continued.

After going back to the original setup I recieved a new error:

Alert! A previous boot attempt failed at this checkpoint(bye). Please contact Dell tech support.

very weird. perhaps a bios update/flash would work. But I've even gone as far as resetting the BIOS to manufact. defaults and it still fails.


Thanks for all of your help though. Will just have to call the customer and explain the circumstances to them.

[I.M.O.G.]

It sounds like its just not finding a bootable volume.

At what point is it failing?

1) You put in the bootable installation media and it doesnt start the vista setup?
2) Bootable installation runs, but when complete Vista will not boot?
3) Did you install Vista on this machine, or transfer this HD from another PC and are now trying to boot it?

I would do this, ensure you can run a bootable CD. Anything. (a burnt linux ISO would do) Only bad BIOS configuration could stop you from booting to a bootable CD. This will eliminate that variable.

If you can boot to a CD, use a bootable CD utility which can format a drive. (http://www.google.com/url?q=http://w...ZGNlydtxkO3yjQ)

Format the drive, boot to your vista installation media, complete install, ensure your boot order specifies the HDD with Vista installed as a boot device.

If I'm missing something, please provide more detail. Let us know if this helps, or what problems you run into, with detail please.

[Preacher3487]

The PC is not even making it through the POST. It will not boot any disk, and does not seem to recognize hard drives.

The PC was in a raid array, which is no longer. The whole problem started after attempting to install Vista on a seperate partition from XP, without breaking the array.

[DMac]

If it truly does not make it past POST, and will recognize no disk (even floppy or CD), you have a motherboard problem. The configuration of the disks/arrays is moot. If it will boot to a floppy or CD, you have something to work with.

[I.M.O.G.]

Originally Posted by Preacher3487

The PC is not even making it through the POST. It will not boot any disk, and does not seem to recognize hard drives.

The PC was in a raid array, which is no longer. The whole problem started after attempting to install Vista on a seperate partition from XP, without breaking the array.

Still don't have enough info - tell me what you see/what it does that makes you say it doesnt make it thru post. Does it hang at the POST screen, present an error message, or does POST screen go away and you get just blackness? This is important, because where and how it fails indicates what the problem is.

Sounds to me like the boot order is probably not configured with the CDROM as the first device. In light of everything you said, theres no reason you shouldn't be able to boot to a CD. Unless your motherboard partially died at the same time as you were messing with the array and vista, which is unlikely.

So I am guessing, your boot order is wrong, its looking for the RAID array and doesn't find it because it no longer exists then the system hangs. Set your BIOS back to system defaults and you should either be able to boot a bootable CD or you should get an error message indicating an operating system could not be found.