What's wrong with my old PC?

[devs]

Hi people I've been tiring to sort out an old PC of mine to sell. I've just reinstalled XP pro and service park 1. Yet when I restart it it asks for the following... "BOOT FROM ATAPI CD-ROM DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER". I'll had a look at the boot order in the bios and it all seems fine floppy, hd, cd. It would appear that its not recognising the HD - is there any wires or jumpers that could be wrong on the actual motherboard?

Cheers,

dEVS!

[neon701]

First of all u say u r trying to sort out an old pc of yours (have u installed any other hardware that might not be Compatible)

Second u say "I've just reinstalled XP pro and service pack 1" so if it was installed before it should be fine (no need to change any wires or jumpers that could be wrong on the actual motherboard)

personally i would then say it is in your bios settings.

Have u tried to reset your bios to its default settings, then just double check your "floppy, cd, hd etc" order. Also check wots set to the master and the slave just in case.

[/dev/null]

If everything is fine in bios it sounds like your MBR may be ****ed. Re-installing windows should solve it.

[devs]

Thx for the feedback guys!
@ neon701 No mate not installed anything else on it – its an old pc that I’ve had kicking around for a while, as I remember the HD failed then it was just never used. I’ve dug out a HD that I’m 99.9% sure works and put that in it and reinstalled xp pro.

The reason I asked about the motherboard setting is because I’ve got a feeling that I messed about with some wires ages ago tiring to fix it up? :nowords: Do you have jumpers on the Motherboard? If so what should they be set to?

I’ve reset the bios to default yet it still does the same thing and asks for a CD on start up…

You said… “Also check wots set to the master and the slave just in case.” Is this in the bios again?

I thought that the MBR may be goosed yet I didn’t think it would let me install windows ect if it was?

Cheers again,

dEVS!

[Q-Buster]

You could try starting it up with a WIN98 floppy in it, then run FDISK, no need to change anything, just see what drives - if any - it finds.

Q-Buster

[sniper]

the master / slave is a jumper on the back of the HD near the connectors , make sure this is set to master and if the cdrom id on the same channel(piece of cable) then make sure this is set to slave , all jumpers on the motherboard will be in the manual , if you haven't got it find out the manufacturer and go to their website , in the BIOS set all IDE devices to AUTO

[devs]

Good shout Q-Buster - yet I don't have a WIN98 floppy ;( Can I download it anywhere on the net?

Cheers sniper - I've checked the jumper settings on the HD and CD they are both fine master and slave. I've also checked that the IDEs are set to auto in the Bios...

Any other ideas?

dEVS!

[urbsy]

Try a different ide cable and check the pins on the hd are all ok.
On a side note I sometimes get this on a pc at work but if I unplug it for a few seconds and plug it back in its fine.

[sniper]

on the motherboard is the IDE connector plugged into IDE 0 , if not it should be , also have you got a floppy installed if you have unplug the data cable and boot up pc , this cable can be installed upside down and can cause problems

[Q-Buster]

You can download a WIN98 floppy - and some others too - from HERE

Q-Buster

[devs]

Just tired everything apart from the win98 boot disk...

Yet still the same error "BOOT FROM ATAPI CD-ROM DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

I'm just going to try the boot disk now any other ideas or is it time to bin this hunk of junk!

Cheers,

dEVS!

[sniper]

Just typed the error you put up into google and read a few of the replies , could be worth trying running it with one stick of memory in at a time if you have more than one , also try removing any unnecesary cards like sound/modem /usb devices before booting up, Can you see the HD details being posted by the BIOS on the start up screens straight after powering on , if they disappear too quick press the Pause key to halt it so you can see what the BIOS thinks is attached , can you put the HD in another system to test it ?

[jbosvark]

disconnect the cd-rom or disable it in the BIOS settings, same for floppy. see what happens then.
what mbd/chipset o you have?
you can also try update the BIOS, see the manuf site.
could be your board is too old to recognise the size of your drive properly, although that issue should have happened while installing XP.
when you boot with the windows cd and choose to install XP, does it show all the partitions. XP setup would give you and error if it id not detect a HDD.
Also try another IDE cable and also try swap the master slave settings so the cd-rom is master and the hd is slave.
You can also try the cd-rom on the other IDE controller by itself also set to master.
Last thing to try is to put the HDD on the secondary IDE controller and see if it boots from there, XP should give an error but it won't be the cd-rom boot error if the hdd works.
BTW if you move to HDD to another controller you have to change the boot.ini file to get windows to boot, else just do a repair install of XP, works a treat.

[devs]

Wow there’s me thinking that I’d tried everything and its time to put it in the bin!

I’ll not get chance to try these things for a while now as I’m in the process of moving house – but thanks for all the info and hopefully one should solve my problem.

I’ll post again when I’ve done everything.

Cheers,

dEVS!