Boot failure problems

[Raffaz]

Hi
Ive just finished building new pc. Im having problems with boot failure errors on startup. Ive got 3 SATA drives in, and if i remove my 2 backup ones it boots fine. Everything is set properly in BIOS (i think). The mobo is an asus A8N-SLI deluxe, if thats any use, im running XP media centre. Cheers.

Mick

[Guts3d]

It sounds like you might have to tell the cmos which SATA drive is the one you want to boot from. If you don't feel comfortable in the cmos, I suggest taking it to a professional so that you don't accidentally change a setting that is critical.

[Kermit D. Frog]

Explain...."boot errors".

[Raffaz]

Explain...."boot errors".

It says Boot failure when i start pc

[Raffaz]

It sounds like you might have to tell the cmos which SATA drive is the one you want to boot from. If you don't feel comfortable in the cmos, I suggest taking it to a professional so that you don't accidentally change a setting that is critical.

Already done this mate, and its connected to the primary sata, there are 8 on this mobo. Just had the same problem again, was my USB pen drive causing it this time.

Mick

[Kodiak]

May be stupid but check that jumper settings are correct.

[MBatson]

You may want to check and see what your boot order is setup in the CMOS. Also check and see what the settings for the SATA are set at. I know some motherboards have settings for turning off the SATA, SATA only, Legacy, and Combined. You may want to doulbe check with your manual on that. Also while in there see if there is a setting to boot from USB. I know a lot of the new motherboard are coming with that feature, it could be causing the problem like you found out eariler.

[Guts3d]

Already done this mate, and its connected to the primary sata, there are 8 on this mobo. Just had the same problem again, was my USB pen drive causing it this time.

Mick

Good, but is there any ATA drives on the board? If so, it is prolly trying to boot from them, as that is the default preference for many motherboard manufacturers. Go into cmos (if you are comfortable there) and set the primary boot drive to be the one you want. Watch when booting up to see where it looks first to boot from. Good luck!

[Raffaz]

Good, but is there any ATA drives on the board? If so, it is prolly trying to boot from them, as that is the default preference for many motherboard manufacturers. Go into cmos (if you are comfortable there) and set the primary boot drive to be the one you want. Watch when booting up to see where it looks first to boot from. Good luck!

Got no ATA drives installed, just 3 SATA drives, boot order is correct, 1 = HD, 2 = CDROM 3 = floppy. SATA boot order is correct also. Any other ideas? Cheers

Mick

[Raffaz]

Finally solved this, i reset my BIOS to default, and it worked. So i checked what had changed, and my ZIP drive is higher on the boot priority list, tried moving it down and the fault came back. Is this a bug in the BIOS, or is there a reason for this? Im not even running the ZIP disk.

Mick

[Raffaz]

Just had this exact same problem again after a clean install. Im pleased i left the answer on here coz i totally forgot how i got round it last time ha ha.

Mick

[CCT]

From the Asus site:

'Due to Phoenix Award BIOS core limitation, it only offers a list of 8 HDD as boot device.
Any number beyond that will not be detected by bootloader, and hence cannot be set as boot device.

In addition, the BIOS will detect HDD in the sequence of IDE --> Add-on Card --> USB --> SATA. When you have more than 7 HDD connected on IDE and USB, the HDD on onboard SATA will not be able to be used as boot disk.'

http://support.asus.com/faq/faq.aspx...Language=en-us