Athlon 1.33ghz cpu failure to boot from HDD

[ChuckM69]

I recently built a system using an ECS motherboard and an Athlon 1.33ghz cpu. I installed this in a rather small case with a 250w power supply, brand spanking new 40gb Maxtor ide disk, 1 256mb sdram 133 stick, and 1 floppy. I booted from floppy, fdisked the hard drive, restarted the machine, and formatted /s and let it finish. I then removed the floppy, and reset the system, but now when it comes up, it says that there's a boot failure to press any key to continue, at which point I do, and it boots right to the c: prompt. I've removed all possible boot orders in the bios, so that the ONLY thing set is the IDE0 disk. I then even changed mother boards, (same case, cpu, powersupply, hdd, floppy, memory) and it did the same exact thing. Question is this: why would it boot from floppy, write to the hdd and even copy files back and forth, yet NOT boot from the hdd without "pressing any key" when its the ONLY thing in the boot order? Is this an issue of bad cpu, too little power supply, or memory issue? I dont see the memory issue being it, cause the same memory works fine when the system is booted from floppy. Is this a power supply issue? Not big enuff for the 3 things running? 2 seperate mother boards did the same exact thing, boot fine from floppy, and fail with press any key to continue from hdd, then it boots to the c: prompt.

Thanks

 

[paparazi]

Hmmmm??
A few things:
Have you made sure your harddrive jumpers are definately set to MASTER? and any other device on this cable is set as SLAVE? (if you can, leave the harddrive on it's own)
Also are you absolutely sure you have plugged the 80wire, 40pin IDE cable (fine one) into the PRIMARY connector on the motherboard (IDE 0) and NOT INTO the secondary connector (IDE 1)
Other thing is without an operating system installed on the harddrive the system has nothing to boot from so will report boot failure (am I missing something?)
So you need to setup from the CDrom and install an O/S.
Martin Please let members know if there advice has helped any.

 

[paparazi]

Forgot to say a cheap generic 250watt PSU is probably not upto the job of powering your 1.33 Athlon long term but should be fine for now. Martin Please let members know if there advice has helped any.

 

[ChuckM69]

I did check the cables, changed them even. I did check the hdd, settings with slave/master and/or cable select. I even changed the disk, to a brand new one. I checked the cable, made sure its plugged into primary ide, and checked the connectors on both cables (changed that too), and made sure that it was set to the correct one (the end one). The system boots from floppy just fine. I fdisked the drive, and then formatted /s. If I remove the floppy, and try to boot from c: it stops and says that there's a boot failure, press any key to continue. I press any key, and it boots right to c:. But it will NOT boot to c: without any intervention. I've updated the bios, I've changed motherboards, I've changed disks, I've changed cables..and I dont know what else to do. Only thing in common is the ram, and processor.. It has to be one of those.. I've even disabled the floppy in the bios, and removed it from the boot order.. I've removed EVERYTHING in the boot order execpt ide-0, and it still stops, says that its a boot failure and then press any key, at which point it then boots. I dont get it.

Charles

 

[mainegeek]

In cmos change halt on all errors to keyboard only.
Pause at boot and make sure your drives were detected.
I would definitely swap out the power supply for a 300w
at least.

 

[DorothyDix]

Correct me if I've missed something in the posts but it seems to me,you haven't indicated whether ornot you've installed Windows or any operating system.If there's nothing to boot to then it won't boot,as said above.

If your Power supply is a good quality one,there shouldn't be a problem,but if you intend upgrading components and adding drives etc. then deffinitely go for a 350w to be on the safe side.

Now,assuming Windows is installed on a fully partitioned and formatted drive,then it should work perfectly unless your Hard drive is stuffed.


Let us know what OS you have


PAUL

 

[ChuckM69]

Problem solved! First, thanks for the suggestions, but I've found the culprit.

I assure yall, that yes, the OS was being placed on the drive. The intention was to install Windows 98. I would boot from the floppy, fdisk the drive, format it with a /s, so yes, the boot tracks were layed down. From the floppy, the system would boot, would allow me to fdisk and format the drive, but once I removed the floppy disk and reset the system after formatting with /s, it would hang saying that there was no OS on the drive, however the command.com and io and msdos.sys files were there.. I'd hit "any key" and it would go to C: prompt. Of course not acceptible, in other words something was keeping it from booting straight to c:.

Well the issue was this.. Since we dont have ANY Windows 9x machines running any more, but i have plenty of clients running 9x, and we do system rebuilds often, I have a cherished Windows 98 boot disk with cdrom drivers etc on it (to save having to build a system JUST to make a boot disk). Well, guess what.. after years of faithful service, that boot floppy had a VIRUS.. damned thing had the Parity virus (was tipped off because I knew the hardware was fine, but occasionally after booting from the FLOPPY, the system would reset into a PARITY ERROR). Well, I found bootdisk.com and downloaded a fresh Win98 boot floppy and poof, amazingly it worked like a champ. I'd changed cables, drives, motherboards, ram, floppy drives and everything BUT the "known good" boot floppy. Stuck that disk in a machine and scanned it with Mcafee, and immediately found a boot sector virus.

So chalk it up to overlooking the obvious. I trusted that my floppy was the greatest thing in the world and should have had the write block on, but didnt, and it was INFECTED. I guess lessons learned the hard way are learned the best.

Thanks again for all the suggestions and help.

Charles