HDD wont boot, but otherwise seems to work

[Noway2]

A co-worker gave me an older HP Pavilion PC that supposedly had crashed its HDD, but was otherwise functional. I put a drive in it, that to the best of my knowledge, is older but fully functional. The PC (and drive) are IDE, set for cable select master / slave. The BIOS setup screen appears to recognize the drive correctly.

I put an Ubuntu live CD in the PC and proceeded to perform the installation process. The process includes repartitioning and reformatting the drive and then copying the OS to the drive. During this process, I could hear the drive run and the activity LED was blinking normally.

The installation appeared to complete successfully and I attempted to re-boot the PC. Upon reboot, I received a black screen with a message along the lines of "Unable to locate boot disk, please insert boot disk and press ENTER". This message happens each and every time.

I verified the boot order in the BIOS and even set it to boot from the HDD first. I also booted to the live CD and tried to boot from the first hard drive, which simply black screened.

I am suspecting that there is something wrong with the IDE controller, but I am not certain. I am considering putting an SATA controller in the machine and trying an SATA drive to bypass the IDE controller. Does anyone have any ideas of things I should check or try before I toss the PC?

 

[AdamRicko]

With the error message "Unable to locate boot disk, please insert boot disk and press ENTER" it sounds like a problem with the MBR on the hard drive or the ide controller as you stated yourself.

Have you tried resseting the Bios to default just incase something you have missed?

Tried to run error checking on the suspect HDD? Also have you run a deep/slow format?

From what you said im thinking you have 2x drives in the system at the moment? Just try it with one in.

Have you replaced the IDE lead for a known good one?

Is the Hard drive a Known good drive?

Hope this helps

IT Support

Comptia A+
Comptia Network +

 

[wahnula]

I also booted to the live CD

That means the IDE bus of the CD is working. Set the HDD to Mater and the CD ROM to slave on the same IDE channel (the one the CD ROM is now using), see what happens. Cable Select is finicky on some older machines.

If it's still a no-go, cut your losses (unless you have unlimited free time) and buy some newer hardware. I would not recommend spending money on a SATA controller and drive, I would spend a few more $$$ and upgrade the platform. Maybe you can keep the case, CD-ROM & PSU.

New low-end platforms (CPU, mainboard, RAM) are less than $100 and will fly compared to a pre-SATA rig.

Tony

Users helping Users...

 

[Noway2]

Thank you to both AdamRicko and wahnula for your replies.

I did perform a bios reset, or at least a "reset to optimal defaults" and then saved. I have not tried running a test of the HDD on a working system, but I don't have any real reason to suspect it, unlike the rest of the PC. If problems persist I can put it in another machine and do that. The format took about 15 minutes to run, and it is only an 80GB drive, which suggests it was a full format or at least more than a file system wipe.

The statement about the IDE bus used by the CD rom(s) is correct and an excellent observation. There are two CD / DVD rom devices. The next step will be to place the HDD on that controller and see if I get different results. It may be that one of the IDE controllers is trashed.

From previous experiments, selecting the HDD as master by jumper does work, and I will re-install it. I did not try a new IDE cable, but that too is an excellent idea and I can do that easily.

 

[BadBigBen]

just for poise, check to see if the HDD is in the BOOT ORDER within the BIOS... easily overlooked...

Seen it too many times, where some of our trainees, forget to place it into the boot order, and then having fun trying to troubleshoot the issue...

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[Noway2]

Ben,

That is a good suggestion and I could see how it is easily overlooked .

I think I checked this one and that it was second on the priority list, following the CD and preceding network. When I return home this weekend and can work on the PC again, I will double check though. Thank you for the tip.

 

[Noway2]

Just to post an update on this one:

I tried putting the IDE hard drive in place of the master CD drive and received the same message about being unable to boot. I then tried it with another, definitely known good, drive to the same effect. What is wierd is that it will boot off of the CD, but not a HDD.

I used an existing SATA drive and PCI SATA card that I had and that would boot. I really suspect that something on the MB has fried and have decided to use the thing for spare parts. It was free anyway.

 

[servelle]

Hello,

Have you tried to use a patitionning software ?

With it you can check if main partition of your disk is active and fix mbr if needed,

(to be bootable a partition need to be active)

regards

 

[Noway2]

Servelle, thank you for the tip, it is a good suggestion. Yes, one of the things that I attempted was, with an IDE HDD, did a full partition creation and installation of Ubuntu. For some reason, no matter what I have tried, the PC will not recognize an IDE HDD as a boot device, but it will with a CD and an SATA drive with an adapter card.

I had some second thoughts about junking the machine and currently have it running Ubuntu on the SATA drive.

 

[ceh4702]

HP'S sometimes had wierd CMOS setup disks and put the CMOS on the harddrive. It may be incompatible with Linux altogether. Go to the HP service site for the model and see what it says.

This is my opinion:

See HP Brand ==> Run Away.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.