New Hard drive won't boot unless windows xp cd is in drive

[opus74]

Hello everyone,

Here's my dilema. I have a Compaq Presario 5465. The hard drive recently died, so i decided to purchase a new Maxtor DiamondPlus 60 GB Ultra ATA /133 drive. I also purchased an Adaptec AHS-1233 ATA card to plug the drive into since i doubt that the pc would be able to read this drive otherwise. Instead of loading 98 back on it, i decided to upgrade to xp. During the XP install, i hit F6 and loaded the driver for the Adaptec Card from a floppy i made. Worked like a charm. Xp came up all seemed great. Except if i take the XP install disk out, and shut the pc down then when i restart it hangs at a flashing hyphen in the upper left hand corner. if i put the cd back in and restart it gives the message HIT ANY KEY TO BOOT FROM CD, but if i don't hit anything it goes ahead and boots from my XP installation on the hard drive.

Any ideas?

 

[davidmcolaco]

Hi,

Have you already checked in BIOS what boot device is loading first?

David

 

[opus74]

Yes. I've actually tried just about every combination. But i believe right now it's set to Drive A CDROM Drive C.

I do remember when i set it to Drive C ONLY. I just get the flashing cursor, and it just sits there. Actually i get the Compaq flash screen then it just sits there.

 

[davidmcolaco]

And you don't have any option in the BIOS boot order to set the adaptec ata card?

David

 

[opus74]

no. i can set SCSI as a boot device, but i've tried that and it doesn't work either. I also checked with Compaq to see if they had a Bios update, and they didn't. I did try leaving a request with Award Software (the makers of the bios) to see if they sell one, though i don't know if thats a good idea or not.

 

[G0AOZ]

Can you view POST messages on the screen? If yes, see if the Adaptec card's own BIOS shows up. I'd expect it to make reference to the IDE interface and the 60Gb drive. Maybe there's an incompatibility between the Adaptec card and the Compaq motherboard... Can you try changing the Adaptec for say a Promise ATA controller card?

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[opus74]

Yes actually i can see the post. The adaptec card does see the maxtor drive..and gives the proper size and id, etc.
I did find out that Award does sell a bios update...might that help?

 

[G0AOZ]

Might do, but I'd have expected BIOS updates to be available free off the relevant manufacturer's website...

The only other thing I can suggest is this. Do you have a small, old unwanted IDE drive which will work off the Compaq's IDE interface? If yes, try formatting it to say DOS, WIN95 or 98. Make sure it boots off the Compaq IDE, then try getting it to boot off the Adaptec.

ROGER - G0AOZ.

 

[opus74]

Yeah you'd think. Awards Software wants $50.00 for the bios update. Compaq has none, probably cause it's such an old machine, but you'd think they'd still make such an update possible. The Awards company said that this bios would support XP. THe current one was before XP came out.
I might be able to dig up an old IDE drive here. I can certainly try that?

 

[G0AOZ]

Had a look at the Compaq site and found this:-

Presario Desktop Models System ROM Update (786K5 Family ROMs)

URL:-

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/...roduct=93368&lang=en&cc=us&softwareitem=35863

Filename:- SP18785.exe 1/1 (1.35M)

Not sure if this will help you or not, but file can be downloaded without charge!

ROGER - G0AOZ.