Spoke too soon, lost boot drive again.

[Konglow]

Have two basic questions. Does primary IDE have to be the boot drive (C)? Earlier I stumbled on a window that showed where I can adjust boot drive. Not in BIOS where boot device chooses Hard Disk or CD ROM but a place where I could choose which drive to boot from, other than Primary IDE. Changing it to proper drive that I just downloaded Vista on got me into Vista. A reboot seems to have changed the boot drive again and it doesn't concern BIOS. I blundered upon it the first time but can't seem to do it again. Can you tell me how to find that window? I hope this makes sense.

WIN Vista Ultimate 32.
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Dual PCIe.
AMD Athlon 64X2 6000 Dual Core 3.7
Kingwin Mach 1 600watt MA1S.
OCZ Platinum XTC 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (4x1024MB).
XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320Mb XXX DDR3 PCI Express w/Dual DVI & HDTV Out (Retail).
Acer 24" HD P249w(Dual Monitors).
Maxtor 2HD = 1 Terabyte

EI 5.2

 

[Konglow]

I found the window for selecting drive to boot with(simple...duh). It worked for a short time before but not this time. BIOS recognizes 4 of 5 hard drives but when comes time to load Win it says there are no drives. I've run with this setup for years. Now it freezes on black window with constant cycling(till it freezes)progress bar. Three times in a row this happened. Now, as once before, it loads Vista and even downloads updates. It's now loading pertinant drivers but afraid it won't work upon reboot. Computer folder now acknowledges 5 HDD with 8 volumes. Why should BIOS not recognize any drives? Going to unplug everything and plug in again in hopes of curing probs. Of course I'll wait till it freezes up again, which I'm afraid it will do soon enough.

WIN Vista Ultimate 32.
ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Dual PCIe.
AMD Athlon 64X2 6000 Dual Core 3.7
Kingwin Mach 1 600watt MA1S.
OCZ Platinum XTC 4096MB PC6400 DDR2 800MHz Memory (4x1024MB).
XFX GeForce 8800GTS 320Mb XXX DDR3 PCI Express w/Dual DVI & HDTV Out (Retail).
Acer 24" HD P249w(Dual Monitors).
Maxtor 2HD = 1 Terabyte

EI 5.2

 

[linney]

Hardware is not my specialty, so we might have to wait for more experienced hardware people to answer expertly.

You might be able to shortcut the process by posting in one of the hardware forums at Tek Tips as well. You can link back to this thread and the original thread from earlier.

Have you been inside the box and perhaps accidentally dislodged or loosened some cables?

I take it the Bios is set for safe defaults and not subject to any overclocking?

Have you tried Vista's built-in Memory Test to see if your RAM at least passes that? There are other RAM testers you could try too.

http://www.memtest86.com/

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

If you look at MsConfig that also has some settings where you can isolate RAM for testing purposes. You will find it under the Boot Tab and then under the Advanced button. Options in there isolate RAM and perhaps Processors too.

310560 - How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/310560

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/kb/929135

The hard drive manufacturer will have free diagnostic software to thoroughly check the condition of the hard drive.

Can you create or get hold of a BartPE CD and run a mini XP just from the CD drive (no hard drive is required once the bootable CD is created and you are using BartPE and XP. This will check your hardware out further. Besides that it is a handy tool to posses.

http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/

 

[firewolfrl]

OK here is the simple fix...look at what drive is the boot...and unplug the sata from that drive plug in the sata drive as the first drive on the sata cabling...
when you installed vista? did you leave all the drives connected?
what you might have going it the OS is on one drive and the boot for the OS is on the other drive. that would be a pain

ok unplug all the drives except the one you want vista on
then load the vista dvd and format and re-install vista

that is about the simplest fix
then when you replug back in the drives after you make sure the OS boots up correctly
make sure you plug the drives in the boot order you want

read this whole site...its the best ot there to explain drives and vista's boot issues

http://www.multibooters.co.uk/quirks.html