System Will not Boot

[sperky]

Hi, Wondered if anyone could help with this one.

Story goes.

Compaq ML370 G2
Operating system NT4 sp6a
Compaq Smart start 5.20

Rebooted the Machine this morning and Server Shutdown ok but on the Reboot experienced some problems.
Post went through ok Controller can see two Logical Partitions no problems there.
Server then comes up with
Attempting to Boot from A:Attempting to Boot from Cd-ROM
Attempting to Boot from Harddisk C:
then Nothing server just sits there.

I ran the Compaq Diagnostics and and no Hardware faults found.
Checked the Primary Boot and this is set to Compaq SCSI 5300 Controller as it should
Checkled all Cables and they are connected ok

Then ran NTFS ERD NTFS Boot disk and this can see all Drives,
All NT files appear to be ok Boot.ini Etc.
Copied files from the NT Directory to Disk, and Visa Versa so I can use the Disks

Attempted NT Recovery and this has worked fine but after reboot again still getting messages
Attempting to Boot from A:Attempting to Boot from Cd-ROM
Attempting to Boot from Harddisk C:
Anyone else had a problem like this and how did they get round it.

Also thought updating the system Partition but not sure how this would help

 

[TheLad]

Have you run a virus check on the machine? The boot sector may have a virus?? -----------------------------------------------------
"It's true, its damn true!"
-----------------------------------------------------

 

[sperky]

Checked for Viruses and no Viruses found.

I am able to boot off a Floppy Disk with NTDETECT and BOOT.ini and NTLDR files.
System then works fine.

 

[samuelma]

corrupt master boot record

Try this
boot to an msdos 6.x floppy disk with FDISK.EXE

type "FDISK /mbr" press enter.
this rewrites the Master Boot Record (mbr)

 

[Engleman]

Has anyone come up with a definative answer to this one? I have the same server that has experienced the same problem.
The only major difference is that we could not get it to boot from the floppy so we have blown away the NT4 that was on there and reinstalled to
1) a new partition created by NT and
2. a new partition created by fdisk and formatted Fat16 and set to primary. 2000Mb.
In both instances NT has installed and looks to be OK complete wsith the boot.ini etc but it just hands at the "Attempting to boot from hard drive" screen.

As suugest there, I even tried the fdisk /mbr to no avail.

This is urgent (of course) as there is some data on a partition that is needed.

Any suggestions on how to get it to boot? or
Will a later O/S handle the situation any better? or suggestion on how to get the data off the raid partition?

Thanks

 

[LILKILLER]

Let me stick my nose in... I run DEC Alpha 800 Servers on NT4 SP6A

I noticed I had a 50gig scsi drive that was not initializing in a timely manner. Check your motor start delays. I changed the wait on mine and all appears to go well so far.

Which scsi adapter are you using? Qlogic?

 

[MrPudding]

I had the same problem on a 380g2 after a reboot (a bdc) I just ended up rebuilding it. After it was rebuilt and replication with the pdc had completed the customer rebooted the pdc. It failed with the same problem...not a good day. Before the rebuild the customer needed some data off one of the partitions urgently this is what I did. I installed an os on a spare server and when that was done I shut it down, then I removed the disked from the problem server and put them into the spare, rebooted the spare and let it update the drive config. The data from the partitions was then available. Probably not supported by compaq but it did the trick.