Gaming Which part is dead?

[Scorpei]

So I recently went and looked at this system:

AMD Athlon X2 5000+, ECS motherboard (PCI-E 16x &1x, 2PCI, mATX, DDR2), 1 gig ram 667, 160gig maxtor disc and generic dvd drive

The thing works fine aside from the fact that it refuses to boot or install on/from internal drives. The drives are detected properly in the BIOS and are also readable (and possibly writeable, although formatting was a bit glitchy) when booting knoppix from USB stick.

The hard disk runs as it should in other systems; the drive isn't defective.

Running the install from win 7 via USB gives a slow boot and then the error that additional drivers are required to install. The hard disk is however already detected properly but apparently still not seen as installable. Adding the drivers for the nvidia sata/ide controller during install still provides the error (the drivers are installed without problems though).

The system runs memtest without problems (2 passes) and as said knoppix runs fine too.

I'm planning on adding a PCI IDE controller I have lying around to rule out the sata/ide controller (assuming it's bootable, haven't checked that yet ^^).

So I'd say CPU is fine, mem is fine, hard disk is fine, PSU is fine --> what's broken

?

 

[Master_B]

Did you also try: Windows.XP.Live.May.2008

its windowsxp booting from CD/DVD drive.... maybe you could then determine what the problem is.

Could you start the system with a bootfloppy from windows98SE to get in dos?

EDIT: probably something you all ready tried.... but is the system working with another harddrive?

 

[CannonFoddr]

Many years ago I had something similar, but with a floppy drive (Yeah that long ago)
Turned out to be the connecting cable between Motherboard & drive

Another possibility, although you have mentioned drivers, have you tried updating the mother drivers ??

 

[Deleted-171178]

Try BartPE?

 

[Scorpei]

@Master_B: The system doesn't work with another hard drive AFAIK (but haven't tried it). I can but assume the system used to work with this drive and the drive itself really is perfectly fine.
@CannonFodder: Like the name

. Booting live windows (tried that a while back on a different system which had the same problem btw) doesn't seem a lot different to me then booting knoppix. Besides the system doesn't boot from CD/DVD/Hard drive, just from USB.

=========General update===========
Another thing I thought I could try was doing a BIOS flash / cmos reset (though not sure how it could have suddenly died, it is possible and I have no clue what the tech before me tried to fix the problem).

I installed an IT8212F in there (ATAPI BIOS flashed), detected properly by the BIOS and the attached DVD burner (known to work) is selectable in the main BIOS as boot option. However when the windows XP install CD is inserted (working, though not tested with this particular drive) the following message is shown: DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

Also, just hooked up a known working disk to the onboard IDE (installed it in another machine ages ago) with win XP install. That one goes and boots but (naturally) produces a BSOD (0x07b). When hooking up the aforementioned CD drive on there it produces the same error (sounds like my CD/DVD isn't working).

All in all something is weird with the motherboard that much I'm pretty sure of. I was hoping it was the IDE/Sata controller though as that would be easy to replace (versus the motherboard itself) ^^.

 

[cobleman]

Did you take the battery out to reset the bios too Default unplug power aswell so it will auto boot with system disc?

 

[Scorpei]

Well I haven't reset the cmos yet. So no didn;t take the battery out

. Surprisingly btw, after disabling and enabling the sata and IDE controllers (and the other above mentioned things) it now seems to be installing without any problems from USB --> sata hard drive and it did not ask me to install any extra drivers. Not a clue how this magically got fixed (broken trace being reconnected by toying around with the board?) though.

 

[vergilite]

i had a really similar problem to you. go to your BIOS settings and look at settings (i cant remember which setting its called or where it was :\), then look for a setting for reading hard drives mine wasnt set to RAID and so my system couldn't read or write because i didn't have the driver for the setting but when i put it as RAID it worked perfectly just go though all your bios settings until you find one where it either already says "RAID" or gives you the option to choose "RAID" and make sure its chosen ... if you get me

EDIT: YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! thats it sata and IDE controller settings

what ever you just did has fixed it because its the same things i did (can you tell im drunk yet)

 

[Scorpei]

You know that actually might have been it, didn't really take the time to check if it was set to raid or not (strange with 1 drive, but still possible the controller was set to RAID mode). Again this wasn't my machine (though it now is

) so not a clue what the person before me did with it.

Yay I guess, a new test system to screw around with and a pretty nice one at that. Thanks for the replies btw eventhough this became more of a blog

.