[nic mullin]

I've got a weird problem with my PC - I've recently put in a new motherboard, processor and hard drive (I wanted a bigger HDD and my old hardware didn't support SATA drives - I was in need of an upgrade anyway, so that's how I justified it to myself...). Initially I put everything together with only my new SATA HDD in there, installed Windows to a partition on that from an IDE cd drive, all good so far.

Now, if I put one of my old IDE hard drives into the system, my computer refuses to boot, usually saying something like "bootmgr is missing". This happens regardless of the jumper configuration on the drive, where it goes on the IDE cable, whether or not the cd drive is plugged in to the IDE cable, and whether or not the drive I put in is formatted or has stuff still on it. As soon as I pull the IDE hard drive out, everything works fine again. This happens with both of my old drives, both of which still work fine when I plug them in with an IDE to USB cable.

When an IDE HDD is plugged into the IDE cable to the motherboard, it is recognised by BIOS, as is the SATA drive with the OS on it, but BIOS won't let me select the SATA drive anywhere on the boot priority list. This presumably means that it never tries to boot from the drive with the OS on it.

I can't find anything in the documentation that came with the motherboard (it's a recent Asus one, with American megatrends BIOS) that explains how/why this might happen, and haven't found any glaringly similar accounts of this type of problem on the web.

If anybody has any knowledge that might help, I'd be more than happy to pay you a hug and a pint for it.

Cheers,
Nic

[slackline]

Haven't a clue, sorry 

[bigd942]

might be something with the boot config, check the boot config is set hard disk (ide) if that option is available

[GCW]

I'd agree with that.
Check what your boot order is in BIOS.  Make sure it's the SATA drive as 1st.

[account_inactive]

Have you checked to see if it's set to primary or slave?

[butters]

Pretty sure that GCW has hit the nail on the head. It sounds like the BIOS is set to boot from the IDE drive initially and when it finds the IDE drive it assumes that the OS is installed there and attempts to boot off that. With no IDE drive attached it defaults onto the next option which is the SATA drive which works - buried in the BIOS settings somewhere will be the option to change the boot order.

[iain]

As the guys above say there will be something in the BIOS. Found this which has a number of people talking about ASUS boards, it's a little old but might be relevant, and anyway there's lots of things to try.

http://www.daniweb.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10331&highlight=sata+ide+boot+order&page=3

This sounded plausable:
"Ok. Know not much about pcs-have an old hard drive with a SATA connection, wanted to a add a new, empty harddrive with IDE connection to an Asus p4p800 motherboard. On boot-up, it kept saying 'Install correct boot source' or something like that-so I realised it must be making the IDE drive the first port of call on boot up.

Accessed the BIOS, and from reading around the place, learned that I had to go to the IDE drive's product name, select it, then DISABLE it. "

[butters]

This sounded plausable:
"Ok. Know not much about pcs-have an old hard drive with a SATA connection, wanted to a add a new, empty harddrive with IDE connection to an Asus p4p800 motherboard. On boot-up, it kept saying 'Install correct boot source' or something like that-so I realised it must be making the IDE drive the first port of call on boot up.

Accessed the BIOS, and from reading around the place, learned that I had to go to the IDE drive's product name, select it, then DISABLE it. "

Iain - probably worth putting in the next couple of paragraphs to that reply as well as it will probably make more sense that way... 

"On start-up, the bios now ignored the IDE drive totally-but the best bit was that, although it wasn't showing up in 'My Computer', in Computer Management it was (control panel-Administrative Tools-Computer Management-Device Manager-Disc Drives) so it meant that windows could now 'see' the drive, regeardless of the fact I'd disabled it in the BIOS.

Couldn't work out how to be able to use it though-read some more, discovered I needed to go to Computer Management-Disc Management. Right click on the new drive, and 'add partition', basically. Just add one. Your PC will then FORMAT the hard drive-and you'll be able to use it. Unless you're lucky and it's pre-formatted, in which case you'll be sorted form the moment you disable the IDE drive and start up."

There is also another reply a couple of posts later that look like a more viable option for Nic to try before he starts disabling drives and the like:

"Step 1 - BIOS setup
Step 2 - Select Boot
Step 3 - Select "Hard Drives"
Step 4 - Change the SATA to be the "first drive"
Step 5 - Save & exit!"

[GCW]

"Step 1 - BIOS setup
Step 2 - Select Boot
Step 3 - Select "Hard Drives"
Step 4 - Change the SATA to be the "first drive"
Step 5 - Save & exit!"

That's what I said, sucker!

[iain]

Hi Bluebrad, I didn't quote the next bit as it's for an empty hard drive, Nic's is already formatted and has an OS and data on it so should show up in Windows anyway.

But the other quote and what GCW said is probably right, and I'm not arguing with the T 

[butters]

<Bored at Work Pedant mode>

I doubt it has an OS on it as it won't boot off the IDE drive when it is installed - more than likely correct on the rest though.

</Bored at Work Pedant mode> 

[GCW]

I guess the other option is to install the OS on the IDE drive, then you won't need to muck about in BIOS 

[iain]

I'm normally the one telling others to understand the problem properly You're right, pedant or otherwise 

It's amazing sometimes how our (or maybe just my) brain just makes stuff up, and yet I can be sooooo certain I'm remembering correctly.

[Tris]

To the OP:

Sounds to me like BigD/GCW were correct with the bios order stuff they said initially.

If you still can't figure it out and it's really doing your head in, just buy one of these or something similar for around a tenner - job done!

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1039307

[nic mullin]

Thanks for the suggestions. BIOS it was. I thought that the "Boot priority" menu (which is the one that wouldn't let me select the SATA drive) actually set the boot priority. How silly of me. Turns out that to actually set the boot priority you need to go to a different menu entirely. 

Once I'd done that it booted first go.

Big D and GCW - if you want to claim your beer and/or a hug from an ugly man, get in touch.

Cheers.

[andy_e]

Big D and GCW - if you want to claim your beer and/or a hug from an ugly man, get in touch.

Who's the ugly man in question nic?