[Mobes]

Hello - Looking to get some help regarding a problem just encountered.

Background - I just recently replaced my HDD on a Compaq R3240 from a 60gb ATA to WD 250gb ATA. I used the DVD I created which installed Win XP Pro and Office 2003. I also used it to partition the HDD to 125gb and left the remaining space unformatted. BTW, the DVD I created was with great assistance from people on this website!

I had decided I wanted to utilize the remaining space on the disk to install Win 7, but wanted to format the HDD using a Gparted disk I have. I was unable to boot from that CD as well as attempting to try my UBCD4WIN cd and also trying my original XP DVD. In all cases, the BIOS seemed to ignore the CD/DVD drive and continued to boot to Windows. I entered setup and selected boot from the CD/DVD and the same thing happened. Also, the CD/DVD drive worked fine prior to all of this and also had no problem installing Win XP.

When attempting each CD/DVD I could hear the disk spinning and I would get a black screen with a blinking cursor, but then it would just continue to Windows.

The BIOS is up to date according to the Compaq website as well as the CD/DVD drive. I'm not sure where to go from here?? Can anyone give me additional direction?

SOLVED: Summary

Thanks to Ponch and jaclazz for their help! My laptop now is able to recognize bootable disks at startup by using Grub4DOS. I used the following menu.lst

Quote

timeout 1
title Boot CD/DVD
cdrom --init
map --hook
chainloader (cd0)
rootnoverify (cd0)

Thanks

Mobes

This post has been edited by Mobes: 17 September 2011 - 03:22 PM

[Mobes]

One thing I forgot was after my install, I was unable to find an SM BUS controller driver. So that is still showing as a ? in my device manager. I have the NVIDIA Geforce 440 go 64m chipset.

[-X-]

When you are in XP, does the drive read the disks correctly?

You can and should install 7 from within XP. This way it doesn't hijack the drive it's on and name it C:\.

[Mobes]

Hi X

It does read the drives correctly. Although, I just noticed that I show a Drive D: DVD/CD-RW and a Drive E: CD Drive. I don't recall having the 2nd optical Drive. I understand about installing Win 7 within XP. I didn't even try my Win 7 disk. I figure none of the other disks are booting including the XP disk I used to reinstall my Win XP.

I'm really trying to figure out why these disks will not boot in case I should need to be able to use Gpart or UBCD4WIN....

[-X-]

I don't know why your bootable disks are not booting. Hopefully someone else can offer some assistance.

You don't need Gparted to make your W7 partition. You can simply use Disk Management (Start > Run > diskmgmt.msc) or I believe if you run the W7 setup.exe from within XP it will format the unpartitioned space for you.

[Mobes]

Thanks X. I believe you're right about the disk management and Win 7 setup. I guess I've just gotten into the habit of using Gparted before installing. I really want to fix my issue with the bootable disks before I do anything else.

I've never ran into this before.


Mobes

[allen2]

I'd try to either remove the hard drive from the boot in the bios or remove it physically and see what happen when booting from a cd/dvd (i'd set only boot options in bios to only try CD/dvd and nothing else).

[dencorso]

allen2 is right. We need to establish whether the DVD drive is still able to boot or not. If you can disable the HDD on BIOS, and set the machine to boot solely from the DVD drive that might be enough. But the surest way to find out would be to physically disconnect the HDD also, besides setting the machine to boot from the DVD drive.

[Mobes]

Thanks guys. I just disabled the HDD in the BIOS and my XP/Office disk booted up just fine. So, is it something that my BIOS does not fully support this HDD? Is there anything I can do other than disable the HDD when needing to boot from the CD/DVD reader?

Thanks again.

Mobes

[dencorso]

I'm glad to hear it worked!
I don't believe there's any real lack of support from your BIOS for your new HDD.
I think more likely it's one of those things so called "by design", since I've seein it happen on some HP laptops in the past.
Now that we know that your DVD drive is OK and able to boot, the next step would be to try to keep the HDD enable in the main (first) BIOS screen, but to remove it completely from the BIOS BOOT screen (which uses to be the last one) only. If that works, you'll have a way to boot the CD while having the machine still recognize the HDD. If that turns out not to be possible, the next idea is to find out the machine's alternate boot Key (usually Esc, F11 or F12), to change the default boot device on the fly. This key should be pressed repetitively from the point the screen first lights up on reboot, and then it'll give you a boot device selection screen, from where you can select the DVD when needed. If even that proves not to work, then we can resort to 3rd party boot managers, like PloP... But let's try one thing at a time, right?

[Mobes]

Thanks Dencorso-

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by keeping the HDD enabled in the first BIOS screen but removing it from the BIOS boot?? What I did do sounds like your next suggestion; I entered into BIOS at startup by hitting ESC and went to the Advanced Tab into Boot Order. I then used the option to disable the HDD, saved settings and the CD/DVD disk booted.

A few months ago when I was working on an install from USB, I had the chance to use PloP and it worked great! I successfully installed XP Pro and Office from my USB.

Sounds like your second solution if I can figure out how to do it would be the best solution.


Mobes

[Ponch]

Have you checked if the jumper on your new drive are set as it was on the old one ? (Master/Slave/CableSelect/Single) ?

[Mobes]

Hey Ponch,

How can I check that on my laptop? Also, I will not be able to get right back to you as I will be out for a while. Thanks for everyone's help!


Mobes

[Ponch]

Sorry I missed the fact it was a laptop. On a laptop it is very rare that any device is set differently than master (you usually have 1 HDD as master on channel1 and 1 optical drive as master on channel2).
Does it take longer to start Windows when the DVD is set to boot first ? (in other words, does it try to boot DVD but decide it's unbootable and switches to next device?)

[Mobes]

When I attempt to boot with a bootable CD/DVD in the tray, I can hear the CD/DVD attempting to start (I assume being recognized). It then goes to a black screen with a blinking cursor for just a couple of seconds and then begins to boot Windows from the HDD. So, it seems as if it tries to boot the CD/DVD...

[Tripredacus]

This isn't a unique situation. I had encountered this with a Compal notebook in the past 6 months, but it would only refuse to boot off the CD if the OS on the HDD was in Hibernate. Any time it wasn't in hibernate it would work fine.

Does your notebook have a boot menu where you can select the boot device?

[Mobes]

Yeh, I've also tried from the Boot Menu and same result, goes to black screen, blinking cursor for a couple of seconds and then boots the HDD. I guess it may be an inconvenience I'll live with. At least my almost 7yr old laptop is still working fine and I now have a 250g HDD vs. the original 60g!

[jaclaz]

Mobes, on 13 September 2011 - 08:21 AM, said:

Yeh, I've also tried from the Boot Menu and same result, goes to black screen, blinking cursor for a couple of seconds and then boots the HDD. I guess it may be an inconvenience I'll live with. At least my almost 7yr old laptop is still working fine and I now have a 250g HDD vs. the original 60g!

If the HD boots allright, you could add to your BOOT.INI an entry for grub4dos and from the latter try booting the CD (either by chainloading the CD bootsector or by-passing it and directly load the actual loader on the CD/DVD.
At least this way we could undestand if the actual optical drive is allright.


jaclaz

[Ponch]

jaclaz, on 13 September 2011 - 09:51 AM, said:

we could undestand if the actual optical drive is allright.

from post #11 it seems clear the device is fine, because if I understand, he then just removed the HDD from the boot order, not from the installed devices, so both devices can coexist in peace. As well, once booted from HDD, the OS reads the optical disc fine.
Permanent workaround would be to use Grub4dos on an (old/cheap/small) USB drive for the occasional cd boot, via USB. That computer is ~2005~ish and surely boots USB.

[Mobes]

@ Ponch - You're right. I removed the HDD from the boot order and the OS reads the optical disk fine. I've heard of Grub4dos but not familiar. Also, I verified a while back that my Compaq laptop does not boot from USB. I actually bought in July/04. I did find at the same time that my HP Desktop bought in 2005 does boot from USB.

Am I pretty much left with removing the HDD from the boot order when I need to boot from the CD/DVD? If so, I'm sure I can live with that.

Mobes