Resolved Can't get into BIOS after XP install

I built a machine a few years ago and had my Raid 0 go bad. I was able to recover everything I needed and bought a new WD 640GB AALS drive. I installed Windows 7, but decided to go back to XP after I read that my motherboard, an old ASUS A8N32-SLI, doesn't support Windows 7 and I had difficulty getting the drivers installed for the older hardware. The system's full specs are in my profile

So I installed Windows XP that I originally used when I built the machine. It's a valid copy I purchased from Newegg and didn't have any issues when I used it 4 years ago. During the installation I formatted the 100MB partition that Windows 7 created in the new WD drive and continued with the installation. After the computer restarted it won't boot up again.

If I press F8 on startup the BIOS displays the basic system information and then just stops after the hard drive is displayed. If I press F8 at this point, the
'Auto-Detecting 3rd Master..IDE Hard Disk'
message changes to
'Boot Selection Popup menu has been selected'
But that's all that happens and I'm not sure what that really means.

I can't boot up from the floppy, DVD drive or the HDD.
I also can't get back into the BIOS.

One additional point. I installed ReadyDriver Plus when I was trying to get the old drivers for my hardware working with Windows 7. That didn't seem to interfere with Windows 7 or booting from the DVD drive. The issues happened after I installed XP.

These are the steps I've taken:
Took out battery from the motherboard for 15 minutes hoping it would reset the BIOS
Checked all the cables and power lines

Still at the same state though
Really appreciate any help you can offer !

 

Well I have to yet find a modern board which doesn't support Win 7. To a board Win 7 is no different from Win Xp, 2000 or Linux. The OS has to support the hardware & not generally the other way round. If you hardware meets the minimum [these are bare minimum to get started, though if you stick with these you could end up drinking litres of coffe or other stuff during the day, waiting for your computer to finish it work] you can install the OS on it.

Try to get into BIOS after removing ALL the hard disks.

 

That worked great. I was able to get into the BIOS and fix the date/time because I had taken out the battery before. The DVD drive was in third place after the HDD so also flipped that. I had changed that earlier so not sure why that didn't stick. Maybe the reset after I took out the battery did that.

So I then tried to boot up with the new drive and the 2 older one's I ha fromthe raid 0 setup and I could no longer boot the machines. I then unplugged the new WD640 and XP booted from the DVD drive.

So did something go wrong when I removed the 100MB partition on that drive? I thought that was from Windows 7 and would cause no harm.

So how do I bootup and try the XP install on that new drive again ?

 

What message do you get when you try to boot off the hard disk ?

Could be that your MBR need to be fixed.

 

I got the same thing as before. It won't boot off of any device in the boot order: Floppy, DVD or the HDD. So it just hangs at the BIOS message that indicates the devices and that's it. I can't even get into the BIOS when the HDD is connected mto the motherboard.

I was able to boot off the DVD and get into the BIOS when the HDD is disconnected.

I think when I deleted the 100MB partition that Windows 7 created and than formatted everything during the XP install caused an issue.

I was thinking of connecting the HDD to my laptop and formatting it again. I can't get into my desktop at all while it is connected to the motherboard.

 

It could be worse than a simple Win7/XP problem.

From the description it appears that there is something wrong either with the hard disk itself or the connecting cable. The first thing would be to try a new cable. If that doesn't work, try the hard disk in another working computer & try to get off your data from that hard disk. If nothing works, send the disk for replacement.

 

I connected the hard drive to a laptop and could see the Windows directory so it looks like XP was installed. I could successfully view anything in the Windows directory so the drive looks healthy. I did a Quick Format which indicated 100MB used afterwards and the rest free. I'm not sure what the 100MB is, but was hoping it would make a difference in the desktop.

I connected it back into the desktop and the same behavior as before. It won't boot from a floppy, DVD or the HDD ( which was now empty anyway ). I also swapped out the SATA cable for a spare one and still the same behavior. I can't even get into the BIOS with the drive connected to the motherboard.

I had this HDD in the SATA connector marked SATA3 on the motherboard with the 2 old HDDs in the SATA1 and SATA2 spots. I switched the new HDD to SATA1 and now the BIOS only recognizes this one drive and not the other two.

I'm hesitant that the drive is bad because I ran Windows7 on it for a week and had no issues booting from it or booting from a drive higher in the boot priority such as a DVD. The drive also looked fine on the laptop.

The machine never rebooted successfully after I deleted the small 100MB partition Windows 7 put on it and installed XP.

Is it possible that Windows 7 has left something on the drive or in the BIOS that is causing an issue ?

 

First back up your data. Then reinitialise the drive using the manufacturers utility. This would remove ALL data & partitions and also give you an indication of drives health.

I would suggest that you then try to load Windows on this drive by removing all other drives from the computer.

 

Been very busy with this drive so didn't see your post till now.

I did some more searching on the web and found alot of issues with ReadyDriver Plus and installing another version of windows on the same HDD. I used GPARTED and found the 100MB partition still there. I deleted that partition and the larger one, created one partition for the whole drive and formatted it to NTFS at the same time.

The desktop now recognizes the drive with no issues and boots from the XP DVD. I did the install on that drive and the setup indicated everything was installed successfully; however, I get an error message when trying to boot from that drive that states :
'Error loading operating system'. I've tried this twice.

I used GPARTED to look at the drive again and everything seems to be in order. One partition.

I'm going to download what I can from Western Digital and see if that makes a difference. GPARTED didn't flag any bad sectors so I figured the drive was healthy. I see what the WD utilities say.

 

May be something wrong with MBR. Have you checked up my link in Post #4 ?

 

Make sure you are reinstalling the SATA drivers if your main drive is SATA. Win7 has most of the drivers needed; XP doesn't. That's why you can boot just fine from the optical drive but not the HDD. You need to press F6 at the prompt when the computer's unpacking files from the install CD.

FWIW, this is also one of the few circumstances I know of where a FDD still is required; XP wasn't written to allow loading SATA drivers from a CD - at the install phase it'll only recognize the floppy drive.

 

Picky, picky, picky.....

If you don't have access to another computer to slipstream the SATA drivers into an XP boot disk - or already have the disk prepared - you will need that FDD. I was going from experience, where 90% of people don't think of stuff like that until they need it.

 

Lgbpop, if you can't load the drivers, XP would NOT recognise the hard disk & won't load at all [No disk found error]. In this case rferrara was able to load Win XP successfully, but couldn't boot from it.

 

I stand corrected, I read Ferrara's post wrong. Somehow I missed the part where he put the drive into another system and could see the Windows folder. No more eggnog until December!

 

Thanks everyone for all the suggestions - very helpful !!!

rsinfo - I did as you suggested and used WD's utilities to write 0's to the drive. I then used GPARTED to create a new partition table with 2 partitions - one for OS and the other for data. I did this on my laptop with no problems. WD's utilites must have been more thorough than the formatting I did with Vista on my laptop.

I also took your advice on Windows 7, but rather than the 64bit I used for the initial install I performed, I went with 32bit to get around the signed drivers issue I was getting on alot of the old dll's I needed for some utilities that Asus provides for my mother board. I'm thinking I may have hit that with alot of the software I have.
The install on the desktop worked fine, but still need to install alot of drivers and software.

Thanks again everyone !

 

Good to hear that everything worked out fine & ok.

Please mark the post as "Resolved ".