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Help with my Parents PC. (I told them to buy a Mac, but no they don't listen)

Hummer

Hummer

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 3, 2006
1,012
0
Queens, New York NY-5
Their hard drive on their PC recently failed so I bought a new 160 gig Western Digital Caviar at BestBuy for 70 bucks. BIOS recognizes it. I'm good there. I'm trying to install Windows XP. I have two XP discs, one ME disc, and 3 Linux discs. I've tried booting from them all and nothing. My PC, when it turns on, just goes "Searching For Boot Record from CD-ROM, IDE-0, Floppy, etc." When it gets to CD-ROM it sits there for about 20 minutes while the discs goes happy in the tray. I've tried 4 discs (only one linux disc, not all three), in two different drives on the PC and it just does the same thing.

What it does get a boot record from though is Net. It says "Searching for Boot Record from Net... OK" and then it goes into this:

Novell Netware Ready Firmware v1.00 (940809)
(C) Copyright 1991-1994 Novell, Inc. All Rights Reserved
SiS 900/7016 PCI Adapters Dos ODI Driver v1.05 (990410)
(C) Copyright 1998 SiS Corp. All Rights Reserved

RPL-ROM-ADR: 00D0 09DF 6C22
RPL-ROM-IRQ: 5
RPL-ROM-PIO: CC00
RPL-ROM-FFC: 5

RPL-ROM-FFC: 5
Searching for boot record from floppy..Not Found
Searching for boot record from CDROM..Not Found
Searching for boot record from Network..OK

Press <home> key to boot from local Drive
Boot Failure
Insert Boot Diskette in A:
Press Any Key when ready

and thats it.

What's wrong? What settings in BIOS do I have wrong. I have everything on Auto in basic settings and I've tried changing up the order to boot in.
 
I'm sure you already though of this, but you should try posting this on a Windows forum. You'll probable get better results. :)
 
Open the case. Double check the cabling to the CD drive. It sounds like you might have knocked it loose. Been, there, done that. :p
 
Make sure you set the jumpers (the little peg things). Those may be the problem.

The hard drives are usually set to Primary Master and CD Drives are on the secondary chain or on the slave position of the primary chain.
 
I would set all the drives to 'cable select' and make sure they are daisy chained in the order of HD>CD.
Of course I'm sure the boot sequence and the such are all correct.

Otherwise, pull the battery out of the MB, see if that helps.
 
what kind of pc? how many optical drives?

when you are in bios, is the new hard drive showing up?

sounds like a bios/cable issue without knowing more. even if you change the boot order, there is usally a setting somewhere for 'try other boot devices' which is why it looks for the cd, then hd, then network boot even if you didn't tell it to.

best guess would be to have the primary ide cable going to the new hard drive, and have the new hard drive jumper set to master (should be the middle set of jumpers on a WD) and nothing else on that cable. have the secondary ide cable going to one cd-rom only (master/slave/cable select won't matter). best chance of no conflict.

if the xp discs are 'upgrade' and not oem/retail, then they will not be bootable. you would be stuck installing Me first, and then doing an upgrade. if you have to do that, tell xp to erase everything and install a clean copy as Me is about as stable as a one legged chair. best of luck.
 
How old is the computer? Some older machines need a BIOS update to see all 160GB of the hard disk drive and wont work right without it.

Also, the only way to get Windows XP onto a machine with a drive bigger than 137GB is to have a copy with at least Service Pack 1 included on the disc.
 
ReanimationLP said:
... Also, the only way to get Windows XP onto a machine with a drive bigger than 137GB is to have a copy with at least Service Pack 1 included on the disc.
Click to expand...

You can still install XP on the disk, it will just ignore any space larger than that threshold until you install the necessary updates.

But, like others have said, it does sound as simple as an IDE cable issue. Check that the drives are configured correctly (i.e. set to master and slave so that they aren't fighting each other). This has happened to me plenty of times in the past, but is always an easy fix. :)
 
Winterfell said:
You can still install XP on the disk, it will just ignore any space larger than that threshold until you install the necessary updates.

But, like others have said, it does sound as simple as an IDE cable issue. Check that the drives are configured correctly (i.e. set to master and slave so that they aren't fighting each other). This has happened to me plenty of times in the past, but is always an easy fix. :)
Click to expand...

Thanks, I have tried switching the cables around and switching the boot orders around in BIOS also using the reset option in BIOS. I get the same thing when it goes to boot the CD-ROM. It'll just sit there and spin for 20 - 30 minutes and then say not found. When there is no CD in the drive it'll automatically go Not Found.

Thanks for all your help guys. I'll leave it to my parents to fix.
 
On the back of each drive, there are a sent of 3 pins next to the IDE cable pins, in sets of two (usually vertically), with a small connector that connects two of the pins. See my elementary ascii drawing below. :p

Code: 
         Disk drive (hard drive, cdrom, etc)
                             |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
|                                                         |
|               [:::] [:::::::::::.::::::::::::] [ **** ] |
|                 |              |                  |     |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
                  |              |                  |
              Pins set       IDE cable         power cable

Most drives will have a sticker on the drive that will tell you how to connect the pins to achieve a desired setup:
  • cable-select, where the position of the drive on the cable determines the master/slave order
  • master, where the drive is the master
  • and slave, where the drive acts as the slave.
If the drives aren't configured correctly (i.e. one master/one slave per IDE cable), then your computer will not be able to use them when you boot.

I don't know if you've checked them or not; but it is worth a try.
 
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