PC BIOS/boot up help

Orbitman2099

I recently acquired an Athlon X2 4600+ and a Biostar K8M800 mobo and I was switching various parts from my Sony VAIO when I realized I got this error at boot up

"BOOT DISK ERROR PLEASE INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

Is this supposed to happen? Shouldn't the PC have already boot into Windows XP off the hard-drives from the old PC? I remember randomly putting in a Windows 2000 Professional disc and it saying "hard-drives not found cannot continue" or something in that sense. So could it be my hard-drives aren't showing up in the mobo and my system cannot boot? Is there a fix to this? Something to do with the jumpers maybe? Thank you.

Ruckus

Check your boot device orders in the BIOS.

Also, if the drives are ATA (IDE) make sure you don't have a Master/Slave issue if you've got multiple drives on one channel.

TychoCelchuuu

It's possible the motherboard's drivers (which aren't installed of course) somehow aren't recognizing your hard drives. How you'd fix that is a little beyond me (put the old mobo in, uninstall mobo drivers, install new mobo drivers, install new mobo?) but it's one possibility.

enderwiggin13

The first two ideas are good ones, you'll also want to set your POST (Power On Self Test) to be verbose/full or not-quick in BIOS so that you can see all devices load up. It may happen quickly, but watch the POST to see if your drives are being recognized by the system. If they are showing up in POST, but you still get the error, it may be a problem with the OS being bootstrapped (started up, i.e. pulled up by the bootstraps). If the drive doesn't show up in POST, then its a hardware thing and you need to check cable connections and the drive itself.

It's been a while since I've done this, but in the past you used to be able to use the Pause key to pause the POST if it's flashing by too fast. SPACE or PAUSE again to unpause.

Ruckus

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

It's possible the motherboard's drivers (which aren't installed of course) somehow aren't recognizing your hard drives. How you'd fix that is a little beyond me (put the old mobo in, uninstall mobo drivers, install new mobo drivers, install new mobo?) but it's one possibility.

The error message in the OP is indicative of a failure of the Motherboard to detect the drive during POST, which is not related to any drivers which may or may not be installed.

Most likely the problem is the BIOS's listing for bootable devices or possibly the harddrive itself.

TychoCelchuuu

Ruckus wrote: »

TychoCelchuuu wrote: »

It's possible the motherboard's drivers (which aren't installed of course) somehow aren't recognizing your hard drives. How you'd fix that is a little beyond me (put the old mobo in, uninstall mobo drivers, install new mobo drivers, install new mobo?) but it's one possibility.

The error message in the OP is indicative of a failure of the Motherboard to detect the drive during POST, which is not related to any drivers which may or may not be installed.

Most likely the problem is the BIOS's listing for bootable devices or possibly the harddrive itself.

Oops, that makes sense. My bad.

Orbitman2099

There is no piece of hardware that shows up in the BIOS's listing of bootable devices, not one single hard-drive. I have multiple internal hard-drives.

Uncle Long

Are the hard drives spinning?

And, the stupid question: Are you sure you have both the data and the power cables plugged in correctly?

Orbitman2099

The hard-drives were not spinning, nope.

Uncle Long

So... uh, they aren't powering on. You do have them connected to the motherboard and plugged into the PSU right?

I mean, if they aren't starting up then there isn't a whole lot to do to get them recognized by your mobo.

TychoCelchuuu

If you've triple checked all the connections and the power and stuff (SATA needs data cable and power cable, but ONLY ONE OF THE TWO POSSIBLE POWER CABLES if the drive has space for two), then I'd try out a spare hard drive just to see if the computer can access any of them, at all. People have already suggested master/slave problems (if it's IDE): did you check that? If we could know what kind of drives they are that would be cool.

Orbitman2099

There's a Maxtor and two Western Digitals, I think?

Ruckus

What channels are they on and which are master and which are slave?

Typically you set your boot drive to Primary Master, Main Optical to Secondary Master, secondary harddrive to primary slave, and anything else on the secondary slave.

TychoCelchuuu

Until you're able to boot it might be a good idea just to plug in the HD with the OS. Are they IDE, SATA, or a mix of the two? The brand doesn't really matter.

Orbitman2099

I'm almost sure all of them are IDE drives..

Orbitman2099

I just double checked with my dad and he said the hard-drives were in fact spinning. He plugged and unplugged them and he said they weren't spinning at optimum speed. He says they usually have some sort of a whistle and he thinks they should be louder. He thinks it's a miscommunication between the hard-drives and the rest of the system. Could the power supply not be powerful enough to supply enough...power? Haha.

Nova_C

A whistle? Not spinning enough? I.....don't think that's right. :P

I think we're missing a step here. You said none of the hard drives appeared in the list of 'bootable' devices. If that means what I think it means, then none of the drives have boot sectors written. So, you're gonna need to install a new OS, perhaps. On the first page of the BIOS it should list your IDE devices (If not on the first page, there should be a list somewhere). Do the drives come up there?

Ruckus

Why don't you list your primary and secondary channel master slave assignments here.

TychoCelchuuu

And which cables each drive is on, including anything else (CD drives) that are plugged in to those cables, and the jumper settings on the "anything else."

And yes, there is no such thing as a whistle that a hard drive makes, except perhaps as it dies