Re: Disk Boot Failure - More information about the problem for you...
- From: "Rod Speed" <rod.speed.aaa@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 18 Feb 2006 08:45:21 +1100
RSS <rsilverst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote
Last night I did some trouble shooting. I discovered that on power up,
the machine *never* boots. And furthermore, whereas previously, the
reset button seemed to always work, that "fix" decreased its success rate
to less than 50%.
That's significant and indicates that the motherboard is likely
going bad or the hard drive subsystem you are booting from is.
I tried disconnecting EVERYTHING from the power supply except the SATA
(i.e. disconnect both IDE drives AND both CD drives) and the problem
remained unchanged - this makes me less suspicious of the power supply.
Agree?
Yes.
I then tried booting from my IDE drive (which is also bootable), and when
I do that, it boots up just fine
Always, completely reliably, from power up ?
If that is so, its likely the drive you normally boot off is
going bad or its controller is going bad or the connection.
- BUT the SATA drive is not present in Windows.
Likely just because that boot doesnt load the driver for the sata
controller.
Further, I should note that during the boot (either on an SATA boot
failure, or when I boot off IDE and the SATA isn't visible), I do NOT
see a message on the boot screen showing the SATA controller coming
up. On the occasions where the SATA drive DID boot, I would see text
on the screen showing the RAID configuration during bootup. This makes
me suspect the SATA controller on the motherboard. Anyone?
Yes, that looks likely.
Finally, last night, I tried messing around with the SATA cable
between the hard drive and motherboard. I removed it. Dusted it.
Reseated it and did a little wiggling. When I did this, all of a
sudden the SATA drive booted 100% even from complete power down. I
tried that 4 or 5 times and had 100% success. So I thought, problem
solved.
Sadly, this morning, problem back. Now the SATA won't boot at all,
under any circumstances.
Are you guys thinking controller, drive,
More likely a physical problem with the sata cable
or one of the sata connectors used for the boot drive.
Try another sata cable in case that one has a
cracked wire or poor connection to one of the pins.
If a new sata cable doesnt fix the problem you most likely
have a dry joint on one of the sata connectors where its
soldered to the pcb at either end, motherboard or drive.
The obvious test there is to try a different sata drive.
or still possibly power supply?
Very unlikely now.
One plan I have is to go to a friend's system, and try my drive on his
MB,
Yes, tho just moving the drive may be enough to disturb the
bad connection enough to see it working again for a while.
and then his drive on my MB
Thats not a great approach, because the drivers wont
necessarily be appropriate for your MB unless its identical.
and try to answer the question that way.
He also has a spare power supply with separate 12V rails, so we may try
that too.
I wouldnt bother with that at this stage.
Any other thoughts?
Try another sata cable first.
(other than that I am going to have an annoying time dealing with this!)
Dunno, its easier to diagnose than many.
.
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