Cant seem to keep scsi as my top boot priority!

TallBill

Lifer
Apr 29, 2001
46,017
62
91
Ok, i got winxp installed on a scsi drive... when i installed it, that was the only hd in the system. Now i've gone and added a few ide drives to the system, and now it likes to boot off the ide drives. i've set scsi as the boot option in the bios... with no effect. what am i missing?
 

LiLithTecH

Diamond Member
Jul 28, 2002
3,105
0
0
Does your SCSI Host Adapter have a setting for
BIOS Support for More Than 2 Drives?

If so, is it enabled?




 

mastertech01

Moderator Emeritus Elite Member
Nov 13, 1999
11,875
282
126
Unfortunately your ATA controllers are seen by your system bios as SCSI as well, and onboard controllers are always seen in priority to the PCI slots. In many boards you simply cannot have a boot OS on the ATA controller and on the SCSI controller as a result and boot off the SCSI drive.
 

JustinLerner

Senior member
Mar 15, 2002
425
0
0
If the board is a newer board and has the option to boot from SCSI or IDE-0, IDE-1, IDE-2, IDE-3, network, optical, CD-ROM, etc, then disable all other boot options in BIOS for subsequent boot devices. This should help ensure that SCSI boots first.

Here's MS info on the boot.ini file and how to change this file accordingly. I believe it should be scsi(0), not multi(x), where x can be 0 or 1 (if there are two IDE controllers on board).
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q314081
Here's the inverse of what you want to do.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q133491

On some motherboards there is an option to set a Type F DMA buffer control, enable this function if it is available in BIOS. If the board has options to select drives by letter to boot from [C,D,E,F] in addition to SCSI [like C,SCSI,A or SCSI,C,A] set the option to the F drive.