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Homebrew system won't boot to CD-Rom - help!!!

S

spartacuskzm

Senior member
We just put together a new system. It's on an Asus A798X. I've set the bios to boot from the CD-Rom and the rest of them to "Disabled". I get a "Disk Boot Failure" "Insert System Disk and Press Enter" error message.

I thought if I had the CD-Rom set to boot w/ the XP disk the rest is pretty much automatic - at least that's what I thought happened on the last two I put together.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

Thanks!
 
Well now it's something else. We're getting a "PXE-E61 Media Test Failure, Check Cable. PXE-M0F - Exiting Nvidia Boot Agent."

Help!!!

Thanks.
 
Go into the BIOS and disable booting from the onboard NIC, that's where the PXE error is coming from. By the way, you can press the Esc key at POST and the board will give you a list of boot devices to choose from after it's done POSTing, if I'm not mistaken. Might give that a whirl.
 
Originally posted by: mechBgon
Go into the BIOS and disable booting from the onboard NIC, that's where the PXE error is coming from. By the way, you can press the Esc key at POST and the board will give you a list of boot devices to choose from after it's done POSTing, if I'm not mistaken. Might give that a whirl.
Click to expand...


Switched it back to simply booting from CD-Rom, with everything else disabled. It was the "Boot other device" that was casuing the error I guess. In any case, now I'm back to the "Disk Boot Failure. Insert System Disk and Press Enter"....does that sound like a bad XP CD?

 
By the way, when I do press enter it doesn't even spin up. I get a light on the CD-Rom for a split second and then the error message right away - it doesn't even try to read the CD.
 
There are a couple of other strange things. At boot up it says it's an Athlong xp1800+ even though it's actually an Athlon xp2400. It also says memory frequency is 166mhz @ boot up. Is that right? The system also has 512MB of Kingston 333mhz DDR PC2700 Ram.

Does this help at all?

Thanks all - noob appreciates the help.
 
Double check the cables going into the CDrom. You should see where the CDRom was detected when the computer boots if it is connected correctly. If you do not see where it is detected, then it's probably either a cable problem or you have two drives on the same cable with both of them set to master or slave.

Try a different CDRom.
 
I did recheck and I think everything was fine. Nevertheless, I unplugged one of the CD Roms so now there is only one left in there. I still get virtually an instant "boot disk error". It barely takes the time to try to read the CD-Rom, if it even does at all.

Doh - so frustrating.

Any other thoughts?
 
This is a different system from what I have listed in my sig (it's somebody elses - not mine), but that's essentially what we did. Still no dice :-(
 
Try a boot floppy with generic cd-rom support. If you get cd-rom access you can read any disk, then install from there. Maybe the cd-rom drivers on the XP disk won't work with the cd-rom you are using. Does the BIOS see the cd-rom?
 
Well we made a boot disk and it in worked - kind of. The directions were (after booting).

1.) Change to CD drive.
2.) Change to i386 folder
3.) Type winnt.exe and setup will start.

Problem is we get the error "Internal setup error has occurred. COuld not find a place for a swap file. Setup cannot continue. Press enter to exit".

Thoughts? We're so close I don't want to quit!

Thanks.
 
Re-connect your hard drive or make sure the BIOS is set to automatically detect all IDE devices.

Primary Master -Auto
Primary Slave -Auto
Secondary Master -Auto
Secondary Slave -Auto

Then check your M/S configuration. If nothing works, connect a single HD as primary master, install Windows, then try adding any other drives.
 
Well have you read the instructions for the motherboard? First thing is you have the fsb speed set wrong that is why it is not detecting the processor properly.
Try a different CD rom. Put it on the 2nd ide port and set it to master. Is the HD new? If you have a win 98 boot disk try that and when it asks tell it to start the computer with CD rom support. it sets up as a ram drive which moves your cd rom to E so once you get the win 98 start up disk loaded do a dir on the HD and see if it there. Also do a dir on the E drive with the install cd in and see if it is reading it.

Bleep
 
Thanks Bleep - I figured as much w/ the processor. I'll fix that.

We tried both CD Roms last night. The boot disk I made worked, but as I mentioned above we get the following:
"Internal setup error has occurred. Could not find a place for a swap file. Setup cannot continue. Press enter to exit".

The HD is new, however we have been told it was dropped when it was picked up. This is confirmed by the fact a small piece of plastic on the back (near where the power plugs in) came off. The mobo, however, recognizes that that HD is there perfectly (WD 120GB Caviar).

Could the error above - not being able to create the swap file - be caused by the drop that occurred w/ the HD? Anything else?

Thanks all.

 
We haven't formatted it. I was trying to have the system boot directly to the CD-drive in order to install XP. Should I format the drive first? If so, how? Right now, w/ the boot disk, it recognizes the Floppy & CD drive, but that's it.

 
can you see the drive in bios? have you set bios to automatically detect all drives? Are the jumpers set correctly on the drive?
 
Bios can see the drive. Jumper is set to master, and bios is set to auto-detect. Right now I have Primary Master of HD and Secondary Master of the one CD Rom that is hooked up (disconnected the other one).

Boot Order is either Floppy then CD (if trying to use Boot Disk) or Just CD if trying to boot to XP CD.
 
Originally posted by: spartacuskzm

Could the error above - not being able to create the swap file - be caused by the drop that occurred w/ the HD?
Click to expand...
Doh
rolleye.gif


Yea, a dropped drive could have something to do with it.

But I would guess you can't install an OS and create a swap file on a unformatted hard drive. Follow the hdd directions and put the disk or floppy that came with the hdd and do a quick format, if you bought a retail package that is. I have read that the Win XP has a format option on the disk, though I could not tell you where it is cause I am still using 98.
 
I'd suggest making XP boot disks from the winxp CD, it appears that you PC will not boot from a CD so to properly install Winxp you need to use XP boot floppies, I belive it uses 4 disks and it will prompt you for the cd-rom once you've gone thought the floppies. Hope this helps... 🙂
 
Can you hear the drive spin up? most likely if it was dropped with enough force to break a piece off, then the drive is hosed. either the platters shattered(i did this to a laptop drive) or the spindle motor is FUBAR.
 
Originally posted by: Arcanedeath
I'd suggest making XP boot disks from the winxp CD, it appears that you PC will not boot from a CD so to properly install Winxp you need to use XP boot floppies, I belive it uses 4 disks and it will prompt you for the cd-rom once you've gone thought the floppies. Hope this helps... 🙂
Click to expand...

Arcane,
Great idea - if the XP boot disks don't work then I'm assuming nothing will. Now where the heck will I find 6 floppys???
 
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