Problems booting with mixed scsi/ide setup

[nater]

Tbird 1.4
Shuttle AK31
Windows XP
Adaptec 29160
x2 18 gig Ibm SCSI drives
x2 SCSI CD drives (cdrw/cd)
x2 IDE hard drives (200gb and 60gb)

OS installed on one of the scsi IBM drives; boot.ini and other system type files were placed on one of the ide drives in the os installation

I ran this setup for 4-5 months without a problem, then one day it just stopped booting into windows--it just stopped altogether following the listing of the pci devices (the last line listed is the ACPI controller) without displaying an error message. Following a suggestion from someone here, I removed all of the PCI cards, including the SCSI adapter, and tried booting. When I did that, I got a "system boot failure, insert system disk and try again" msg. I get the same message when everything is reconnected EXCEPT for the IDE drives. If they are connected, I don't get any error message at all, it just halts on the booting process. I have successfully booted into windows using My Boot Disk and another boot disk with the xp recovery console--however, that only works if the IDE drives are disconnected. If they are connected, I get a missing or corrupt hal.dll error message. I'm clueless at this point, but I would like to save my OS installation if at all possible.

 

[mastertech01]

You have no operating system on the IDE drives installed do you? Just in case you didnt know, the system will always give boot priority to the first SCSI controller seen, which is always the ATA controller since it is seen as a SCSI controller. If the boot order is set correctly, and no other OS is installed, maybe you should try recovery console and select FIXBOOT to the OS drive. Also make sure the controller is still set to boot off your OS drive and that all connectors, jumpers and terminators are secure.