Really bizarre boot problem

[OzzieGT]

So I just installed the first SATA drive on my system. I am using it as my boot drive (even though it is showing up as G: in windows??). Anyway, so if I have a bootable cd rom in the drive and it says "press any key to boot from CD..." and I ignore it, I get my windows boot menu. However if I don't have a bootable CD in the drive I get a boot drive error. I don't get it...why can it boot of my HDD only when there is a bootable cd rom in the drive? Any suggestions?

 

[velis]

You don't have SATA HDD set as a boot device in your BIOS.
My guess is you have the following setting:
floppy
cdrom
HDD-0

The problem here is that HDD-0 is another PATA harddisk (non bootable) you have. You need to find the correct one and set it as a boot device on that list. Either your BIOS will clearly mark the drives so you won't have to guess or you'll just have to try all the possibilities to see which one works. I believe some older BIOSes made a distinction among PATA and SATA drives.

There is a negligible chance of your MB not supporting straight SATA boot from BIOS, but i guess that's really out of the question since it WILL boot the way you desribed.