Weird optical drive problem

[hennessy1]

I have a evga 680i board a1 version with p30 bios. I already know both optical drives work. Also have reset bios to defaults and still didnt work. What the problem is that I cant boot from my master optical drive. If I do it with only one drive it wont boot from that drive. And what I mean is I see it in post screen and stuff like that. The change occurs in bios setup. It will show in ide devices menu but there will be a blank there on the screen that lets you choose which optical drive to boot from first. If theres not enough info then just say but that is my issue.

 

[alzan]

I'm not sure how the drives are currently jumpered but you could try setting them for Master/Slave and see if that fixes it or set them for Cable Select.

You could also try resetting your BIOS to defaults.

alzan

 

[hennessy1]

Thank you for the reply but I have done both and to no avail. Its not the cable because the drives are both detected and work fine even in windows. I just don't know why it wouldnt let me boot from the drive. There has to be a slave on there or else it wont let you boot from any drive. on the cable.

 

[montag451]

Tis possible you have one or both drives jumpered to CS (Cable Select).
Jumper them Master/Slave.
see if that does anything to float your boat.

 

[hennessy1]

thats how they were jumpered originally and thats when I changed them to cable select.

 

[montag451]

Can you try another cable - just in case.

 

[hennessy1]

yup did that one too round ide cable and regular

 

[montag451]

If you put the optical drives on the primary channel, and take out all hdd's, does the same happen?

 

[hennessy1]

those 2 optical drives are the only thing that go on ide everything else is sata thats because I only have 1 ide channel on my board

 

[montag451]

In BIOS, what does it show when you have 2 optical drives connected?
-I know you have looked and they are there, but can you look at the detail and see if 'Auto' is selected, or not?
-Also, try changing the 'Halt on errors' to disabled.
-What is the boot order?
-in the Integrated Peripherals, go into the IDE function setup - post back with everything you see.
-Same with the RAID config - post back with everything.
-Do you get any LED error codes on the mobo?

 

[hennessy1]

yes auto is selected, halt on errors is disabled, well the boot order is that I only have the hdd that has windows on everything else is disabled, no error codes, and no raid enabled.

 

[montag451]

silly question,
are you sure you are trying to boot from the right drive when you have the boot cd in it?

 

[hennessy1]

yes but thats not even the case when I go to choose the boot drive it doesnt list the drive if its the master or doesnt list the drive if its the only drive on the cable(master).

 

[montag451]

I have to go back to the jumper then.
Not taking the pss, I have made this mistake in the past.
Sometimes the jumper diagrams on the drive are 'upside down'. Can you recheck them?

 

[hennessy1]

Did better then that i moved and tried them at all locations on the pins

 

[montag451]

If you did that, I would try them in a different system again, it is possible that the drive has been shorted.

 

[Nocturnal]

I would say that there's a possibility with the drive being bad. You've pretty much done everything possible besides putting them into another system and checking them out there.

In the case that you have, then perhaps the motherboard's IDE ports are bad. Even though you can see them within the BIOS doesn't necessarily mean that they're working properly.

 

[hennessy1]

well the drives work fine in windows and everywhere else I just cant select the master as a boot drive I can the slave just not the master

 

[L00PY]

If you flip the drives (make the master the slave and vice versa), is it the same drive that's not bootable or does the "new" master become unbootable while the slave stays bootable?

Does the "Boot Other Device" BIOS option change anything?

You mentioned the revision, but I'm too lazy to verify -- you are using the latest BIOS available for your mobo, right?

 

[hennessy1]

yeah it doesnt matter which drive is master only slave will be bootable and yes i am using latest bios p30

 

[imported_Baloo]

Originally posted by: hennessy1
yes auto is selected, halt on errors is disabled, well the boot order is that I only have the hdd that has windows on everything else is disabled, no error codes, and no raid enabled.

Uh, you're not gonna boot to CD if you have it set to boot to HDD only. Change that.

 

[L00PY]

Try removing the jumpers from the master entirely. With an optical as master and a harddrive as slave, does it boot?

I'm leaning towards a bug in the BIOS.