[dba-Tech] Operating system not found

Lembit,
I had the same problem some time ago. Assuming that you have an AMI BIOS the
solution was as follows:

+ Enter the BIOS setup during Boot with F2
+ Go to menu "BOOT"
+ Go to the submenu "Hard Disk Drives" and hit Enter
+ Here you can see which of your drives the BIOS sees as your 1st, 2nd or
3rd Drive.
+ BIOS will always select the 1st Drive to BOOT.
+ Make sure that the 1st Drive is the one you want to boot from. The
selection menu shows prefixes like HDD: PM-xxxxxxx (Primary Master) or
HDD:PS-xxxxxxx (Primary Slave)
+ My problem was, that the BIOS for whatever reasons swapped the sequence of
these drives when playing with the boot device. I have not figured out why
this happened but could reproduce the problem.
+ After getting this straightened out and having the first Boot device set
to HDD the problem was fixed.
Summary: In addition to seeing the disks during BOOT, and having set the 1st
Boot Device to HDD you also have to make sure that the sequence of your hard
disks is set to make the desired one as the first Drive.

Helmut


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Von: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com]Im Auftrag von Lembit
Soobik
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 10. April 2008 19:34
An: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues
Betreff: [dba-Tech] Operating system not found


I've got a PC with real puzzling behaviour:
suddenly it tells me at boot time: Operating system not found.
Now this would indicate that either the HD is gone bad or disconnected,but:
The BIOS shows the HD is there.
then I started it with ACRONIS True Image.
Acronis shows the disk and contents and lets me do an image to a differnt
PC, no problem here.
So I took a different HD from another PC which has WinXP on it.
Same problem - Operating system not found.
Yes I tried a different cable - nothing.
So I took an old HD, connected it instead of the original and started to
install winXP on that.
What happened:
It recognized the HD, let me erase it, make a partition, format it and
copied the files and initialized configuration.
Then it has to restart....
instead of continuing the installation, it started over. That means, it did
not see the HD at boot time (although BIOS does show it).

now I started the WinXP install again, and when it did the restart, I took
the WinXP CD out.
Here it should have asked for the CD, but it told me Operating System NOT
FOUND  again.

So, it can read and write to the disk, but it won't recognise any OS.

now I hooked the disk up to IDE2 - this is where it recognized the Acronis
disk as well as the WinXP disk,
but NO, it does not find the OS there either, although BIOS sees the HD.

to complete the tests I have now connected the CD drive to IDE1 and found, I
can run Acronis fine.

so the problem is, it will not recognize an OS on a HD, but it will run from
a CD, no matter whether on IDE1 or 2.

Does anybody have an idea? or do I have to replace the MB?

any suggestions welcome

thanks
Lembit

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