Borked mobo?

Ultra_Extreme · 14 Jul 2006 at 22:44

board will only detect master on IDE channels swapped it over from one case to another last night, went to boot it and it would only find the master HDD , it wont boot from it tho, says NTLDR is missing which is like file 1 in the boot sequence. Anyone think what else it could be?

should add that if i swap HDD's around the result is the same thus its not HDD failure

have reset cmos too

InvaderGIR · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:01

Sounds stupid but...

...have you tried using a different IDE cable?

My PC kept screwing up and I couldn't figure out why, turns out I had a busted IDE cable that was really intermiten and messed the whole rig around. Put a new one in and it was fine.

If that's not it, then it could have incorrectly shutdown and borked the install

Ultra_Extreme · 14 Jul 2006 at 23:25

unfortunately yeah i have tried that and no change

Minstadave · 15 Jul 2006 at 00:33

Ultra_Extreme said:
board will only detect master on IDE channels swapped it over from one case to another last night, went to boot it and it would only find the master HDD , it wont boot from it tho, says NTLDR is missing which is like file 1 in the boot sequence. Anyone think what else it could be?

should add that if i swap HDD's around the result is the same thus its not HDD failure

have reset cmos too

NTLDR error is usually due to a borked windows install, not a hardware problem.

Ultra_Extreme · 15 Jul 2006 at 01:51

Minstadave said:
NTLDR error is usually due to a borked windows install, not a hardware problem.

yeah but it reports that on both drives (of which only one at a time will show in the bios) one has a working MCE install the other is blank......IDE interface has gone methinks

Sir Random · 15 Jul 2006 at 02:08

Silly question, but have you tried the other IDE port? (assuming the mobo has 2 IDE ports)

Are the optical drives detected ok?

Ultra_Extreme · 15 Jul 2006 at 02:32

Sir Random said:
Silly question, but have you tried the other IDE port? (assuming the mobo has 2 IDE ports)

Are the optical drives detected ok?

Yeah same story on the other IDE, will only detect the master, again i reiterate i have used many hard disks, not just the same 2. Also when i use the master optical drive to boot an XP cd it BSOD's while displaying the "setup is now starting windows" section

Sir Random · 15 Jul 2006 at 03:12

Are the drives detected ok in the BIOS? If they are, then it could be a faulty stick of ram. I kept getting hard drive errors on boot-up (missing file errors) when a stick of sdram died in my old PC. I tried re-installing windows, and even re-formatted the drive (needlessly) before discovering it was dodgy ram

.

Ultra_Extreme · 15 Jul 2006 at 03:39

Sir Random said:
Are the drives detected ok in the BIOS? If they are, then it could be a faulty stick of ram. I kept getting hard drive errors on boot-up (missing file errors) when a stick of sdram died in my old PC. I tried re-installing windows, and even re-formatted the drive (needlessly) before discovering it was dodgy ram .

nah only one drive per channel shows up, none will boot