Cannot boot from CD first! HELP!

vipergrm

vipergrm

vipergrm

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Hi guys,

I am just installing a new build machine for a friend. The board is an Abit IB9. The problem I am having is that I cannot boot from CD on startup. I have been into the BIOS loads of times now and even if I set to boot from CD for priorities 1,2 and 3 it still happens. It seems to ignore the CD altogether and go straight to the hard drives. I keep getting 'NTLDR is missing' which would indicate that it is trying to boot from the hard disk. I have tried both SATA and IDE hard drives with the same outcome. I have tried plugging the IDE CD/DVD ROM drive into primary/secondary IDE with the same problem. I have also change the CD/DVD drive.

Oddly enough, if I remove the hard drives altogether, it WILL boot from CD, but this is of course, completely useless. I even tried plugging the hard drive in after it booted from the XP CD but after the first reboot the same thing happened and it would not boot from the hard drive either. I have also upgraded the flash twice and downgraded it again. Still the same problem. I have reset the CMOS several times too.

Am I right in thinking that there is something wrong with this motherboard? Have I missed anything? Your help is much appreciated. As you can imagine, I have spent so much time on this! Thank you very much in advance.

Viper ;)
 
Weird.

If this is a new build, have you tried memtest or just one stick of ram?
I can't see it would be related to not being able to boot, but one cause of not being able to install windows is bad memory.

Seems like you tried everything else, so can't hurt.
 
Have you tried using the IDE/SATA bridge that ships with the mobo?
Also the IDE is on an addon controller so that may change the actual setting in boot priority (also quite often the BIOS these days actually has the device named rather than just CD/DVD).
 
Buff - I'm not quite sure what you mean by that. All I know is that the default board options will not boot from the CD. Regardless of aything else, I simply think that this is completely wrong. Surely this isn't how the board comes as a default setting?

Buff - Can you tell me where I need to change something in the BIOS?

Thanks!

Viper ;)
 
Wingz said:
try using a different ide cable, i read in another forum that he had a faulty one.
Click to expand...

If it will boot from the CD with no HDD installed then the cable is probably good.

Any chance you could post a picture of your BIOS set up for floppy, CD, HDD boot order as the 1,2,3 thing sounds like you're in the wrong part of the BIOS (there is a separate boot order for HDD, optical drives etc. for when you have more than one) and it could be you are only changing that, not the actually boot order itself.

Under Advanced BIOS features;

First Boot Device should be Floppy
Second Boot Device should be Hard Disk (select this with the arrow keys and use + and - numeric keypad to change it to IDE CD ROM)
Third Boot Device should be IDE CD ROM (select this and use the + and - keys as before the change it to Hard Disk.

Press F10 and choose Yes to save and exit.

Do not change the Hard Disk Boot Priority though.

Sorry if you have it set up like this, but the 1,2,3 thing you mentioned sounds like the Hard Disk Boot priority, not the Boot Device priority.
 
The IDE controller is an addon controller so it's possible that it could be in the boot options as that or it's possible that the ODD may actually be named by specific device name rather than just CD or DVD.

What I was saying is that you could also try connecting the IDE ODD to 1 of the SATA ports using the adapter that is bundled with the mobo.
 
Guys, thank you for your replies. I have RMA'd the board as every possibility seems to have been exhausted. I have also tried replacing the IDE cable. If I hadn't mentioned earlier, I got an error intermittently saying "DMI Update.....Failed". This would only clear after several reboots. I am sure there is something not right with this board. Thank you for the support! ;)
 
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