Stupid question...

sjt269 · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:49

I'm almost embarassed to have to ask this, since I'm sure it's a ridiculously obvious question to some people (not to me, funnily enough)...

Got a replacement hard drive in from Western Digital earlier in the week and tried to install it today in my brother's PC, and I'm having some problems. The setup gets half way through, formats the drive and installs some files with no problem, then tells me the system needs to reboot and that the setup will continue after rebooting. The thing is, it doesn't. It starts over trying to install Windows. It's not set to boot from the CD, so I dunno what's wrong or how to fix it. I've installed Windows hundreds of times, and it's never done this before. I'd be willing to bet its some silly little mistake though, rather than a major issue. It's a SATA drive, if that matters, 160Gb.

Anyway, anyone got any suggestions on how to fix this? Obviously I'm having a look myself, but I've been fiddling with the PC since 2pm and I've given up for now.

GraemeUK · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:48

Does it finish copying the files over and then tells you its going to restart?

Have you checked everywhere in the bios for the boot priority order?

Try taking cd out when it reboots so it doesnt boot from it but then put it back in when the installation starts again.

Unplug your keyboard just before reboot, just to rule out nothing it making it boot from cd (when it says press any key to boot from cd).

Apart from that I'm not too sure. HTH Good luck

|Ric| · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:49

Take out cd, boot, put cd back in?

sjt269 · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:24

I tried taking the CD out, and it just hangs with the message 'Boot from CD:' as though its not recognising the hard drive.

Could this be down to jumper settings, do you think? This might be better in the hard drive forum, in that case (I thought it was a software issue at first, changing my mind now though) but surely the jumpers would have something to do with it not booting from the HDD? It doesn't seem to show in the BIOS either, though the setup picks it up no problem, as does chkdsk and other such commands.

mr.sly · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:31

Trying changing where you've plugged in the SATA drive into the motherboard. When I first got a SATA drive I made the mistake of plugging it into the Sec SATA I think it was and I had a similar problem.

Not positive it will work but it's worth a try.

nicktay2605 · 27 Apr 2007 at 23:32

I had this problem when installing Vista, would completely restart the installation after rebooting. Make sure when it says 'boot from cd' don't press anything, because it sometimes says 'press any key to boot from cd or dvd' and if you do this it will restart the installation. It should automatically continue the installation.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 14:06

I'm pretty sure I didn't press anything on the keyboard, but I'll completely unplug it next time I have a go, just to be on the safe side.

Slyvester said:
Trying changing where you've plugged in the SATA drive into the motherboard. When I first got a SATA drive I made the mistake of plugging it into the Sec SATA I think it was and I had a similar problem.

Not positive it will work but it's worth a try.

I plugged it into the same place the previous SATA drive was plugged into, so this shouldn't be a problem, shoudl it? The new one is SATA II, I think, and the old one SATA I, so I dunno.

gareth170 · 28 Apr 2007 at 14:16

tTz said:
I plugged it into the same place the previous SATA drive was plugged into, so this shouldn't be a problem, shoudl it? The new one is SATA II, I think, and the old one SATA I, so I dunno.

can your motherboard take sata II? if it can't, u need to change the jumper on the back of the hard drive to sata I..

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 14:59

Yeah, I finally tracked down the jumper settings on the WD website, and I'm planning on giving it a go later on. I was going to try fiddling with the jumper settings anyway, actually.

What I don't get though is that if the mobo can't understand SATA II, how could the Windows installation get halfway done?

mr.sly · 28 Apr 2007 at 15:05

On the WD site there's a DOS (Lifeguard I think it's called) program you can download a burn to CD. And that can check your hard drive to see if it's healthy. And also set up the partition, because maybe the motherboard doesn't like the size of the drive. I'm not really sure it's going to be that though because as you said it's installing half of windows.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 15:09

The HDD is a direct replacement from WD, so I'd imagine it would be working, plus the last hard drive that I had that didn't work didn't even get to the install stage, whereas this one does. Maybe it is the partition size after all. If I install XP on a smallish partition, I can expand it later, can't I?

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 17:01

Got nowhere with changing the jumper settings. The install still loops round and round, and the HDD doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the BIOS, though I don't know whereabout in the BIOS it would appear anyway.

mr.sly · 28 Apr 2007 at 17:25

Yeah you will be able to make the partition bigger later on with something like Partition Magic I think.

Also it's nothing something I've had to before, but Windows gives you the option to install SATA drivers I think when installing windows (the blue screen bit) if you hit F6 I think.

Might be worth downloading the drivers for your motherboard and putting them on a floopy disc and try that.

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 17:27

Yeah, I was looking at that SATA driver option on my last attempt at installing. It might be worth a shot, if I can find a floppy.

MarcLister · 28 Apr 2007 at 17:40

tTz said:
Yeah, I was looking at that SATA driver option on my last attempt at installing. It might be worth a shot, if I can find a floppy.

Are you able to run Windows on your brother's PC? If so, just make a quick nLite copy of your brother's XP CD and integrate the SATA drivers into that. Saves the need to faffing around with floppies.

Also what motherboard is it? Deffo SATA II able? What version of XP? XP SP2?

Plus, Hi from your other thread. Lets see if I can help you in here.

d.chatten · 28 Apr 2007 at 18:51

I thought that i would "try" to help if i can, SATA II HDD's from WD are backwards compatible with SATA I motherboards, the reasons for HDD's not being detected are usually bios related, compatibility issues with the motherboard, bad HDD or HDD jumper settings, ie: SATA I/SATA II.

This is what i see happening, the system boots from CD/DVD and setup starts, setup partitions and formats the HDD, setup copies files to HDD, setup restarts the system, system boots from the CD/DVD instead of the HDD.

The main reason this accures is if the HDD isn't being detected properly by the bios, if the HDD isn't detected by the bios then the system can't boot from the said HDD, so, the system will either not boot at all giving a boot device error, or, the system will boot from the CD/DVD "in a loop" if a CD/DVD is in the CD/DVD-ROM drive depending on the boot settings in the bios.

I can see that a number of things have been tried and it seems like the only options left are, updating the bios or trying a different HDD, preferably a SATA I HDD.

Hope this helps!

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 22:20

d.chatten said:
I can see that a number of things have been tried and it seems like the only options left are, updating the bios or trying a different HDD, preferably a SATA I HDD.

I've tried a number of different jumper settings, including resetting it to SATA I (although the BIOS on his PC says its SATA II enabled) and still nothing works. I'm going to try installing new SATA drivers at some point (at the 'Press F6' bit in the install) and see if that makes any difference...if it doesn't, I'm stumped, and shall give up. Knowing him, he'll sell the drive on evilbay (his latest craze...) and buy a new one. Might not be such a bad idea, if he gets an IDE one. It would save messing about with SATA drivers. Assuming it would work.

MarcLister said:
Are you able to run Windows on your brother's PC?

This is the only hard drive in said PC. Even installing the backup one he's been using (one of my two random old 10Gb spares I happen to have lying around) at the same time as the SATA one fails to show the SATA one, and it just boots from the 10Gb one, which is a bit limiting to use long term, and he's been using for weeks, waiting for WD to send out this replacement SATA thing.

MarcLister said:
Also what motherboard is it? Deffo SATA II able? What version of XP? XP SP2?

Definitely SATA II, so says the BIOS, and I've tried his version of Windows (with SP2 on the disc) and my own version (no service packs) and they both do the same thing.

MarcLister said:
Plus, Hi from your other thread. Lets see if I can help you in here.

Heh, your help is most welcome.

MarcLister · 28 Apr 2007 at 22:34

tTz said:
if he gets an IDE one. It would save messing about with SATA drivers. Assuming it would work.

I take it you don't have a spare IDE disk then? That would help I reckon if you could get one cheap. Perhaps a friend or a neighbour has one you can borrow?

tTz said:
Heh, your help is most welcome.

I try my best.

gareth170 · 28 Apr 2007 at 22:40

don't u have the ide sata option in your bios?

sjt269 · 28 Apr 2007 at 22:46

MarcLister said:
I take it you don't have a spare IDE disk then? That would help I reckon if you could get one cheap. Perhaps a friend or a neighbour has one you can borrow?

I don't have a spare one he can use long term. Don't think any of my tech-savvy friends have any spare hard drives (already appealed to them for help) but it can't hurt to ask them.

gareth170 said:
don't u have the ide sata option in your bios?

What IDE SATA option? :confused:

I can't even find this SATA hard drive in the BIOS, incidentally, though Windows Setup finds it, as does the nVidia RAID setup (it's an nForce 4 board, hence nVidia RAID).