Windows Boot Problems

So I just installed my SATA HDD and, well....problems ahoy!

I can no longer start up Windows with any combination of the harddrives I have connected. Everytime I attempt to start, it asks me which to boot, I choose Windows XP, and it flashes to a blue screen with white writing for a fraction of a second (i once saw the windows startup menu before this) then back to the main bios startup screen to repeat the process.

My only assumption is that the main HDD with Windows on it is now fried. I can't login via Safe Mode or Last Known Configuration or any of the other choices.

Is there anyway to slow down the screen so I can actually read the blue screen? I'm going ot be pissed if my shit is fried, but I guess I need to get a windows cd to boot from cd...any suggestion?


edit--i just tried to boot into directory services restore mode (sure, why not) and it brings me to a booting in safemode -0 directory services repair screen....then back to the blue screen of death then reboot computer.

Fuck Windows. I <3 the iBook i'm on right now even though I can't figure out how to fucking uninstall virtualPC....and it won't turn off so I could shut down the comp, and I don't know the mac equivalent of ctrl alt del or msconfig.

A similar thing happened to me today.
I have my pc working great. I tried out an old hard disk I have lying around, which I wanted to throw away or sell, and it was a busted pos.
So I went back to my other disks and unplugged the broken one. It wouldn't boot. (though no BSODs)
I reloaded the BIOS defaults and it worked fine again. Weird.

I doubt it's fried though, as that makes no sense unless you knocked your old hdd around whilst installing the new one. Try reloading defaults.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Burky

A similar thing happened to me today.
I have my pc working great. I tried out an old hard disk I have lying around, which I wanted to throw away or sell, and it was a busted pos.
So I went back to my other disks and unplugged the broken one. It wouldn't boot. (though no BSODs)
I reloaded the BIOS defaults and it worked fine again. Weird.

I doubt it's fried though, as that makes no sense unless you knocked your old hdd around whilst installing the new one. Try reloading defaults (hit del ;))

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Well, I did move it to a different bay to make room for the new HDD, and it required some pulling because of wires in the way....

Right now I have the XP install disc in, so i'll so where that goes, and after this I'll set the bios back to default.

I'm really loving my Mac right now, despite the 4-6 inch block of dead pixels on the right hand side that's an inch wide. Fuck you, Apple. :)

This just in:
I attempted to repair the Windows, and it's recognizing the Windows install on both my C and E drives. (E drive is a super old install, C is the one I think is fried...)

I'm now logged in to C:\Windows but don't know what the fuck I should be doing in here, but hey, at least it's a good sign that it's probably not fried.

More to my first post:

Check that all your drives are recognised; it should say so on post, and you can also check in the BIOS.
Make sure you plug your drive into SATA port 1.
And sorry to ask the obvious, but make sure you plugged in the old disks into the exact same point as before; if you change master to slave, or something else like that you might get problems.

It sounds like your disk is fine, so it's nothing terrible I guess.

Failing that, see if you can install Windows on your new SATA disk.
If you can, then once in windows you should be able to access your old disk too. It's best to run your OS off a faster hard disk anyway.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Burky

A similar thing happened to me today.
I have my pc working great. I tried out an old hard disk I have lying around, which I wanted to throw away or sell, and it was a busted pos.
So I went back to my other disks and unplugged the broken one. It wouldn't boot. (though no BSODs)
I reloaded the BIOS defaults and it worked fine again. Weird.

I doubt it's fried though, as that makes no sense unless you knocked your old hdd around whilst installing the new one. Try reloading defaults.

[EDIT]

Check that all your drives are recognised; it should say so on post, and you can also check in the BIOS.
Make sure you plug your drive into SATA port 1.
And sorry to ask the obvious, but make sure you plugged in the old disks into the exact same point as before; if you change master to slave, or something else like that you might get problems.

Failing that, see if you can install Windows on your new SATA disk.
If you can, then once in windows you should be able to access your old disk too. It's best to run your OS off a faster hard disk anyway.

---

I don't think it's in SATA port 1, so good call on that...
Yeah, everything is connected properly with the master being the master, slave the slave, and SATA just jumped to 1.5mbs though not recognized....which I now know is cuz of the port. Good call. Once I get the SATA recognized, I'll install on it.

This just in:

I fucked around in the repair utility and restored the BIOS, and Windows just loaded. Hooray.

This thread is now a WTF WHY ISN'T SATA WORKING thread.

(I have 4 HDDs connected...too much?)...master, slave, external, and SATA

I keep getting a found new hardware wizard popup, but it won't tell me to what, and there's no new O drive recognized, (lol O drive)

I just switrched the SATA port from one end to the next and a RAID screen popped up on the start up....here's the hopin'

I'm sorry for messing up with the edits so much. I made a first one, then saw you replied, so I put the edit in a new post...messy.

It shouldn't be too much I don't think. Why do you have so many partitions? I'm only up to a J drive.
Oh, and why your disk won't work; you will need to reformat it first. If Windows doesn't recognise it, stick in your XP boot disc and reformat it in preperation for a Windows installation, then abort after that point.

OK still not recognizing the SATA drive and still coming up with the new installed hgardware message...wtf. (i unplugged all external plugs too to see if they were causing the new hardware message.)

edit...got a name on the hardware....ST3160812AS .... googling now

Yeh that's a Seagate disk I think. My one comes up with the same (ST3160812AS) when I boot, so it sounds about right.

Have you set it up properly; sometimes SATA disks have both a 4-pin power input AND an SATA power input. It's important that you only use one or the other; not both (the SATA one is better).

They're not partitions; they're 3 HDDs (soon to be 4),
compact flash, smart media, memory stick, CD, DVD, and 3 removale disks.

I'm restarting to go into XP now.

(it's a Barracuda HDD, so hooray)

I have the HDD connected to the PSU via a power converter that just came, and have it connected to the mobo via the wire. That's all. So it's being recognized by the new hardware thing...just not anytrhing else. :p

Oh yeah, a lot of the time I have to get the motherboard's SATA drivers on a floppy disk and get those into Windows for SATA drives to be recognized, but that's only when I'm installing Windows on a SATA drive though. If you still can't use your drive, and you still have an unrecognized item in your device manager, get your motherboard's SATA drivers and use those drivers on that device.

SATA can be extremely frustrating, it's like 2 steps back from IDE in terms of ease of use. So you've got everything working fine now?