Not finding any boot devices

avanti · March 3rd, 2008, 12:17 PM

I am having some issues with my computer, it is a Dell Dimension 8400. It started with the computer turning itself off every now and then, sometimes crashing into a "blue-screen" during the night (its on 24/7). Then a few days ago it refused to boot up without the Windows XP cd in the drive images/smilies/blink.gif

I want to format it since it is also running very slow, but when I try to do so the Windows installation program says it can't find any drives..

It doesn't seem to matter if I set the DVD to master/slave or cable select, the HD doesn't have that option at all. When I go in the boot menu to change boot sequence neither DVD or HD is found. What am I missing??

The specs of the beast... images/smilies/rolleyes.gif

(I am considering to buy a new one, but when it is working it does what I need it to do perfectly so I would rather wait a bit longer..)

http://pic.phyrefile.com/2008/03/03/8400.jpg

jensked · March 3rd, 2008, 12:22 PM

Maybe some cable is a bit loose...screw it open and check every cable...

Italian made computers :p

avanti · March 3rd, 2008, 12:50 PM

I have done that, everything seems in order, since the computer and dvd drive runs perfectly when I boot with the win cd I can only assume that everything is plugged in correctly.

The main drive is a sata, I presume it is not possible to change between master/slave or cable select on them, at least I have not found any way of doing it.

btw, its a dell, not a olivetti... images/smilies/tongue.gif

petarkb · March 3rd, 2008, 10:56 PM

Enter the BIOS and set the SATA drive as your first hard drive. Then give it highest boot priority. It should be enough.

Yaco · March 4th, 2008, 04:37 AM

Now when you have it run off the CD, does it goto the Windows fix screen or anything? It just boots up regularly?

avanti · May 29th, 2008, 02:10 PM

I am bumping this thread because I have decided not to put of formatting any longer.

The problem is still the same, when I use the windows cd to boot, and select "install windows" it says "no drives found". If I plug in one of my external ide drives it does recognize it and ask if I want to install on it, which I do not...

Is sata always a bitch? I never had this problem in the olden days...

The sata is set as the first drive.

What should I do, I have tried to put everything in the setup menu to "factory default", didn't help...

Yaco: it boots up regularly.

MadCow809 · May 29th, 2008, 03:34 PM

does the bios even detect all the hard drives?

and what mode is it running under?

IDE/RAID/ACHI?

avanti · May 29th, 2008, 04:10 PM

Bios does detect the connceted drives, 1 sata dsik and 1 dvd drive.

it was set to "Raid autodetect/AHCI", I tried to change it to Raid, result the same..

MadCow809 · May 29th, 2008, 04:16 PM

Dont change it to RAID.

leave it at IDE mode and see if you can boot up. You should be running IDE mode anyway... ACHI mode needs to be enabled before you install windows, and I doubt that you did that... Win XP/Vista won't be able to detect any hdd if you change it afterwards.

BlitzR · May 29th, 2008, 04:19 PM

Is the HDD partitioned?
Edit: Forget what I said. images/smilies/tongue.gif

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/1...-on-ahci-mode/
Might help

avanti · May 29th, 2008, 04:52 PM

I changed it back now, I also tried raid/ata, it did find the disk, but only the complete disk, not the individual partitions (3).

Thank you for the link BlitzR, but I am still in the same situation... images/smilies/sad.gif

MadCow809 · May 29th, 2008, 08:38 PM

So what... now that it's running in IDE/ATA mode, it still can't pick up the partitions??

Sonds like the partitions are corrupted. See if you can access the drive using GetDataBack or Smart Data Recovery v3.9 on a different computer.

Quote:

computer turning itself off every now and then, sometimes crashing into a "blue-screen" during the night

sounds like the hard drive was corrupted from all the crashing and bsod, that can happen quite easily when you dont shut down properly. But to lose all the partition.... hm... possible, but not likely.

I still rekon you should run your hdd on a seperate machine to get the data back and re-partition the drive.

argatoga · May 29th, 2008, 09:01 PM

If the Windows installer can't see the hard drive you might need to provide it with your motherboard's SATA drivers.
Intel provides a combo driver set here, but you will need to extract the ide/sata drivers from it.
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...ional&lang=eng
Put the drivers on a disk (just copy everything from inside the ALL directory right onto a floppy) and press F6 when the install screen is all blue (it will say something along the lines of press F6 for additional drivers near the bottom of the screen)
If all works out well Windows will load the driver and see the harddisk.

avanti · May 29th, 2008, 09:10 PM

I don't have any floppys at the moment so I have to wait until tomorrow for that option.

When windows is running it does access all partitions, everything is working normally, the problem only occurs when I am trying to reinstall windows.

MadCow809 · May 29th, 2008, 09:14 PM

Shouldn't be the SATA driver problem.

Vista or XP Sp2 both have sata drivers pre-installed. At least I never had to install any other sata drivers for XP, for all of my machines.

argatoga · May 29th, 2008, 09:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by avanti

When windows is running it does access all partitions, everything is working normally, the problem only occurs when I am trying to reinstall windows.

Do you have a restore disk from Dell? The XP install disk may not have the drivers like your installed copy has.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MadCow809

Shouldn't be the SATA driver problem.

Vista or XP Sp2 both have sata drivers pre-installed. At least I never had to install any other sata drivers for XP, for all of my machines.

His install disk might predate SP2.

avanti · May 29th, 2008, 09:32 PM

I might have had a restore disk but I don't anymore... The windows xp pro disk was bought in 2003, it says "version 2002" on the box.

argatoga · May 29th, 2008, 09:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by avanti

I might have had a restore disk but I don't anymore... The windows xp pro disk was bought in 2003, it says "version 2002" on the box.

Yea that predates Service Pack 2. The restore disk had the drivers on it, so without it you will need a floppy with the ones mentioned above for XP to see the drive.

avanti · May 29th, 2008, 09:47 PM

che palle! can I use a pen drive or burn them on a cd instead?

March 3rd, 2008, 12:17 PM	#1
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	Not finding any boot devices I am having some issues with my computer, it is a Dell Dimension 8400. It started with the computer turning itself off every now and then, sometimes crashing into a "blue-screen" during the night (its on 24/7). Then a few days ago it refused to boot up without the Windows XP cd in the drive I want to format it since it is also running very slow, but when I try to do so the Windows installation program says it can't find any drives.. It doesn't seem to matter if I set the DVD to master/slave or cable select, the HD doesn't have that option at all. When I go in the boot menu to change boot sequence neither DVD or HD is found. What am I missing?? The specs of the beast... (I am considering to buy a new one, but when it is working it does what I need it to do perfectly so I would rather wait a bit longer..) __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

March 3rd, 2008, 12:22 PM	#2
jensked Joined: Mar 31st, 2005 Last Online: January 6th, 2009 Location: Flanders, Belgium Age: 25 Posts: 4,007 Car: RIP Opel Astra -> 2006 Toyota Corolla Wagon Rep Power: 43	Maybe some cable is a bit loose...screw it open and check every cable... Italian made computers :p __________________

March 3rd, 2008, 12:50 PM	#3
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	I have done that, everything seems in order, since the computer and dvd drive runs perfectly when I boot with the win cd I can only assume that everything is plugged in correctly. The main drive is a sata, I presume it is not possible to change between master/slave or cable select on them, at least I have not found any way of doing it. btw, its a dell, not a olivetti... __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

March 3rd, 2008, 10:56 PM	#4
petarkb Joined: Feb 12th, 2007 Last Online: Yesterday Location: Sofia, Bulgaria Posts: 1,140 Rep Power: 24	Enter the BIOS and set the SATA drive as your first hard drive. Then give it highest boot priority. It should be enough. __________________ Those who do learn from history go mad while watching the same shit happen over and over again.

March 4th, 2008, 04:37 AM	#5
Yaco Joined: Jan 17th, 2008 Last Online: 07:04 AM Location: Whitney Point, New York (state not city fool), USA Age: 21 Posts: 306 Car: 95 Cutlass SSL (201k), 91 Dodge Spirit (70k) Rep Power: 8	Now when you have it run off the CD, does it goto the Windows fix screen or anything? It just boots up regularly? __________________ "I love the smell of money in the morning." -May "Smells like wheels!" -Clarkson "Ha-ha!" -May I look at porn just for the viruses and spyware.

May 29th, 2008, 02:10 PM	#6
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	I am bumping this thread because I have decided not to put of formatting any longer. The problem is still the same, when I use the windows cd to boot, and select "install windows" it says "no drives found". If I plug in one of my external ide drives it does recognize it and ask if I want to install on it, which I do not... Is sata always a bitch? I never had this problem in the olden days... The sata is set as the first drive. What should I do, I have tried to put everything in the setup menu to "factory default", didn't help... Yaco: it boots up regularly. __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

May 29th, 2008, 03:34 PM	#7
MadCow809 Joined: Feb 23rd, 2006 Last Online: 02:20 AM Location: Durban, South Africa / Los Angeles, California Age: 23 Posts: 3,117 Car: 2007 E87 BMW 130i LFS Status: Rep Power: 32	does the bios even detect all the hard drives? and what mode is it running under? IDE/RAID/ACHI? __________________ Supporting : A.Priaulx, Kimi Räikkönen, J.Button, R.Kubica, P.Solberg, M.Hirvonen, J.Plato & M.Jackson FinalGear's Car/Bike Register 08/09 Currently looking for a car, got any suggestions? 08 Honda Civic Coupe 06 BMW 130i 05 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS 05 Ford Bantam 1.3i 95 Mercedes Benz E320 Sportline Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 3Ghz (333 X 9 @ 1.44v ~ 35°c with ZEROtherm BTF90/92mm Cooler) \| DFI INFINITY P965-S \| Corsair XMS DDR II 800 6 Gb \| GeCube ATi HD3850 512mb @ 800/1000Mhz \| Seagate 500Gb + 500Gb + 750Gb + 1000Gb\| LITE-ON 20X DVDRW \| XION 600W PSU \| Logitech Z-2300 \| Logitech MX1000 \| Logitech G25 \| Dual 22" LCD Display @ 3360 x 1050 + Toshiba 40" HDTV @ 1920 x 1080 \| CoolerMaster Centurion 590 \| Vista 64 Ultimate \|

May 29th, 2008, 04:10 PM	#8
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	Bios does detect the connceted drives, 1 sata dsik and 1 dvd drive. it was set to "Raid autodetect/AHCI", I tried to change it to Raid, result the same.. __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

May 29th, 2008, 04:16 PM	#9
MadCow809 Joined: Feb 23rd, 2006 Last Online: 02:20 AM Location: Durban, South Africa / Los Angeles, California Age: 23 Posts: 3,117 Car: 2007 E87 BMW 130i LFS Status: Rep Power: 32	Dont change it to RAID. leave it at IDE mode and see if you can boot up. You should be running IDE mode anyway... ACHI mode needs to be enabled before you install windows, and I doubt that you did that... Win XP/Vista won't be able to detect any hdd if you change it afterwards. __________________ Supporting : A.Priaulx, Kimi Räikkönen, J.Button, R.Kubica, P.Solberg, M.Hirvonen, J.Plato & M.Jackson FinalGear's Car/Bike Register 08/09 Currently looking for a car, got any suggestions? 08 Honda Civic Coupe 06 BMW 130i 05 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS 05 Ford Bantam 1.3i 95 Mercedes Benz E320 Sportline Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 3Ghz (333 X 9 @ 1.44v ~ 35°c with ZEROtherm BTF90/92mm Cooler) \| DFI INFINITY P965-S \| Corsair XMS DDR II 800 6 Gb \| GeCube ATi HD3850 512mb @ 800/1000Mhz \| Seagate 500Gb + 500Gb + 750Gb + 1000Gb\| LITE-ON 20X DVDRW \| XION 600W PSU \| Logitech Z-2300 \| Logitech MX1000 \| Logitech G25 \| Dual 22" LCD Display @ 3360 x 1050 + Toshiba 40" HDTV @ 1920 x 1080 \| CoolerMaster Centurion 590 \| Vista 64 Ultimate \|

May 29th, 2008, 04:19 PM	#10
BlitzR Joined: May 1st, 2006 Last Online: 06:19 AM Location: Sydney, Australia Posts: 1,525 Rep Power: 19	Is the HDD partitioned? Edit: Forget what I said. http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/1...-on-ahci-mode/ Might help __________________ Last edited by BlitzR; May 29th, 2008 at 04:39 PM..

May 29th, 2008, 04:52 PM	#11
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	I changed it back now, I also tried raid/ata, it did find the disk, but only the complete disk, not the individual partitions (3). Thank you for the link BlitzR, but I am still in the same situation... __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

May 29th, 2008, 09:01 PM	#13
argatoga Can't Start His Wank Joined: Oct 4th, 2005 Last Online: 02:52 AM Location: Washington State, USA Age: 25 Posts: 2,107 Car: '97 Mustang GT, '78 MG Midget (12a swap) Rep Power: 52	If the Windows installer can't see the hard drive you might need to provide it with your motherboard's SATA drivers. Intel provides a combo driver set here, but you will need to extract the ide/sata drivers from it. http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Deta...ional&lang=eng Put the drivers on a disk (just copy everything from inside the ALL directory right onto a floppy) and press F6 when the install screen is all blue (it will say something along the lines of press F6 for additional drivers near the bottom of the screen) If all works out well Windows will load the driver and see the harddisk. __________________ "Until a President is killed in a 300c, it can NEVER be as awesome as the Lincoln Continental." - thedguy "But to take alobohol rectally... Couldn't that kill a man?!?" - Austere "If you think about it breast implants aren't much different than braces. Their main purpose is to improve one's appearance, at least that's how it was in my case." - KaJun Last edited by argatoga; May 29th, 2008 at 09:12 PM..

May 29th, 2008, 09:10 PM	#14
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	I don't have any floppys at the moment so I have to wait until tomorrow for that option. When windows is running it does access all partitions, everything is working normally, the problem only occurs when I am trying to reinstall windows. __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

May 29th, 2008, 09:14 PM	#15
MadCow809 Joined: Feb 23rd, 2006 Last Online: 02:20 AM Location: Durban, South Africa / Los Angeles, California Age: 23 Posts: 3,117 Car: 2007 E87 BMW 130i LFS Status: Rep Power: 32	Shouldn't be the SATA driver problem. Vista or XP Sp2 both have sata drivers pre-installed. At least I never had to install any other sata drivers for XP, for all of my machines. __________________ Supporting : A.Priaulx, Kimi Räikkönen, J.Button, R.Kubica, P.Solberg, M.Hirvonen, J.Plato & M.Jackson FinalGear's Car/Bike Register 08/09 Currently looking for a car, got any suggestions? 08 Honda Civic Coupe 06 BMW 130i 05 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS 05 Ford Bantam 1.3i 95 Mercedes Benz E320 Sportline Intel Core 2 Duo E4300 @ 3Ghz (333 X 9 @ 1.44v ~ 35°c with ZEROtherm BTF90/92mm Cooler) \| DFI INFINITY P965-S \| Corsair XMS DDR II 800 6 Gb \| GeCube ATi HD3850 512mb @ 800/1000Mhz \| Seagate 500Gb + 500Gb + 750Gb + 1000Gb\| LITE-ON 20X DVDRW \| XION 600W PSU \| Logitech Z-2300 \| Logitech MX1000 \| Logitech G25 \| Dual 22" LCD Display @ 3360 x 1050 + Toshiba 40" HDTV @ 1920 x 1080 \| CoolerMaster Centurion 590 \| Vista 64 Ultimate \|

May 29th, 2008, 09:32 PM	#17
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	I might have had a restore disk but I don't anymore... The windows xp pro disk was bought in 2003, it says "version 2002" on the box. __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

May 29th, 2008, 09:47 PM	#19
avanti Joined: Jul 22nd, 2005 Last Online: 06:58 AM Location: Milano, Italia Posts: 2,731 Car: 2 cars + 3 bikes Rep Power: 68	che palle! can I use a pen drive or burn them on a cd instead? __________________ \|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\| Ride, Eat, Sleep, Repeat.

May 29th, 2008, 09:48 PM	#20
argatoga Can't Start His Wank Joined: Oct 4th, 2005 Last Online: 02:52 AM Location: Washington State, USA Age: 25 Posts: 2,107 Car: '97 Mustang GT, '78 MG Midget (12a swap) Rep Power: 52