Cmos Boot Sequence Changes Not Responding

swnicholson · #1 (**permalink**) 18-07-2004, 04:30 AM

hi,
i just installed a new hard drive. after installing xp and formatting and partitioning the drive, i wanted to use the hard drive as the boot disk again after using the floppy drive for a while.

now i can't get CMOS to respond to my boot sequence changes!!

every time i restart, the floppy drive is the boot disk! this is driving me insane.

i have tried removing the floppy boot disk that i was using, hoping cmos would move on to the next boot disk, but it only tells me 'OS not found'.

any tips on how to get the CMOS to pay more attention to changes in the boot sequence?

thanks,
scott

DJNafey · #2 (**permalink**) 19-07-2004, 07:06 PM

After you initially had the new hard disk running OK to install Windows on it, are you sure that the BIOS is correctly auto-detecting it when you reboot?

If the hard disk 'Type' is set to Auto, it might be worth switching it to User and typing in the cylinders, heads and sectors, which is normally printed on a label on the hard disk.

You shouldn't actually need your hard disk to be first in the boot sequence. A boot sequence will normally be Floppy, CD-ROM, IDE0 - when it doesn't find a floppy disk inserted, it will check for a boot CD and, when it doesn't find one of those, it will look for a boot sector on the hard disk.

Ah, there's a point. Is the BIOS detecting your hard disk as Primary Master - if not, it probably won't boot from it.

...and I presume that you are choosing the 'Exit and Save Changes' (or similar) option when you are leaving the BIOS?!

Please let us know whether any of these ideas help.

swnicholson · #3 (**permalink**) 20-07-2004, 04:25 AM

Thanks for the tips. I tried them but still no luck. What I figure is that during my partitioning of the drive I must have really screwed something up. Maybe a mistake caused the CMOS boot sequence to not recognize the hard drive. So I've reformatted and repartitioned the drive again, luckily I had it all backed up!

Thanks for the tips
scott

DJNafey · #4 (**permalink**) 20-07-2004, 08:43 AM

Scott,

I don't know of any way that partitioning or formatting a drive can affect the BIOS but, if you somehow partitioned the drive without making your boot partition the 'active' partition, then the BIOS wouldn't find your Windows XP files to boot from. Of course, if you created the partitions during the Windows XP install as your original post seemed to suggest, then it looks like it just messed it up a bit itself.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback

nottocleverwivcomputers · #5 (**permalink**) 06-11-2006, 10:37 AM

i have exactly the same problem but mine just popped up for no reason a few ppl have changed my bios settings is there a proper way that bios should be set to run and performproperly

thanks