System With Mulitple SATA Drives Won't Boot Correctly

Greetings Geeks -

I don't have specifics on the rig, as I am working on it for a friend and I thought it would be a quick fix without too much trouble. We all know how that goes . . . .

Here is the lowdown:

He has a 6 month old Gateway Quad core. About 4 months ago I installed a second hard drive, not problems. Actually, it was my first SATA install. Go me. Anyway, a few weeks ago he tried to install a third hard drive. As a result, computer would not boot and would prompt to identify a bootable source or disc. He thought he destroyed something, so did I. But, after tinkering I discovered the boot order went wonky in all kinds of ways. If I enter the Boot Disk menu via the BIOS, select the HD with the OS on it, the computer will boot. I cannot rearrange the boot order in that menu, on select the boot disk for that session. So, no problem, I just go into the BIOS setup and adjust the boot order to boot from that disk. No dice. No matter what I do, the computer does not recognize the HD with the OS. Even when I disconnect and/or disable the other HD's, I still receive a message to insert or identify bootable media or something like that. Regardless, I can go into the boot menu and select the OS drive and the computer will boot swimmingly.

So, what gives? How can I get the BIOS to boot from the HD with the OS? The OS is Windows 7. Do I need to set the boot order/HD options form Windows somehow (I could not enter Windows as I did not yet ask for his password)? I cannot recall the particular BIOS at the moment or mb specs, etc. I can get those as needed. I thought I would pose my question with some cursory info before I have to dig deeper.

Thanks for any help!

 

Are all the hard drives SATA? If so plug the boot drive into the first SATA p;ug on the mobo.

 

Collinsl -

Thanks for the tip - I am pretty sure I plugged the boot drive into SATA slot one. However, since I cannot be 100% sure, I will try that when I get the chance. My brother in law took his computer back for the time being, he just has to press "F2" to enter the boot menu, select the proper drive, and boot from there. I think that SATA cable rearrangement is something he can handle, I will pass that along. If not, I will give it a go!