New mobo, comp won't boot, HD fine.

Hey, ok, so I have a Dell Dimension E521 that had a dead mobo and no picture on screen from either the integrated graphics, or the card. I ordered a replacement mobo and it arrived today. I installed it and now the computer won't boot.

For a while it was saying "diskette drive 0 seek failure Alert! system battery voltage low" I checked the CMOS battery with a multimeter and it was fine. The "System battery voltage low" only came up once in a while, but the diskette error was pretty constant. The computer does not have a floppy drive, so I entered the bios and disabled it. The diskette error disappeared.

Now I have a new error:
Boot from CD:
Boot from CD:
NO BOOT DEVICE DETECTED, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS F1 TO CONTINUE OR PRESS F2 TO SETUP MENU

I go into the BIOS and try to play around with boot device orders, but no dice. I then loaded up Linux Slax from a bootable CD and it loaded fine. I got into the GUI and was able to mess around. The new mobo came with a CD with a couple of .EXEs on it but I haven't been able to get it to run in slax. (simply because I don't know how)

The BIOS *does* detect the hard drive as present. When Slax is running, I can explore the files on it.

I thought perhaps the operating system on the drive was messed up, so I plugged it into another computer and it booted up fine. (After running CHKDSK on itself.)

I'm really stumped here. Any ideas?

 

If you hit F12 during the Dell screen and choose HD as the boot device what is the exact error?

 

You sir are a f***ing god! THANK YOU! That was the issue! It seems obvious now. The XP screen came up and it's running CHKDSK like it did on the other machine I loaded it onto. I can only assume that it will boot up normal again after the restart. If it doesn't, I'll reply back here ASAP. Thanks again so much!

 

Ok, I got excited too soon. It works whenever I load up the boot menu and select the drive, but I have to go into f12 every time to do that. Otherwise I just keep getting the Boot from CD error. If I enter setup here are my boot settings under the "System" category:

Boot Sequence:

Bootable Hard Drive
1. Onboard CD-ROM drive
2. Onboard Floppy drive (not present)
Intergrated NIC (not present)
3. USB-FDD (not present)
4. USB-ZIP (not present)
5. USB-CDROM (not present)
6. USB-Device (not present)

HDD Boot Sequence:
1. SATA-0 : ST3250820AS
2. Bootable Add-in Cards

Other categories are Drives, Onboard devices, Video, Performance, Security, Power management, Maintenance, and POST behavior.

 

I'm not sure. Check in BIOS under Drives>SATA operation and see if RAID is set to On. If it is try changing to Off. See if any change.

Another thought is try temporarily removing the SATA cables from the optical drives and see if it boots to the HD as the only available device.

 

I think I found something. When I select "Boot Sequence" it says that "Only devices preceded by a number are bootable" and the HD does not have a number by it. I don't see an option to add a number, only to delete it or move it around in the order.

 

Raid is off, removed the other cables, no dice. :-(

 

And the HD is definitely connected to SATA-0 connecter as you posted earlier? That is what is confusing me since that appears correct.

I noticed no number for the HD in the earlier post. I'm not sure why we don't have it in the sequence. I'll look around to see if I can find anything but it seems a number should be automatic.

 

Yeah, it's connected to SATA-0, I tried switching the cable to another connector, tried switching the cable itself, no luck with anything. I have it booted right now and everything on the desktop works fine. I'm just puzzled.

More info: When I hit F12 I have a few options. It looks like this:

Boot Device Menu
*Normal
+*Bootable Hard Drive
*Onboard CD-Rom

*System Setup
*Hard drive Diagnostics
*Boot to Utility Partition

Use Up/Down arrows to highlight desired item.
Use Enter to select highlighted item.
Use F4 to exit popup menu.

What is odd is the "+" above bootable hard drive.
I've run the HD diagnostics and it said the drive passed. Haven't tried boot to utility partition.

 

Where I am confused is that BIOS sees the HD, so my only thought is that it is somehow determining that it is not bootable and thus not putting it in the sequence. But CDROM show up as bootable options even with no disc in the drive, so that doesn't make sense.

I don't have much time now but I will look into it. It has to be something simple that we are just missing. (I don't know much about RAID but I guess trying that set to On will make no difference?)

 

Tried RAID, no go. Also tried turning off the other SATA drives. No luck either.

 

Make sure RAID is turned back off.

It looks like you have a setting for drives 0-3 in BIOS. All they all turned on?

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/dime521/en/SM_EN/syssetup.htm#wp1043338

 

Yeah, they're all turned on, but I've turned the Diskette drive off.

 

Check Device Manager and see if there are any yellow marks. Trying to figure out if it could be a SATA driver problem but something still says BIOS to me.

Maybe try resetting to BIOS defaults again (clear CMOS). Before booting does the HD show up in the numbered list?

 

Good work! I want you to know I figured that out on my own and only found this thread a few minutes ago.

I know you tested the battery but if the problem reoccurs after cutting power to the machine (no power at the wall socket) then I think you should just splurge and buy a new CMOS battery. Or use the one from the old MB; the one that came with your new board may have been sitting for quite a while in a warehouse somewhere.