Windows 7 wont boot

Jibbs

Hi all,

Long story short; I built my own PC for audio work about 3 years ago. Here are the main specs:

¬Windows 7 64bit OS

¬Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R iX58 Socket 1366 7.1 Channel Audio ATX Motherboard

¬Intel Core i7 920 D0 2.66GHz Socket 1366 8MB Cache

¬Corsair 6GB (3x2GB) DDR3 1600MHz XMS3 Memory CL9(9-9-9-24) for i7 motherboards

¬OCZ 30GB Vertex SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read = 210MB/s, Write = 135MB/s

¬Samsung SpinPoint F3 500GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache

I use the 30GB SSD for the OS and Programs and the two Samsung F3 hard drives just for data etc.
I've never had a problem with it until this morning when I switched it on and it asked me to insert a boot disk into the dvd drive. I put in my Windows 7 disc and it went to a screen giving me options to install windows.
Obviously I dont want to do this so I've gone into the boot menu and bios setup menu on startup to see if i can set the boot drive to hard drive, and I can, but it does not specifically identify either the OCZ SSD hard drive or the Samsung F3 hard drives. it just says 'Hard Drive'.
So when it restarts and boots up again it just says 'Boot Up Error' and asks me to insert boot disc int dvd drive again.

So whats happening? Is my SSD boot drive dead? Are all the hard drives dead or is there a problem somewhere else?

Not really a long story short in the end!

I would really appreciate any insight/suggestions/solutions to my problem. I hope I have been detailed enough. Thanks in advance.

Jibbs

One more thing, I opened up the case today to check connections and clean it. Everything seems okay inside.

Thanks again.

200motels

Jibbs wrote: »

One more thing, I opened up the case today to check connections and clean it. Everything seems okay inside.

Thanks again.

Did you try and repair PC with boot disc? It will give you an option of repairing it when you boot into disc.

yoyo

Pop the motherboard battery out for 3 mins and replace it. This will reset the bios to factory settings. Is the bios detecting any of the 3 hard disks? worst case scenario it's the SATA controller on the motherboard is gone so new mobo would be needed .

Nick

Jibbs

200Motels: Didn't try that. When I put the Windows disc in it looked like it only gave me the option to install. I'll try again this evening.

Nick: I hope 200Motels is right! How difficult an operaton is it to remove the battery?

Thanks for the responses guys.

Jibbs

Also Nick, It doesn't seem to be identifying the hard drives by name, just using the term 'Hard Disk'. Is there any menu i can go to, to see a list of the hard drives installed or being recognised?

200motels

Jibbs wrote: »

200Motels: Didn't try that. When I put the Windows disc in it looked like it only gave me the option to install. I'll try again this evening.

Nick: I hope 200Motels is right! How difficult an operaton is it to remove the battery?

Thanks for the responses guys.

Under the install icon their should be down to the left of it repair your computer.win7_rtm_08.jpg

Jibbs

Thanks 200Motels. I tried that but it just brought up a dialog box saying that the disc I inserted was not a compatible version of windows.

I used the motherboard recovery disc I got with the motherboard and it said there was no operating system installed! I then went back into the CMOS menu and had a look at the IDE settings and values. It was showing 0 for all values so I think Nick was right unfortunately.

I'll reset the battery tomorrow and maybe try and update the BIOS and see if that helps. Unless anyone can suggest something else that might work.

200motels

Jibbs wrote: »

Thanks 200Motels. I tried that but it just brought up a dialog box saying that the disc I inserted was not a compatible version of windows.

I used the motherboard recovery disc I got with the motherboard and it said there was no operating system installed! I then went back into the CMOS menu and had a look at the IDE settings and values. It was showing 0 for all values so I think Nick was right unfortunately.

I'll reset the battery tomorrow and maybe try and update the BIOS and see if that helps. Unless anyone can suggest something else that might work.

You could try and boot into a Linux Live CD to check your drives to see if their Okay. Link here to download.
http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php

yoyo

If the bios is not detecting any of the drives it's not looking good. Do you have a spare SATA cable lying around? I would doubt 3 cables would go faulty though. Some motherboards have multiple SATA controllers on the board, so if one is gone you may have one or two free ports on a working controller. This would very much depend on the boards configuration. I'm not sure how common it is.
Do a CMOS reset by popping out the battery for a few minutes and see if it helps. A bios update may also be worth a try if this fails, nothing too loose really at this point..

Nick

stevek93

yoyo wrote: »

If the bios is not detecting any of the drives it's not looking good. Do you have a spare SATA cable lying around? I would doubt 3 cables would go faulty though. Some motherboards have multiple SATA controllers on the board, so if one is gone you may have one or two free ports on a working controller. This would very much depend on the boards

. I'm not sure how common it is.
Do a CMOS reset by popping out the battery for a few minutes and see if it helps. A bios update may also be worth a try if this fails, nothing too loose really at this point..

Nick

Would I be right in saying flipping the battery or using jumper just removing the battery doesn't seem to always work.

200motels

stevek93 wrote: »

Would I be right in saying flipping the battery or using jumper just removing the battery doesn't seem to always work.

Sometimes removing the battery for say 10 mins works, have you tried the Linux Live CD?

yoyo

stevek93 wrote: »

Would I be right in saying flipping the battery or using jumper just removing the battery doesn't seem to always work.

You need to leave the battery out for a while. A more forced method would be to remove battery, power on machine with battery removed until a CMOS cleared/battery empty message appears. Power off the machine then boot it back up with battery in and re-configure the bios.
The bios should loose all settings after 3 minutes with the battery being disconnected. Not all motherboards these days have clear_cmos jumpers I don't think.

Nick

LukeyKid

I haven't read all the thread so don't no was this mentioned but have you tried taking out the drives and testing them in a different computer ? That would help you figure out if the problem is with the motherboard or the HDD's, Something similar happened to my PC i turned it on and it said "please insert boot disk" didn't no why it was very random i realized that USB Booting was priority and i had a memory card in it, kind of stupid to be honest but its can be simple things as well but the fact that it isn't reading the drives isn't a good sign.

Jibbs

so, I've tried all your suggestions and no joy. I opened it up again last night and swapped around the hard drives and tried them in different SATA ports and it appears that one of the ports is working. I think my next step is to take the whole thing apart, give it a good clean and see how many of the ports are working but it looks like just the one.

thanks for all your help but I fear my next thread will be titled 'What MoBo for an Intel LGA 1366 socket'.

Cheers.

pauricrushe

Remove all drives including the DVD Drive and connect your ssd drive on its own go into the bios and check to see is the boot setup to ide or ahci. select achi restart the machine and see if the ssd is mounted. if you have a laptop with a esata port you could plug in the ssd and see is the drive ok

old_aussie

Check in the BIOS that the SSD is plugged into the SATA port that is selected for the Booting the OS, or change the Boot port(in BIOS) to the one that the SSD is plugged into.