Hello ianc,
Troubleshooting is rarely a one-shot proposition so this answer will
not necessarily solve your problem. I will ask you to try several
things and (if none work) report the results. I will then suggest
that you try new things based on the results of the first round.
Don't be discouraged if a solution is not immediately forthcoming;
post a clarification request with your findings and I will be
notified.
First off, are you absolutely sure the CD is bootable? Have you
successfully booted it in another computer? Are you sure the CDROM is
OK? Can you read the CD you are trying to boot off of in the CDROM
drive you are trying to boot it from, with the OS booted from the hard
drive? Plextor is a good company so I suspect the drive is fine, but
it always pays to be paranoid about these things.
Does your BIOS recognize the CDROM drive? My BIOS gives a listing
something along the lines of:
Pri. master ATA/100 LBA . . . . .
Pri. slave ATA/100 LBA/48 . . .
Sec. master ATAPI CDROM . . . .
Your OS may recognize the CDROM even if your BIOS doesn't. This works
fine once the OS is booted, but if you expect the BIOS to use the
drive, it has to be copasetic.
Is the boot sequence and/or error messages different if there is a CD
in the CDROM drive versus when there is no CD in and you still try to
boot from CD?
You mention BIOS version 9 - is this the default your motherboard
shipped with? Also, what motherboard revision do you have? Gigabyte
notes that there are 3 revisions of this board. I don't see in the
manual where the PCB revision would be noted on your motherboard, but
I would recommend looking at the top right corner first.
That should be enough to get you started. Check back frequently - I
check for clarification requests twice or more a day so we should be
able to get this worked out fairly quickly.
-Haversian |
Request for Answer Clarification by
ianc-ga
on
25 Nov 2002 16:31 PST
Hello Haversian
Here are the answers to your questions:
Yes, I am sure the CDs I'm trying to boot from are bootable CDs. I've
tried them in an alternate computer and they boot up as they should.
Indeed, once the computer is booted (from hard disk), I can read the
CD-ROM without any problem whatsoever.
At startup, the BIOS does indeed correctly detect and identify the
CD-ROM drive.
The boot sequence and messages displayed are identical whether a CD is
within the drive or not.
No, BIOS version 9 is the latest version I've downloaded from
Gigabyte's website. It came with version 4 - and have also tried
booting with this version (by booting off the backup BIOS).
My board is revision 3.0
Look forward to hearing any further suggestions.
Ian
|
Clarification of Answer by
haversian-ga
on
26 Nov 2002 08:08 PST
Hello Ianc,
Ok, it sounds like the CD is fine and the CDROM drive is fine. Do you
know if this computer has *ever* successfully booted from a CD?
The specifications claim that IDE1-4 should be able to boot to CD.
Could you please unplug all IDE devices except the CD, and plug that
into the primary IDE chain? While you are at it, please check the
jumpers on your CDROM drive. Many IDE devices have separate jumper
settings for master and single-drive settings. In many cases there
are 3 jumpers, one each for master, slave, and cable select - no
jumpers at all correspond to single-drive operation.
> The boot sequence and messages displayed are identical whether a CD
is
within the drive or not.
That may indicate that the BIOS does not recognize the CDROM
drive as something it should boot from. Could you check your BIOS
again? I'm sure you have set your computer properly to boot from CD
before IDE, but some BIOSes have more settings than that. Mine for
example has an ATA100/SCSI option and a CD/NETWORK option. There are
settings on a different page somewhere that control whether
ATA100/SCSI means ATA or SCSI, and the same for the CD/NETWORK option.
So while you may have selected CDROM as the first boot device, other
settings might be changing what seems to be a straightforward option.
> My board is revision 3.0
That's good - you got the newest one. While I wait for your
responses, I will look through the manual for that board version.
-Haversian
|
Request for Answer Clarification by
ianc-ga
on
26 Nov 2002 15:19 PST
Hello Haversian
Ok, some progress made this evening. I disconnected everything like
you suggested, except for the CD-ROM (already set to Master) on the
Primary IDE port, checked the BIOS settings, and made sure the IDE
ports were set to "auto". Success - the CD-ROM booted.
So, I then thought what can I connect to make it not work. I added
the tape drive to the Primary slave port and ah-ha... it didn't boot
from the CD-ROM. Then, I swapped both the CD-ROM and tape drive's
master/slave relationship and it still didn't work. Finally, I
performed an IDE device auto-detection from within the BIOS and found
that this then allowed the system to boot from the CD-ROM. Connected
everything back, re-performed the BIOS IDE automatic device detection
and everything worked.
However, the odd thing is that if I set the BIOS to do an auto-detect
upon power-up, it doesn't work. Get the BIOS to do the detection once
whilst within the BIOS setup screens, and everything works.
Very odd.
So, many thanks for your help! Any idea as to why this abnormality is
occuring? Naturally, I'd prefer auto-detection upon power-up, but if
without this I can boot from the CD, then I know what I'd prefer!
Ian.
|
Clarification of Answer by
haversian-ga
on
26 Nov 2002 21:53 PST
> Any idea as to why this abnormality is occuring?
Yes I do. In order to boot from CD, the BIOS needs to know that you
have a CDROM installed, and where it is to be found. However, if the
system has *no* drives detected because autodetection is set for
later, it can't boot. Hard drives require a much older and more
primitive system in order to boot, so they're pretty fool-proof. It
basically comes down to poor BIOS programming - there is no reason why
the system cannot autodetect drives, then search for CDROM devices,
and then decide which to boot from.
I'm glad we got everything working for you. If you are interested,
you might experiment a little more and then submit a bug report to
Gigabyte with your findings. It's a thrill when a later version comes
out and they've fixed something you suggested.
-Haversian
|
