New PC Problem?!? Need help A.S.A.P!
 

I just finished building a PC, and no problems had cropped up until my last reboot. I shutdown simply to take a look at a fan controller, but I didn't mess with any wires or anything; I simply looked at it for a sec. Anyway, when I tried to reboot, it wouldn't do it and it still won't.

Right now it's stalled at:

Verifying DMI Pool Data ...................
Boot from CD :
Boot from CD :

NVIDIA Boot Agent...blah, blah, blah

PXE-E61: Media test failure, check cable
PXE-M0F: Exiting NVIDIA Boot Agent.
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER


Anyway, I already have WinXP Home installed on it, with tons of progs set up and other stuff worked out. It was pretty much finished except for a few little things I wanted to do to custimize it. I've checked all the cables inside numerous times, and I still can't figure out what is going on.

Any help would be really appreciated!!!

Stats: MSI mobo, AMD XP2400 CPU, 512MB DDR333 RAM, 80GB WD HDD, ABIT Videocard (64MB DDR), Lite-On 52x CD-R, Lite-On 16X DVD, Sony Floppy Enermax 350w PSU

I would remove the IDE cable and reinstall it. If it still has the problem, I would replace it with another cable. I've had cables look fine that were in fact faulty.

I would also check the BIOS boot order. I think you can get this error if the HDD is not in the list, but it wouldn't make sense for that to change since you haven't been mucking in the BIOS. (and the "check cable" message wouldn't make sense)

Boot off the WinXP CD and see if it sees your hard drive. If it does, do a repair (not recovery) without formatting. The repair will fix any problems that may have been caused by corruption and will leave your installed proggies in tact.

If it doesn't see the hard drive, you got other probs. Could be a bad cable or a bad drive.

It detects all the drives, it just does it very slowly.

Double check the jumper settings on the drives, make sure they are set to master/slave and not cable select. If you only have one drive on the channel, double check to see if you need the jumber for master or not.

remove (or disconnect) all the unnecessay hardware from the computer and see what it does.

check in bios to see if bios sees your Hard drives, if not check your cabling, it can be easy to nock one out

Check the boot sequence in BIOS, make sure Hard Drive is first. Then check the jumper settings and make sure they're set right according to the IDE cables. Then switch cables. If none of that works, give it up and try to repair or format. That's what I'd do, anyway.

-Lasereth

i guess the IDE cable isn't inserted correctly. also check your memory. then go into the bios and select Default Bios setting.

Don't forget to unplug your power cord if you remove any PCI cards.

Go into your bios and set your first boot to be of the cd drive and then you can set the rest of the boots to come off the hard drive. You computer is looking for a cd to boot from when you have none.

I have had this happen and I don't know how to fix it.

But as a temporary work around, place the XP CD in the drive while the computer boots up. It will see that the CD is bootable but do not boot from it. At this point, for me, Windows starts up normally. And if I get the error again, I reboot with the CD still in and the next time it works.

I have a Leadtek nForce2 board by the way.

Be sure that "boot other devices" is turned off in your BIOS config. The BIOS taking a long time to detect your IDE devices is a bad sign, especially with new components. In my experiences, some mobos like to use cable select with drives, and some like you to set the jumpers to Master/Slave according to how you want them (their position on the cable doesn't matter). Try disconnecting every IDE device except your main booting hard drive to see if that fixes the problem. When there are problems like this, 9 times out of 10 it's a stupid jumper problem. Good luck!

PS, I have an Epox 8RDA+ nForce2 board.

I've tried everything and still no luck. The jumpers are all fine, and all the drives are eventually detected, but not for about 5 minutes of waiting. It still won't boot up, and I get the same message as in my first post. :(

Any more help???

i noticed you have a WD hdd, take off you jumper on the back WD is picky about being set to master or sable select if its the only one and will stall your boot times big time, if that doesnt work for ya im sorry cant help ya more than that