teh computar machine is teh sux! halpz

[Peegee]

Okay, I just bought a new computer, but it lacks hard drives. Good thing I already have hard drives, so I plug them in, and boot the computar machine, and it goes "insert boot disk in a:'" over and over, even when I put in a boot disk in a:

now, perhaps I just don't know how to install the floppy disk drive, but why isn't it booting using the hard disks? The two hard drives show up in CMOS, so.....*dies*

[chadmonkey]

Make sure that only the hard drive with the OS on it is set to be the master hard drive. All other hard drive's must be set to be slave drives. There are pins/switches on hard drives that you can set to specify whether they are slave or master drives, and the configuration is different on each drive, so check the drive, it should be printed on it.

[Peegee]

It's set, because I transferred the drives from a computer to the new one. So what's preventing it to boot?

[chadmonkey]

Did you check your bios to see the order of drives for loading the OS. Usually you'd set it up so that it'd boot off of your master drive, then the A drive as a backup.

[Peegee]

I'm not sure what booting off my master drive is set to, because there's a pile of options in the boot order:

IDE-0, IDE-1, IDE-2, IDE-3, FLOPPY, ZIP A:/LS120 ATAPI ZIP C: CDROM, SCSI, NETWORK, BBS-0, BBS-1, BBS-2, BBS-3, USB FDD, USB CDROM, USB HD, USB RMD-FDD, USB RMD-HDD, or DISABLED

also, my sec. master drive (cdrom) is "ATAPI Incompatible"....wtf?

oh, and if you're still around, and you have a messenger program, tell me what it be, so I can harrass you ^^

[Bulldog]

I'm pretty sure you need to check your BIOS and set it to boot from your harddrive. Boot from drive C, I guess. Bleh.

[crono_logical]

IDE0 is usually Primary Master
IDE1 Primary slave
IDE2 Secondary Master
IDE3 Secondary Slave

Make sure you know which drive contains the OS, then set that to the primary boot device in the BIOS. Do the HDs show up correctly in the CMOS, e.g. correct ATA speeds, HD size etc.? Or put all the HDs in the boot sequence in order so you know it checks them all for an OS if you're that unsure (I have the CD drives, then floppy, then HD as the boot order for my computer, btw )

Also, did you wire them up correctly for sure, including power? Note if you're using 80-pin shielded cable for the HDs, put the Master on the connector in the middle o the ribbon, and the slave on the end - if you're using older unshielded cable (40 pins, looks like the wires are thicker and there's not as many of them, the CD drive is more likely to be using this of you have one shielded and one unshielded cable), then the master goes at the end of the cable and the slave in the middle connector.

Originally posted by chadmonkey
Make sure that only the hard drive with the OS on it is set to be the master hard drive. All other hard drive's must be set to be slave drives.

Not quite - you can technically install the OS to a secondary drive and boot off that - quite common in dualboot systems to have one OS per drive and set it up like that Also, you don't set the boot drive as master and all others to slave - certainly won't work if you have 4 HDs anyway sinnce on most computers that'll mean 2 slaves on one ribbon, which is wrong. If there's only one device on a ribbon, that's Master, if there's 2, one is the master (depending on where on the ribbon it's plugged in - see previous paragraph), and the other is the slave. But yes, you're right about looking on the HD itself to see the pin/switch setup to see how to config the drives.

Originally posted by Pureghetto
It's set, because I transferred the drives from a computer to the new one. So what's preventing it to boot?

Just moving HDs from PC to PC doesn't mean they'll work immediately, you still need to check and set the master/slaves and make sure they're plugged into the right connector on the HD ribbon as well Otherwise you'll just confuse the BIOS on the new computer

[eestlinc]

aren't you supposed to set the floppy drive as the primary boot drive in case your hd has issues?

[crono_logical]

Which is why I have the CD drives checked first, then the floppy drive, before the HD on my PC Bootable CDs tend to be faster too