P5K Premium blinking cursor :/

1078 Views 21 Replies 6 Participants Last post by 54254, Mar 17, 2009

54254

Discussion Starter · Mar 15, 2009

2

Hey,

I just took a 320GB IDE HDD out of my PC leaving 2 SATA drives in there and now my PC won't boot... it just sits at a blinking cursor after POST.

It does this no matter what drive is connected. I've tried going to default BIOS settings and putting the drive back in but nothing

Help?

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gonX

· #2 · Mar 15, 2009

Tell me about it. I've had my P5K Premium stop POSTing even after moving a fan from one fan header to another. Moving it back didn't fix it.

54254

Discussion Starter · #3 · Mar 15, 2009

Funny thing is it knows they are all there in the BIOS and if I take them away it knows it has nothing to boot from...

I tried updating the BIOS from 0811 or whatever it was to 1011 or something and that hasn't sorted it either >:[

Its booting the Vista installer fine... lets see if it can find my Vista install in the rapair thing.

gonX

· #4 · Mar 15, 2009

Oh you actually get to POST. Try to click F8 at the POST and select the harddrive that contains the bootloader.
If it was on your old harddrive, and you want to remove it, take it out, insert Vista boot disc, and run the diagnostics on the CD.

54254

Discussion Starter · #5 · Mar 15, 2009

The old harddrive was just a dieing storage one, the Vista thing just found my install and saw that it had some boot problems and it offered to repair it etc.

****. Its just rebooted, ignored Vista and did the press any key to boot thing... once that had timed out I just got the press any key to boot with one dot after it over and over again down the screen...

Ill try the F8 thing.

EDIT: F8 didn't work, selected the drive and it just blinked again. :/

ericeod

· #6 · Mar 15, 2009

Have you disabled the Jmicron IDE controller? Try that, then set your HDD boot order. Also try changing the SATA placement on the board.

54254

Discussion Starter · #7 · Mar 15, 2009

The JMicron controller is disabled and the HDD boot order set, ill try swapping some of the SATA cables round now.

Moved them around and nothing!

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54254

Discussion Starter · #8 · Mar 15, 2009

Even changed the SATA mode from AHCI to IDE and its still not doing anything :/

ericeod

· #9 · Mar 15, 2009

If you hit F8 and select the drive, and still nothing, it sounds like the MBR is missing. You can try to run the startup repair off the Vista disk.

Just to see if everything is detected, insert the Vista install DVD and see if you can get all the way to the install menu and if the HDDs are recognized.

DennisC

· #10 · Mar 15, 2009

I had this problem on my Intel motherboard before. What I did was reformat my hard drives on another computer then reinstall vista on it.

54254

Discussion Starter · #11 · Mar 15, 2009

Well the Vista install is detecting them fine etc because it can see the Vista install on my HDD, so it must know the HDDs are there.... lovely, yet another Vista reinstall!!!

I would switch to XP if it recognized all 4 gigs of RAM or the 64bit version was more compatible

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ericeod

· #12 · Mar 15, 2009

2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaffa Cakes!

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Well the Vista install is detecting them fine etc because it can see the Vista install on my HDD, so it must know the HDDs are there.... lovely, yet another Vista reinstall!!!

I would switch to XP if it recognized all 4 gigs of RAM or the 64bit version was more compatible

So you did try the repair statup from the Vista DVD? It can usually fix the MBR.

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54254

Discussion Starter · #13 · Mar 15, 2009

Yeh, it said it fixed it so it rebooted and it was still doing it.

I'm going to boot an Ubuntu live CD and see if installing GRUB will be any better

ericeod

· #14 · Mar 15, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaffa Cakes!

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Yeh, it said it fixed it so it rebooted and it was still doing it.

That is frustrating. It sounds like a reinstall is in order.

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54254

Discussion Starter · #15 · Mar 15, 2009

Yeh, it's odd that just removing a hard drive can do so much damage >:[

ericeod

· #16 · Mar 15, 2009

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaffa Cakes!

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Yeh, it's odd that just removing a hard drive can do so much damage >:[

I had a BSOD that resulted in a "missing MBR" message not to long ago. I have a backup image (the bonus of having Vista Ultimate), but couldnt use it. It kept wanting to try and overwrite the backup drive. So I reinstalled Vista to the RAID and tried running the backup, but it was doing the same thing. So I disconnected the backup drive, installed Vista, and reconnected the backup drive. Then I ran the restore and was finally able to get it to work. it seemed like the MBR was put on the storage drive, so the image couldnt be loaded to the raid. So maybe thats what happened to you.

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54254

Discussion Starter · #17 · Mar 15, 2009

Ahh I feel like an idiot now, I remember... Vista wouldn't let me format that storage drive so I formatted it in the server I was putting it in... perhaps the MBR is why! Now I know there is a way to write an MBR using the CMD on the Vista disk... I just need to find out the right commands

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gonX

· #18 · Mar 15, 2009

Yeah write fixmbr

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xandypx

· #19 · Mar 15, 2009

Insert your Vista DVD select the repair your computer.
select the partition where you see the OS
hit Next
Select Command prompt:

the commands from the C prompt with the Vista Disk inserted are

Bootrec.exe /fixMBR
Bootrec.exe /fixBoot

The first command fixes the Master Boot Record, and the second fixes the Boot Sector, just in case it is also damaged.

Close the Command prompt, remove the Vista Disk.. reboot.

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54254

Discussion Starter · #20 · Mar 15, 2009

Blehh still got the blinking cursor?!

I think ill just do a reinstall... tis a shame too, I just got it the way I like it

Funnily enough that HDD was going in a server to store backups for a week or so while I went to buy a new one.

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