Author Topic: Can't stop PC trying to boot from SCSI drive (Read 473 times)

Sparks · « **on:** February 06, 2002, 07:58:28 PM »

Wonder if anyone can help...

Just fitted a 40Gb IDE drive to my brothers PC. Before this the machine just had a 4Gb Seagate Baracuda running off a DPT SCSI card. We want to keep the SCSI card and use the 4Gb drive as a backup. However, even though the Seagate has been Fdisked, if I plug it in to the controller card the PC tries to boot from it and errors. I have checked the Bios and made sure that the fixed IDE drive is the first in line for boot before the Scsi card but no go. The Scsi card is always in the machine and as long as the drive is not actually connected then the PC will boot happily from the IDE drive. The minute Seagate is plugged in the PC sees it as the boot drive

MB is an Intell AL440LX - we have installed the latest BIOS (what a pain that was) and DPT card is a PM2044W (now supported by Adaptec). Unfortunately Intel won't give me even e-mail support and neither will Adaptec.

Ideas anyone??

Skuzzy · « **Reply #1 on:** February 06, 2002, 08:06:21 PM »

Sparks, you should be able to go into the BIOS utility of the DPT card and tell it not to boot, or you can disable the BIOS altogether.

The last suggestion will require some sort of expernal driver to access the drive if you have to disable the BIOS.

Sparks · « **Reply #2 on:** February 07, 2002, 06:26:39 PM »

Thats what I thought Skuzzy - the DPT card Bios has two settings for "Boot Order" - disabled or normal. With "normal" selected I get get the "Please insert a system disk and try again " message and with "disabled" selected I get a different message (which I can't remember ).

I can't understand why the Motherboard Bios is even looking at the Scsi controller though when the IDE drive is first in order of boot preference and that is the one with the operating system - its as if the DPT card is overidng the system board Bios ??

mason22 · « **Reply #3 on:** February 07, 2002, 07:28:12 PM »

hrmm, is there a scsi setup on the DPT card? i'm not sure if there is anything in there that would help. but it might be worth a try.

have you scoured the bios for any other settings having to do with the devices?are there any deeper boot settings hidden somewhere?

that's really wierd.

CavemanJ · « **Reply #4 on:** February 07, 2002, 10:31:21 PM »

what does the system bios have for boot order?

Last time I looked at my bios (which has been a pretty good while) it had like 5-6 options for what to try first in th boot order

Sparks · « **Reply #5 on:** February 08, 2002, 09:40:59 AM »

Mason - the only thing in the SCSI card setup Bios is "Boot Order" which can be either 'normal' or 'disabled' - I have tried both.

Cave - the system Bios has 4 options - Removeable (floppies etc), Hard Disk, CDrom and Network. Then there is a sub option under 'Hard disk' - you can either have 'Fixed Disk' which it identifies by model number or 'Bootable add in card' - I have Fixed disk set as number 1 and Bootable Add in as number 2 - there isn't an option to disble either just alter the order.

Anyone know any good Newsgroups or BBS's for this kind of thing.

Thanks again all

Sparks

Eagler · « **Reply #6 on:** February 08, 2002, 10:15:22 AM »

gogglegroups for everything

http://groups.google.com/

http://groups.google.com/groups?q=DPT+SCSI+card+disable+bootup&hl=en

jcoy@arkansas.net contributed the following:

>I originally installed SCO OS 5.0.2 on an IDE hard drive.
>I then installed a DPT SCSI controller and 3 SCSI Hard drives.
>After I installed the DPT driver the system will not boot
>complaining it cannot find the root device. I want to continue
>using my IDE drive as the root device but I cannot figure out
>what bootstring to provide to do that.
>
Was it the DPT driver from AHS 5.2?, when I installed that on a 5.0.2.
system that had a DPT supplied driver previously it broke it!

Actually you may have to disable the SCSI card bios function for SCSI
bootup, it's probably trying to boot your machine rather then let your
IDE drive boot it.

Regards, David.
---------------
David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@acslink.aone.net.au
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

===============================

gl

Skuzzy · « **Reply #7 on:** February 08, 2002, 05:22:20 PM »

Well, I know what the card is doing, but do not know how to tell you to fix it.

The DPT BIOS is hooking Int15 from the motherboard BIOS. That is how it manages to boot from a drive that the system BIOS knows nothing about.

Adaptec does the same thing, but they have included a switch to turn off the Int15 hook, which allows the BIOS to operate for real-mode operations, but does not boot.

Disabled, the BIOS should not hook Int15, from the system BIOS, but they may have a bug in the DPT ROM. Do you have install software for the DPT? I beleive they do have a utility that will allow you to do more with the card, than just using the jumpers.

Grayarea · « **Reply #8 on:** February 10, 2002, 06:31:03 AM »

Sparks

If you cannot get it to work, then consider using a boot manager to install a boot strap on the scsi drive, and make that boot off the ide disk.

All Linux installs (and win2k / NT) use such a boot manager, and you can configure it to do what you want.

Maybe alot easyier then trying to resolve the boot sequence issue.

Email the list if you want more info.

Grayarea.