very strange booting problem.

Post by **silent bob** » Sun Nov 13, 2005 6:45 pm

So bought an old Compaq SFF (small form factor) off ebay ages ago to put smooth wall on, I put smooth wall on a number of times with out any problems but never used it in the end.

So mum said she wantes a computer so I got this thing out set it to boot from cd rom put windows xp disk in and it booted straight to smoothwall with out checking the cd rom drive. I tried another disk, same problem. I took the HDD out and left only the CD in it went to the non system disk error press any key so I did and it booted the cd rom drive fine. So i thought maybe I'll put an empty hdd in and see what happens got to the non system disk error pressed a key and it tried to boot from lan then went back to the system disk error screen. I can't get it to boot from cd rom no matter what I try, different IDE channels, reset the cosmos, putting the booting order backwards (I was desperate)

What do you think the problem is? Re Flashing the bios maybe? I've got a replacement mother board upstairs that I could try but it's my last option because these things are packed in you have to take everything apart to test it which is a massive pain.

Post by **Underpants?** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 4:21 pm

I don't know if I'd fuck with the cosmos, that's pretty serious shit. Try maybe setting boot order as CDROM only, install, then on first reboot, reset the hdd as 2nd in line.

Post by **Tormentius** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 5:21 pm

Underpants? wrote:I don't know if I'd fuck with the cosmos, that's pretty serious shit. Try maybe setting boot order as CDROM only, install, then on first reboot, reset the hdd as 2nd in line.

Post by **Foo** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 5:32 pm

I thought I saw everything flicker for a moment there.

Post by **zolborg** » Sat Nov 19, 2005 5:36 pm

Maybe you cleared your cosmos?

Post by **silent bob** » Sun Nov 20, 2005 1:17 am

CMOS even. It's fucked I'm chucking it out. Tried flashing another bios but I couldn't get it to read from the floppy.