Boot Problem
 

Howdy Hi;

I just bought and installed a 1 TB external hard drive. Everything works fine except this morning when I started up my computer it wouldn't go past the first load screen. This says 'GATEWAY' and <F2 BIOS> and <F10 BOOT>. Hitting either key did nothing so I fiddled around a bit and found out that if I unplugged the new drive from the PC it would go to the BOOT screen all by itself, and from there I could start it with no problems.

So it's hardly a catastrophe but it is annoying. Does anyone have an idea what it's doing and how I can fix it?

Do you have two HDD now installed? Or did you replace the old one with the newer 1TB?

The newer one is an external USB drive. So I have both.

I know that when you have two internal hdd's you have to configure one as a Master and the second as Slave with jumpers.

With one being External, in the bios you have the USB in the boot order before your Internal hdd.

That's my best guess with info you gave.

EIDE or SATA internal drives? If the former, you might have to set jumpers, if the latter you have to fiddle around in the bios.

EDIT: Some older bios versions do not like having USB drives plugged when you turn your PC on.

Thanks everybody for your advice. I'll fiddle around and see what happens.

That sounds like it, as the PC dates to 2005. Any ideas other than just unplugging it every time?

2005? :hmmm:

Try taking the USB drive out of the boot order, or put it on the very last spot in the boot menu.

If that doesn't help...

Only thing I could come up with would be a bios update, if its not a jumper or boot menu setting.

That would be in the Bios and setting your Boot Order.

EXAMPLE:
1. HDD
2. Optical Drive
3. Floppy (if you have one installed) I don't.
4.USB. For external Hdd.

As a short term workaround you can press F10 during boot and get a dialog where you can select the drive to boot from. Select the primary drive (probably something like "HDD0") to boot as normal.

Would have to do that every boot though, so better to fix the order in BIOS.

What they said LOL. Specifically - the boot order in Bios.

I already have to do that every boot. The F2 and F10 keys don't even work unless I unplug it first, and even then I have to F10 boot.

I'll try rearranging the order right now.

Well, I switched everything around, and no change. I disabled the new drive, and it wouldn't boot at all. It seems the problem is that the boot menu is no longer recognizing the original internal drive. Once the computer is running I can bring it up just fine, but the boot menu doesn't have it listed.

The only BIOS update from Gateway is older than my machine itself. It also requires making a boot floppy disc, and I don't have a floppy drive. Does the CD/DVD drive count? Also Sandra the PC explorations system gave me a warning: BIOS is flashable but externally mounted. An incorrect update could be fatal.

Can I get the thing to recognize the internal hard drive again?

ok - we are getting into some weirdness - roll up your sleeves. Sounds like either the MBR of the internal HD is going wonky - or the boot.ini file has been modified.

Lets start with a couple of questions....

What OS are you using?

Are you using any odd bootloaders, like LiLo?

XP Home, and no.

The next step may be using you OS disc to repair corrupt files.in boot.

If not familiar with this I will walk you thru it.