Can't boot Win2kPro X 2

[J-Excel]

I installed a 2nd Promise ATA controller yesterday on my Win2kPro box and it died during the driver install. I did a hard reboot and it came up with ntoskrnl.eve corrupt or missing. No problem. I have Win2kPro on another hd so I just changed boot drives without thinking about removing the new card. After booting it found the card and asked for the driver. I crossed my fingers and tried loading the driver again and sure as $#!+ it hung up again. Now when I try to boot with that drive it's saying the driver is missing, even if I try to boot into safe mode. Is there anyway to recover either of these OS installs or am I screwed?

[J-Excel]

I repartitioned, formatted, and installed Win98SE on the first drive. Worked fine. But when I installed a fress install of Win2kPro on that drive I got a BSOD that said BOOT_DEVICE_UNAVAILABLE after setup boes through the white-on-blue text setup screen the first setup reboot. I can boot back into Win98SE fine but it won't boot into Win2kPro to finish the install. Grrrr! Why would a drive boot to Win98 but not Win2k?


I took out the 2nd ATA controller and after some work I got the second drive to boot, but I'd prefer to get the other drive working as my OS drive.

Any ideas?

[zrocule642]

I'm not exactly sure why an ATA controller would be having trouble with Win2K pro... as I've never had that problem, but those that read this.... Do you need to load drivers like a SCSI controller at the start of installation in Win2K Pro? I know if you want to try, press F6 when it flashes at the bottom of the screen to load drivers for the drive controller.

My question would be though.... why are you using your boot device on this ATA controller? Is there a particular reason why the onboard controller can't be used?



Brian

[J-Excel]

It's a Maxtor ATA133 drive. The mobo doesn't see it.

[zrocule642]

I've definately seen the "BOOT_DEVICE_UNAVAILABLE " message before, but that was on a new HP here at work that had a 10,000 RPM SCSI drive and the controller wasn't one that the Win2K CD had built into it. So when running the install, you had to press F6 to load any SCSI drivers.. and provide the disk (you can get off the net) But that took care of it.

It died in the same place yours did, it would copy stuff and then after the first reboot where it has to work on it's own... it fails.



Brian

[J-Excel]

Thanks man. I'll give that a shot.

[zrocule642]

I've only had that message once. That was on a VERY new SCSI controller in a new PC here at work. I couldn't install Win2K on it because I didn't load the SCSI drivers at the beginning of setup (the blue screen during setup where it says Press F6 to load 3rd Party SCSI drivers). If you didn't load the drivers, when the system reboots for the first time, it is loading on it's own not loading all the drivers that Setup used initially. If you didn't install the 3rd party drivers, it can't see the drive and will say BOOT_DEVICE_UNAVAILABLE


BTW, even though it's an ATA133 Drive, your motherboard should see it. What's your board have, ATA100? or ATA66? If it's ATA66 I suggest getting a new board. If its ATA100, and it doesn't see it.... something's broke or you have a jumper set wrong.


Brian

[zrocule642]

Doh! I thought it didn't post so I re-wrote/double-posted. Sorry 'bout that.





Brian

[cadetstimp]

Yup, I agree with zrocule642 ... missing driver or at least the wrong one or bad version.

Be sure to hit F6 during fresh install and then use the latest driver from Maxtor on a floppy.

Still no go? Try temporarily disabling the on board controller...just to see if Win2k will load and boot from the controller.

[NDC]

When you boot the system, do you see both card BIOS load?