My Brand New Computer Won't Boot from the DVD Drive! Help!

December 10, 2008 7:09 PM

My brand new Core i7 computer will not boot from the DVD Drive to install Vista - please help me tell my bios what they need to know to make this thing boot! (screen shots included inside, along with full details)

I have a Gigabyte GA-EX58-DS4 Motherboard, and the NEC DVD Drive is the only IDE connection I'm using. The jumper on it is set to Master, and I've tried two different IDE cables to no avail.

Here are five screenshots from the boot process:
http://twitpic.com/rt0v
http://twitpic.com/rt10
http://twitpic.com/rt1l
This is what happens past the bios:
http://twitpic.com/rt1w

And this is what happens when it tries to use the NEC DVD drive. Also noteworthy is that the green light on the drive only comes on when the machine is initially booting up, but not when it should be looking for the Vista boot disk:
http://twitpic.com/rt1y

posted by adi to computers & internet (6 comments total)

What is your DVD rom plugged into? Your screenshots seem to not entirely make sense...

For example, rt0v shows no DVDRom drive listed, yet RT1W does. Your bios (RT1L) shows RAID/AHCI disabled, but again RT1W shows you have it enabled.

Keep RAID/AHCI disabled (atleast for now). Are you sure the DVD drive is a good drive and the media boots on another machine? I had a very similar issue, and the drive was not able to read media.
posted by SirStan at 7:19 PM on December 10, 2008

Oh -- so random thought here.... I had a very similar problem actually.. my DVD drive (that was previously totally fine) wouldn't work on my Gigabyte motherboard. I just grabbed it.. and its a ND-3550A ... same as yours! Mine seemingly died (it shows up in the bios, but wont read cds anymore) exactly when I setup my Gigabyte board!

GIGABYTE KILLS ND-3550A's!.

Seriously.. i'd bet money on some wierd issue w/ Gigabyte boards and IDE ND-3550A's. There are various posts around the internet that say the ND3550 might have issues with various chipsets.
posted by SirStan at 7:22 PM on December 10, 2008

I just plugged my ND-3550A into an external USB cage and it loads up and reads my XP CD Just fine. I rebooted with it plugged into the IDE controller on my GA-EP45-UD3 and it is detected, but wont read any media.
posted by SirStan at 7:24 PM on December 10, 2008 [1 favorite]

The problem is either with your drive, your motherboard, or your media or some connection between the three.

1: Check your media, make sure it isn't scratched. Try another bootable CD, see what happens. Does you vista CD boot in another machine?

2: If the CD/DVD drive is showing up under BIOS and / or at boot then that means it's connected and working (though there still could be a problem you'd probably know it from odd sounds, etc.)

3: For the motherboard reload the default BIOS settings - that should at least give you an F12 type option to pick your boot device on POST.

I mean, it doesn't get much simpler than this, so if it's one of those things where you've tried everything then you should suspect a faulty drive or a faulty motherboard.
posted by wfrgms at 7:29 PM on December 10, 2008

SirStan maybe on to something...
posted by wfrgms at 7:30 PM on December 10, 2008

SirStan FTW! For whatever reason, GIGABYTE motherboards kill ND3550A DVD Drives!

I swapped it out for a ND3500 DVD drive (slightly older), and it's installing as I type this!

Thanks again, internet!
posted by adi at 7:42 PM on December 10, 2008