BIOS Will not boot to windows vista in newly built computer! Please help!?

Question

I have a ASUS p5k deluxe mobo with a intel Q6600 quad, a Philips IDE dvd drive, and one 750gb seagate SATA (no floppy drive). When BIOS tries to boot, it won't boot from the windows vista 64 disc (works on other computers) in my dvd drive but displays "reboot and select proper boot media or insert boot media in select boot device and press a key" and "invalid system disk" and "Primary slave drive ATAPI incompatible. I've tried everything (boot device order, DVD drive jumpers, switching memory, booting from winXP, ubuntu, and a used hard drive, using different dvd drive, resetting CMOS, upgrading BIOS, booting with nothing except the dvd drive connected) the computer shows no sign of recognizing anything within the DVD drive but i'm thinking of copying windows setup into 4gb flash drive. Is this possible? Also, the HDD cable connection for the dvd drive (labeled host interface) has the #s 39,40 on the left and 1,2 on the right. i've an 80-pin cable; do i need a 40-pin? Please help!!!!

Answer 1

looks like you have tried everything!
as a simple test, if the light is on the front of the dvd drive constantly, you may have the ide cable in the wrong way round.

to boot from your disk, you must have the drive set as master
set boot priority to boot from cd
but i guess you have tried all this?
good luck my friend -let us know what it was when you finally fix it

have you tried booting from an xp disk?

Answer 2

The biggest thing that peaked my curiosity was the cable...
A 40 pin or 80 pin won't matter, but the orientation of the cable does. All cables are coded, as the pin 1 is the 'wire' that is red in the cable, all others grey ( or whatever ) and pin 1 always lines up in the same orientation. Don't recall which side, as I always look to see whenever I need it. But anyhow, the cable should have a raised 'key' on one edge of the connector ( in the middle ) and the board and drive connector has a slot in it for that key. Make sure that Pin 1 is the same for both ends of the cable and follow the wires, or the red wire ( if available ). Make sure that it lines up w/ pin 1 on MOBO and drive. I've seen bad cables from the factory ( rare, but not impossible ) so it may be just as simple as that...

And as a last resort, the USB thing sounds good. Some of mine do a USB boot,never tried it, but file copy to the USB will work fine...

Answer 3

if the BIOS supports Booting to USB then yes potentially you could go the flash drive method - unfortunately im not sure if Microsoft/Vista will let you though - simply copying and pasting the DVD files? I doubt it somehow.

Have you tried using a different DVD drive?

My best suggestions:

a) Borrow someones DVD drive.

b) find an external DVD Drive that runs USB and boot from that.

you must know someone or somewhere that can help you with that. I'm guessing a local PC repair shop might have an external DVD drive - just ask if you can borrow it (yea right) or bring the computer in for an hour to install Vista from the device. They may charge you a little bit either way but i think its beter than buying one for a 1-use thing.

OR

take the seagate and use a different computer for the installation? Always worth a crazy-man's shot =P

Answer 4

There are some themes here a million] have you ever related the DVD ROM properly? Is it PARTA (IDE) or SATA. Disconnect your confusing stress for now. Plug interior the DVD. bypass to BIOS. Is it indexed interior the "discovered" device checklist. If no then it has no longer been properly related. 2] Your going to choose SATA driving force once you install living house windows so as that the working gadget can use the stress - you will ought to press F6 throughout boot up of the deploy CD. 4] putting living house windows on the Flash stress, properly a minimum of living house windows will deploy yet see factor 2 above. 5] have you ever tried the DVD in yet another laptop (seems such as you have a spare)

Answer 5

If you have not tried using a different cable, you might go ahead and give that a shot, since by process of elimination it looks like you have ruled out just about every other possilbe problem.