Inaccessible boot device issue

[Firemyst]

Hi there,

Here's my dilemma... I was running a machine with two IDE hard drives. The first, C:, crashed. The backup drive had two partitions D: and F:.

The machine runs and boots fine, and I've set the default drive letters to be D and F (so C no longer exists on my system).

The issue is now that whenever I add a second hard drive to the system, I receive the "Inaccessible Boot Device" error, and my system stops booting.

My bios recognizes a second drive. Any of the second drives I try to install run fine on their own (that is, I can format them, put them in other computers, etc).

So I figure it MUST be some sort of setting in the registry or boot record somewhere.

The Microsoft articles were of no help.

Does anyone have any ideas? I would really like to add a second drive to this system again.

Thanks

 

[mcconmw]

If you are installing the new drive on the same IDE channel, are you installing the new drive as the slave? If you are installing the drive to a different IDE port, are you connecting the original IDE drive in the first IDE port.

Mike

 

[Seaspray0]

When you installed the new drive, your drive letters are most likely changed. To see what your drive letters are, use a Win98 boot disk and run the FDISK.EXE program with the new drive installed. The boot.ini file will still reflect the correct controller and drive position of your system partition but your bios may be looking to the new drive to boot from. Some computers will allow you to select the drive letter from which to boot from. Change your bios to reflect the new drive letter that is assigned to your old hard drive.

 

[Firemyst]

Hi everyone:

Thanks for the help. I'm installing the new drive as "the slave". When I don't have a new "slave", the machine boots fine. I've moved my drive that works to both the "master" and "slave" positions on the cable, as well as specifying it to be both with the drive jumpers.

The drive letters did not change. When what is now the "master" drive was the "slave", it's partitions were "D" and "F". They are now "D" and "F" as I changed the System/Boot drive letter in the registry under:
HKLM\SYSTEM\MountedDevices

The only listings I have for DosDevices now in that registry key are A:, D:, F:, G:, H: (the latter two are CD & DVD drives)

From everything I've seen in my bios, there are no drive letters associated with the drives.

I can believe that too, because my W2K server gets halfway through the bootup sequence (the screen where it says "windows 2000 server family) before it stops and says "inaccessible boot device". If the bios weren't correct, the computer shouldn't even be getting that far in the boot sequence.

Anyone have any other ideas?

Also, in the above mentioned registry key, above the "\dosdevices\" I have multiple entries for:

\??\Volume{alphanumeric-string}

Are these necessary?

Thanks!

 

[mcconmw]

The problem is almost certainly that when you add the hard drive the bios is considering it disk 0 because of you lacking a c: drive no matter what physical position you put it in. I believe if you will change your boot.ini file to use rdisk(1), shutdown, add the drive, and then reboot that it will work.

**Caution** Once you change rdisk you will not be able to boot to this disk again if it is alone in a computer without changing the boot.ini file back. Obviously, you will have to put this drive in another machine to edit the boot.ini back if it does not work.

Good explanation of the boot.ini

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/tr...prodtechnol/winxppro/reskit/prmc_str_masc.asp

 

[Firemyst]

Hi there,

I tried your suggestion, and it didn't work (except for the part of me not being able to boot into the machine again ).

What happens is now it's saying it can't find a file that's something like

nt....

I don't remember if it was ntldr or not.

Here's my boot.ini file:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WinNT="Windows 2000 Server" /fastdetect

When I changed the rdisk(0) to rdisk(1), that's when everything falls apart.

If I leave it as above, then the machine boots fine with one drive only.

Since I can't boot with a second IDE drive, I can't copy files to the second drive.

Any other ideas?

Thanks!

 

[howardjch]

I had a similar problem. If two IDE devices are on the same channel, both must run at the same data transfer rate. I simply replaced a disk drive with a new one, formatted and loaded the OS from CD, but when the system was supposed to boot from the disk drive I got the same error you did.

Connect the disk drive on the IDE channel by itself. If you've done this already, then I don't know what else to tell you.

Good luck! // JC

 

[Seaspray0]

From what you describe, the problem lies in your boot.ini because you're getting atleast some reaction from 2000, however it doesn't hurt to check everything...

Check your bios. It should state which hard drive you have set to be your boot device. The drive can be listed in one of two ways, by ide controller and drive position (mine shows ide1 through ide4 reflecting first controller master through second controller slave) or by drive letter (good luck, you might try the letter FDISK uses). The bios will go to the drive selected and look for the active partition (can be doublechecked with a 98 boot disk running FDISK). verify that bios is going to the right disk and use FDISK to verify that the active partition contains your system boot files. The active partition should contain ntldr, boot.ini... your boot system files. boot.ini will point to the drive/partition that contains the WINNT folder.

Does bios point to the correct hard drive? Does the active partition on that hard drive contain your boot system files?

Your boot.ini located there contains:

multi(0)=use ide
disk(0)=first controller
rdisk(0)=master
partition(1)=active partition, or first partition if no active partition exists.
WINNT=name of folder containing OS

Does this match the location of your OS folder?

 

[Firemyst]

Seaspray0:

Here's my boot.ini:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WinNT="Windows 2000 Server" /fastdetect

My bios is correct. Here's what my bios says under the boot sequence menu:
1) CD-ROM
2) Floppy
3) IDE HD [model number for drive with OS]
4) disabled

So I know my BIOS is correct because my W2K server gets halfway through the bootup sequence screen where is says "windows 2000 Server Family".

My boot.ini is ALSO correct, or it wouldn't start booting. As you can see from above, everything in my boot.ini is specified correctly.

I believe what is happening is there's a registry key which has an address to the second "slave" channel on the IDE cable. Whenever there's something attached, it sees that address and tries to boot. Unfortunately, I have no idea what that registry value is.

I have run fdisk multiple times, and my "D" drive is set as the "active" partition.

On the additional drives I want to put in, I've run a low level format to wipe EVERYTHING out. Even after doing that, the machine still says "INACCSESIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE" with the following error code numbers:
0xEB81B84C 0xC000034

On my primary IDE channel I have the bootable HD with "D" and "F" set as the master (via the jumpers) and put at the end of the cable (the master position). Any slave drive I want to add I have the jumpers off (Which specify "slave&quot and put in the "Slave" position on the cable.

The secondary IDE channel has my DVD and CDROM drives respectively.

Any other ideas?

Again, I believe it MUST be a registry setting to look at the address on the "slave" position within the primary cable(but I don't know what it is) because the machine boots fine without a second HD added.

Thanks!

 

[ricpinto]

Try this:
HDD1--> OS with drive D and F
HDD2--> Your second HDD.
Copy Boot.ini, ntdetect and ntldr to a diskette.

Configure HDD2 as a master on IDE1. Fdisk HDD2 and create a partition for boot up, let's say 500MB, format to FAT32 without /s (format c: only)and set it as an active partition. Copy NTLDR, NTDETECT, and boot.ini from the diskette but edit your boot.ini. Use rdisk(1) and partition(1) for boot up. Now connect your HDD1 as an slave to ide1.

My purpose here is to ensure the location of C: is fixed on IDE1 HDD2.

 

[Firemyst]

ricpinto:

Here's what happens (still doesn't work) :

1) When I have HDD2 set as the master (having those 3 files) with the boot.ini modified, and try to boot, it doesn't. I receive the error "System file IO.SYS is missing or bad. ..." I also noticed it changed my BIOS settings to boot from HDD2 instead of HDD1.

2) When I don't have HDD2 set as the master, but the slave, my system still does what it always has -- gets halfway through the "Windows 2000 Server Family" blue screen, and then stops with the INACCSESIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE issue. I receive the following error codes:
0xEB81B84C 0xC0000034 0x00000000 0x0000000

So again, that tells me it must be something in the registry or startup sequence that's telling it to look for something on the hardware address the second drive (regardless of teh drive) resides on.

Any other ideas?

 

[ricpinto]

copy also IO.sys and msdos.sys in addition to the 3 files.

OR:

As an alternate test.. format a diskette and copy the 3 files with boot.ini ammended then insert the diskette to FDD and reboot. See if it will boot up.

 

[Firemyst]

ricpinto:

Tried your suggestions. The IO.SYS and MSDOS.SYS files were ok in size.

When I coped those to HDD2 with HDD2 in the "master" cable position and designated as "master' with the jumper, the computer didn't even start to boot. IT came up, went through the screen of recognized hardware, checked the floppy drive, and just hung with an msdos prompt.

Leaving that configuration, I restarted the computer with the floppy in the drive (with the modified boot.ini file). The machine did it's usual thing -- got halfway through the "Windows 2000 Server Family" screen before halting with the inaccessible-boot-device issue again.

Now the interesting part -- when I put HDD1 in the cable slave position but left it designated as the master through the jumpers, the machine didn't hang at the dos prompt. Instead, it came up and said something to the effect of:
&quot;<root>\system32\ntosldr.exe is missing. Please reinstall this file.&quot;

What can you derive from this? Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[robbie40]

STOP: 0X0000007B (0XED41B84C, 0xc0000034,
0x00000000, 0x00000000) INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE -
it thens goes on to give information about virus checking