xp only boots with cd-r in drive!!!!

[bandersnatch]

I've never come across anything as wierd before, and can't find any reference to the problem anywhere, so I come pleading for help.

I have just done a clean install of XP on a new HDD on a friends machine.

When booting up into XP Pro, all goes well until the desktop comes up. This then freezes - no icons, task bar, system tray etc.

BUT - and I found this by accident - if I leave a blank CD-R in the CD Rom drive it boots up fine.

There is no other software installed yet, except for Radeon drivers fo video card, no modem or network.

Any ideas what's going on?

[Play_The_0dds]

can you post a few more things like: is the system new, what os was it running b4, did you add any hardware, did you set the bios to setup defaults, will it start in safe mode so you can check for hardware conflicts, and possible install some of the drivers? any info you could supply would help greatly.

[bandersnatch]

I thought you might ask, but I was hoping someone might come up with a "Yes I had that - here's the link to a registry tweak that fixed mine" sort of response, and that I could avoid giving semi-full information.
It's basically a bitsa (bitsa this and bitsa that)
He was given it as a unknown vanilla box, couldn't get it to boot and asked if I could do something cheap with it for cost and a couple of bottles of wine.
It appears that the school he teaches at was throwing away some old stuff and he "won" it.
Digging into it it turned out to be a thin, almost dumb network terminal. But I like a challenge so said I would give it a go.
Hance most of it is cobbled together from bits from the spares box, or stuff bought in for other people and on hold till they pay.
Anyway, here goes.

Make - no idea. Beige box, no labels, stickers or anything. Probably something lashed together on the cheap for the LEA and dished out to local schools
MoBo ATC - can't trace model, not even an FDD sticker on it.
Award Bios - sorry, don't have a note of version handy
450 mhz P3
Ram 256 meg P133 (2 x 128, newish & recognised in bios)
HDD Excelstor 60gb 7200 HDD (new and formatted fresh NTFS)
CD-ROM Creative CD3630E (the original 32X)
CD-RW Benq 5232W - 0F2 (new)
FDD - who knows? !!!!
Video ATI Radeon 7000 64mb AGP 4x

No sound, no modem, no nic. All IDE cables new or at least proven.

Original HDD was a 0.8 gb, with Win95 and networking software installed only (can't tell you more as it went in the rubbish)

Current OS Win XP Pro + SP1 (clean install to new HDD)

All of the drivers are native XP except for the Video card, which were certified ATI Catalyst 3.7

Subsequently I've installed a few apps (Office, Nero, Photoshop) to try it out and all work perfectly.

The above is probably not much help, as I suspect it only serves to confuse matters. I'm a bit embaressed by the whole thing, and having spent 3 nights desperately trying to find a proper solution I've given it to him, with instructions to leave the CD-R in the Rom drive when he boots up and when I've finally sorted it I'll let him know.

It has got me completely banjaxed.There's no reason I can think of that the symptoms and the cure are in any way related.

[bandersnatch]

One further bit of info - when I discovered the CD-R trick I thought it might be the CD-Rom, so swapped out temporarily with a LG DVD-Rom, but no difference

[Play_The_0dds]

the motherboard may be so old it is not recognizing the large hard drive, it may also be the ram i have seen several pc66/100 boards not run pc133 even if the ram says backwards compatible. if you could identify the board you might be able to update the bios and firmware, if not you may be able to partition the drive down into smaller partitions and it detect correctly. with all the other hardware you have in there it would cost that much more to get a good motherboard cobo from ebay,tigerdirect,newegg......and have a really good machine. and if it a AT case may want to consider a barebones kit. i truely believe it is the size of the hard drive not being detected correctly in the bios. if you make a 10 gig partition and install on that it may pickup and work ok, then make the rest of the drive into partitions it will accept. it's something to play with.

[bandersnatch]

I hate to admit it but you're probably right. I had to jumper the hard drive down to capcity clip to 32 gb to get the mobo to accept it in the first place, hunted for a bios update, searched the MS database, Googled myself silly, and had run out of ideas.

It was such a strange combination of circumstances that I felt in my bones that I was missing something stupidly obvious and there was a simple fix that I didn't know about.

I guess I will have to swallow my pride, lie to him, get a new mobo & cpu, pay the excess out of my back pocket and hope that he doesn't realise that 90% of the innards are new, but he's only paying for 70%. To do otherwise would ruin my local street cred as the (middle aged) geek who sorts out the problems that PC ***** (insert the name of your own / personal / local / multinational rip off superstore) want £00's to fix.

A little learning is a dangerous thing.
Pride cometh before a fall.

Various other cliches

Thanks very much for having a think about the problem anyway. If I do come up with some magical fix I'll reply to the post so you can add it to your personal knowlebase, although I can't imagine that the query will raise its head very often. Sensible people would have told him to bin it in the first place.

[bandersnatch]

I promised I'd let you know if it got fixed, and it did.
He brought it back a few days later, saying it wouldn't boot at all (he actually said that it was b*ggered completely now)
Plugged all in, switched on - bios checksum error.
Put in new cmos battery, reset bios, it booted up straight into XP, no worries.
Held on to it for a couple of days, and it's now booting and running fine.

so you were right about mobo problems, the battery must have been on its last few minutes of useful life.

Still no logic in why the blank cd-r in the rom drive let it work, but when did logic have much to do with PC's

[Play_The_0dds]

glad to hear you got it going, i dont know why i didnt think about the battery, i usually pop a new one in on computers that are a couple years old when they come in, so rules it out from the start. i guess i do somethings out of habbit and dont think to tell anyone else. i have also seen case fans and system fans, mice and keyboards cause simular problems, just assume most people know this stuff, to unhook everything that doesnt have to be there, and try other devices when possible. i often catch myself assuming, and i always promise i will try to not assume so much.