Since I've been putting it off for far too long, I reformatted our GPU testing PC last night in order to re-install Windows and set it back up using our updated testing suite. Like usual, I just popped in the install DVD, deleted the HDD partitions, and then let the setup repartition and format the drive. So far so good... until the first reboot.
For some reason, the PC would never complete its POST, and would get caught at the same spot each time... when it queries the storage devices. Each time, it'd display the ODD just fine, but when it came to the HDD, no cigar. At first, I thought it could have been a side-effect of the overclocked CPU, but as it turns out, it wasn't.
Strangely, what fixed things was if I went into the BIOS and disabled AHCI mode, reverting back to IDE. It made no sense to me, but I wondered if somehow the chipset on the board screwed up and ended up rendering AHCI useless. But then I installed a second drive and put the board back into AHCI mode, and it booted fine. Back to the regular drive... no boot.
It seemed to me that Windows setup screwed up the partitioning of the drive so badly, that it literally rendered the PC non-bootable. So for fun, I booted up with a Gentoo live CD and then used "fdisk" to delete all of the partitions on the drive (Windows creates two). When I listed the partitions, there were errors around cylinders and aligning or something, so I knew that could have been the issue. I created an NTFS partition, rebooted, and boom, a bootable system with AHCI enabled.
Has anyone ever heard of something like this happening? It seems a little bizarre that a bad partition job could cause something like that to happen. I am glad it was fixable though, but hate the fact that it took me a couple of hours to figure out.
For some reason, the PC would never complete its POST, and would get caught at the same spot each time... when it queries the storage devices. Each time, it'd display the ODD just fine, but when it came to the HDD, no cigar. At first, I thought it could have been a side-effect of the overclocked CPU, but as it turns out, it wasn't.
Strangely, what fixed things was if I went into the BIOS and disabled AHCI mode, reverting back to IDE. It made no sense to me, but I wondered if somehow the chipset on the board screwed up and ended up rendering AHCI useless. But then I installed a second drive and put the board back into AHCI mode, and it booted fine. Back to the regular drive... no boot.
It seemed to me that Windows setup screwed up the partitioning of the drive so badly, that it literally rendered the PC non-bootable. So for fun, I booted up with a Gentoo live CD and then used "fdisk" to delete all of the partitions on the drive (Windows creates two). When I listed the partitions, there were errors around cylinders and aligning or something, so I knew that could have been the issue. I created an NTFS partition, rebooted, and boom, a bootable system with AHCI enabled.
Has anyone ever heard of something like this happening? It seems a little bizarre that a bad partition job could cause something like that to happen. I am glad it was fixable though, but hate the fact that it took me a couple of hours to figure out.
