HDD won't boot without CD in ODD

[seedubya]

I'm a little embarrassed to even ask this question!
I have a Dell Inspiron here which will boot to Windows XP on the hard drive just fine when there is a Windows XP CD in the ODD but gives me a "no bootable device" error when there's no cd in the drive.

It's set to boot from hdd, I've run fixmbr and fixboot. The partition is set active. Any thoughts?

 

[Styxbound]

Assuming it's a desktop, I'd try changing the cd rom and cable and clearing the bios.

 

[Knightsman]

yeah is the IDE cable connected to the CD-Rom? I would also try a different cable.

 

[Knightsman]

I'm a little embarrassed to even ask this question!

Don't be embarrassed, we all have our days of confusion.

 

[FoolishTech]

You might see if the BIOS has an option to set HDD pre-delay or similar sounding name. I don't usually see that on Dells, but it's worth a shot. Used to be an issue at Gateway, but their BIOSes almost always have a pre-delay feature.

 

[seedubya]

My original post obvously wasn't very clear, sorry!

It's a laptop, running Windows XP, PATA HDD and ODD. It will NOT boot to the HDD if the ODD is empty. Put a bootable Windows CD in there and the HDD boots just fine. Take out the CD and I get "no bootable device found"

Windows is on the first partition on the HDD, the partition is set active and I have done fixmbr and fixboot.

@FoolishTech - thanks for that, will try it on Monday.

 

[angry_geek]

Weird. Just a thought, try removing the odd and see if boots normally. Also check the boot.ini just for kicks. May have a weird line that didn't get removed on the fix.

Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk

 

[Knightsman]

I would reflash the bios and see if that helps

Sent from my DROID2 using Tapatalk

 

[Jsch38]

Some more suggestions

Might want to chk the following items.
1. In bios is HD set to bootup 1st.
2. With Win disk in place, boot up system, install Avaria antivirus, install updates and run a virus check on the boot file. I had one with a virus on boot sector.
3. Remove CMOS battery and disconnect power supply cable from MB for 5 minutes and then install a new CMOS batterty and try to bootup with out CD, Had a system with similar issues and this worked.

Let us know if any of our suggestions worked,