OS not Found

[mtdmitchell]

Ive installed Windows 7 on loads of laptops and Computers, so far and no problems untill i try a Stone MR052 Laptop.

 

Windows 7 Installs fine, and seems to be working until i take out the OS DVD and reboot then it cant find the OS.

 

If i put the OS dvd back in (not booting from it) Windows then loads from the HDD. Strange, this has happen on two different Laptops of the same model.

 

Ive also upgraded the bios.

[SYNACK]

I had this happen ages ago with a Windows XP box, as far as I could figure it was an issue with the low level formatting of the hard drive and the MBR because the CD simply chains the boot request to the first hard drive and takes over as MBR. I got round it by replacing the HD but I suspect that you could retry fixmbr and fixboot on it (I think I tries this to no avail) and if that does not work look to see if you can do a low level format of the drive. If there is not option for that you could use boot and nuke to scrub the hard drive which I would probably try before the low level format then try the install again.

[mtdmitchell]

Well ive tried everything, Somethin is not compatable.

[7andY]

IIRC, W7 creates a small partition at the beginning of the drive, but these MR052's also have a small recovery partition there as well. Perhaps W7 is trying to boot to partition 2, which is where it would normally find the OS, but, as partitions 1 & 2 are taken up and W7 is installed on partition 3, it's going belly up!

 

7&

[mac_shinobi]

IIRC, W7 creates a small partition at the beginning of the drive, but these MR052's also have a small recovery partition there as well. Perhaps W7 is trying to boot to partition 2, which is where it would normally find the OS, but, as partitions 1 & 2 are taken up and W7 is installed on partition 3, it's going belly up!

 

7&

 

so if he gets it to boot into windows 7 assuming you can ammend / change the boot.ini file to point to the correct partition ?

[mtdmitchell]

thanks for the replies, ive only just got back to looking at this problem.

 

I always remove and Partitions when i reformat a Computer. Ive just tried Vista as well and the same problem occured.

 

So i went back to Windows 7 and it seemed to work for a while unitil i set ghost to capture the image...and on reboot no Os found!

 

looking at the partition it does have two but i think one of these is created when installing Windows 7 or was it when ghost just rebooted?

[mtdmitchell]

at first the problem was not because of ghost as i didnt get that far before th eproblem occured. Stonecomputers advised me to install the chipset and that seemed to work. Until i tried to capture the ghost image - which i think is creating a Temp partition and stopping it working.

 

im going to try a manual ghostcast

[mtdmitchell]

Looks like the ghost partition is stopping WIN 7 Working - Hope this is just this model Laptop- Cleared the ghost Partiton and it works again

[nick2114]

Hey DirtyDog,

 

I have a stone MR052 notebook and i'm having exactly the same problem, 1stly where did you get the chipset drivers and 2ndly where di you get the BIOS update from - I havent even got to the stage of creating an image from the machine yet just trying to get it to a useable state, but without the DVD in the drive it just wont boot. Are there any options for SATA operation in the "New" Bios?

 

Cheers

 

Nick

[mbedford]

I had the exact same problem with WDS and Windows 7.

 

Get the latest MR052 BIOS from here

www.stonecomputers.com - /ftp/

Click on BIOS and then MR052

 

That solves the problem.

 

Mike

[sted]

if you look up other numbers on the stones id lay odds you can find the fuji it really is and download drivers from there

[nick2114]

next question how did you get the bios to flash its just failing to open the rom for me? did you flash from dos or win?

[mbedford]

I used a DOS boot disk from bootdisk.com Its important that you ensure that the version of DOS that is booted does not use HIMEM, the flashing application doesn't work if HIMEM is enabled. I dont remember off the top of my head how I did this but a quick google should solve that one.

 

Once I was booted in to DOS, I simply ran the .BAT file that comes with the BIOS ROM and it updated.

 

Mike

[nick2114]

lol was using an old win me usb boot img - forgot me used Himen!

 

runs ok on 98 boot img

 

Cheers

[nick2114]

ok so Bios is updated but still no options for SATA operation, reinstalled 7 pro (again!) installed chipset drivers run a repair, run a startup repair - no problems found. But still it only boots with DVD in drive I'm running fast out of ideas now been through loads of posts with BootMGR problems and rebuilding BCD but no resolution. Any ideas???

Mike how did your install go did you ever get a base image off it? any chance of ghosting it to a DVD for me? I just cant see a way round this i've formatted the HDD 5 times now!

Grrrr

[dhicks]

But still it only boots with DVD in drive

 

"Boots with DVD in drive" as in a bootloader loads up from the DVD and brings up a message saying "Press any key to boot from DVD drive..."? The computer is actually booting from the DVD, not the harddrive, it's just that if you don't press a key the bootloader simply boots Windows from the harddrive for you. This rather suggests that Windows itself works fine (and has all drivers for things like motherboard chipsets and SATA drivers installed properly), it's just that it's bootloader isn't loading for some reason. Check the harddrive is actually set to be bootable in the BIOS, otherwise you could try installing the GRUB bootloader from a Linux utility disk to boot Windows.

 

--

David Hicks

[mbedford]

hmm, its been a while since I loaded Windows 7 onto one of these so maybe there was an extra step, im having a flash back to needing to change a BIOS setting after doing the update. Something related to "SATA Legacy mode" or along those lines.

 

im not back in the office until Wednesday but I will try and find that model machine and take a look for you then.

 

I doubt getting a 3rd party boot loader will help as this is definatley a problem related to SATA within the BIOS. Have another look in your BIOS for anything related to SATA or Serial ATA, im sure it was some sort of Legacy mode the more I think about it.

 

I can try getting a ghost image for you but i dont think thats going to be any help :-(

 

Mike

[Brpilot99]

I had the same also and got round it running the repair option from the w7 disc rather than the install. You can also make a bootable repair disc from a good copy of w7.

 

Hope this helps

Cheers

[DAZZD88]

Well I installed Windows 7 a couple of weeks ago and had a suspiciously similar problem. It was because whenm I went to install 7 I'd wiped all the partitions and then installed 7. However I'd not that about what I was doing and I left the other HDDs in my computer. After a while I clicked on that Windows 7 had installed the necessary boot files to another HDD and my bios was trying to start the wrong drive. Start up Windows 7 and run BCDEDIT from a command prompt and see where it's put the boot files.

 

If it's installed them in the wrong place then you can copy them and then change the BCD file. You'll have to google it though because I didn't bother to bookmark the site I used.

[Rawns]

I have exactly the same problem. I have had it for about 6 months and never found a fix for it. I can't be bothered with the whole format/reinstall process so leaving the disk in is no huge issue.

 

The error I get is that Winload.exe failed the digital signature check. The HDD is first boot item and the DVD never seems to spin up, but if it's not in there, windows refuses to load! I've got to the point where I just except it.

[nick2114]

Hi right been on the phone to Stone again!

 

They vaguely remember having to set the ahci controller mode to legacy in the bios however i STILL have no controller options in bios after flashing it with the new bios 3 times! Mike if you could look at your BIOS version I would be most grateful mine is A.0b-1358-8a20 if your is defferent winphlash must have an option to backup exisiting bios??

 

Cheers

 

Nick

[sted]

shouldnt need to set ahci controller to legacy for windows 7 only really needed if you cant find/too busy/lazy to add sata driver to an xp disk

[mbedford]

As luck would have it I dialled into my work machine and I have a copy of the BIOS i used. I have zipped the entire thing up including the flashing app.

 

Hotfile.com: 1-CLICK Dateihoster: MR052.zip

 

Hope this helps.

 

Mike

[nick2114]

Thanks very much for the bios. Unfortunatly I still have no option for AHCI or SATA config - Spoken to Andrew Sharrad (technical Director Stone) and he has been unable to help suggesting a Boot loader might work! but all to no avail still i'm left with the DVD in Drive i think i have reached the end with this laptop and maybe just go back to good ol XP

 

As for adding the SATA driver to the Win 7 disk or on start F6 windows 7 already has drivers for the ICH7R driver that this laptop uses! so that wont help its just can phsically see the boot files on the HDD it needs the DVD to invoke the boot!

 

Boo Hiss

 

Cheers for all the help guys!

[mbedford]

Did you try reinstalling Win7 once you did the BIOS update?