Boot CD failure with two CD-DVD in system

Version 9, build 2323.
Windows 2000 Pro, SP4, an older Dell 4100 machine, PIII 1g processor, 512meg RAM (built in 2001).

One 40 meg hard drive (4 partitions, includes normal boot partition) on motherboard 1st IDE channel.

One Memorex 48x CD drive (read only) on motherboard's 2nd IDE (swapped with a HP 9100 series CD-writer, but no difference in the problem I'm describiing).

A SIIG pci controller card with two hard drives on card's 1st IDE channel.
A Sony DRU-500A DVD drive on the 2nd IDE channel.
A firewire card (all attached devices turned off)
An adaptec USB card (all attached devices turned off)

IF I had both the Sony DRU-500A as master and the Memorex CD as a slave on the motherboard's second channel and BIOS enabled to boot from CD, the TI9 bootable CD works fine. Same story swapping the two between master and slave on this channel.

IF I put the DRU-500A on the SIIG card's second channel as described above, and make the Memorex the only CD reader on the motherboard's 2nd IDE channel, the TI9 CD starts to boot with the usual message "starting acronis loader", then eventually fails "boot failed". F11 doesn't work since the load process doesn't get far enough. If I unplug the Sony DRU-500A from the SIIG controller, the TI9 CD will boot normally.

I created the 8 disk floppy loader, set BIOS to boot first from the floppy, left everything else connected as described (Memorex CD reader on motherboard IDE channel 2; Sony DRU-500A on SIIG ide channel two), I could boot from the floppy set normally into TI9.

I have everything jumpered correctly. Each is master when on its own channel. And when one is on the cable as a slave, it is jumpered as a slave, etc.

It would appear there's some huge conflict between the motherboard bootable CD on ide channel two and the SIIG pci controller channel two with the Sony DVD writer (in the Linux boot process). But if I could get a bootable image onto a CD that was the same that's used to boot the floppy set, would I get past this problem since it doesn't happen when I boot from the floppy set?

Would a safe mode bootable CD image work since a number of device drivers aren't loaded? I only want to be able to boot from a CD and do restore and backup from hard drives on the system. Periodically I burn DVDs with these images as further backup. I don't want to write the backups to a secure zone, which I have never used, since I want to be able to make copies of the backups to store away from the computer.


Mike

 

Hello Mike,

You could well be on a hiding to nothing getting TI's linux based boot rescue CD to recognise that SIIG PCI Controller card. Therefore, unless you have some overriding reason for not doing so, I'd be inclined to leave the Sony DVD and Memorex CD as master and slave on the motherboard's secondary IDE channel.

Regards

 

You may be right about it being a lost cause if I understand you correctly, but...

My overriding reason was that the SIIG card has much better throughput than the motherboard's. Plus I'm swapping the Sony DRU-500A for a DRU-810A soon and need more throughput to make use of the speed. Taking 30 minutes to burn a 4 gig DVD is a bit slow (motherboard only lets the DRU-500A 4x run at 2x).

The TI9 boot CD doesn't have any problem with the hard drives that are connected to the SIIG card (which is 4 years old; the drivers are still the same ones used for the current SIIG and Adaptec cards, same chip set, so I suspect there's got to be generic support for the SIIG card in Linux?). If the TI9 boot CD completely ignored that DVD writer on the SIIG channel, it would be fine as it'd serve no purpose for backup and restore purposes anyhow.

If the floppy boot process works fine with the DVD drive on the SIIG card and the CD drive on the motherboard IDE channel, I was hoping there was a way to get the floppy image on a bootable CD.

Mike

 

Well, as you appear not to be using USB or SCSI devices, you could try using a Safe version of the bootable rescue CD. It uses a combination of DOS and your motherboard's BIOS routines to access the hardware. You could get lucky and find that it recognises the SIIG PCI controller card. However, there is no guarantee that the controller will operate in DMA mode. In which case the data transfer rate would probably be no faster than the motherboard's IDE channels.

Regards

 

Hello Mike,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

As far as I can understand, the problem is that you can not boot from Acronis True Image 9.0 (build 2323) Bootable Rescue CD when your Sony DRU-500A DVD drive is connected to SIIG pci controller card. However, in case Sony DRU-500A DVD drive is unplugged or connected to the onboard IDE controller, you can boot from Acronis True Image 9.0 (build 2323) Bootable Rescue CD without a problem. Is this correct?

Could you please try to boot from any other bootable disc (e.g. Windows installation CD) when your Sony DRU-500A DVD drive is connected to SIIG pci controller card ("problematic" configuration) and let us know the result?

Thank you.
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Alexey Popov

 

Menorcaman,

Thank you. A safe boot CD is one option I'd like to try, but haven't figured out how to create one since TI only gives me the option of creating a normal CD.


Hi Alexey,

Yes, you're right in your summary of the problem I'm having.

Using a bootable Dell recovery CD I can boot from a CD drive attached to the motherboard 2nd IDE channel when the Sony DRU-500A is attached to the 2nd channel of the SIIG card. No error messages are displayed.

I have tried booting from a version 7 TI bootable CD. Since this was the first version of TI I bought, I also happened to buy a bootable CD from Acronis. Neither of those will boot either, showing the same error.

I attached a zip drive in place of the CD drive to the motherboard's 2nd IDE channel and can boot from it using a DOS 6.x image (and BIOS setting to boot from ARMD-FDD, i.e. zip drive). However, when I use TI9 from W2K to write a bootable TI image to a zip media (it recognizes the zip drive and gives me the option to create bootable media on the zip drive), I get an "invalid or missing operating system" message when trying to boot from the zip drive. It would appear all of the needed Linux files are there, about 15 meg worth. This all of course is separate from the CD boot process/setting. But it was something I tried.

I did install the recovery manager so I have the F11 option when booting the machine normally. With that I can read and write backups to any of my hard drives on the system using the recovery manager separate from the operating system. That is a compromise, but it would still be good to be able to boot from a CD as a more secure method of backup and restore.


Mike

 

Mike,

I hope it won't be against the good manners I value in this forum if I try to explain what Menorcaman meant about the safe version of the bootable rescue CD.

When you boot from the rescue CD (one version only), you are given three options from which to select to procede. The safe option is the middle one with only the most common drivers embedded.

Boris

 

Boris,

Thank you... but my problem is that the boot process doesn't even get that far to allow the choice. It seems the initial loader is failing because of hardware/software conflicts. All I get is the black screen and the message "starting acronis loader...", followed by a period of no visible activity and then the "boot failed" message. Rebooting is all that's possible at that point.

Mike

 

Hello Mike,

Most likely this problem is related to the particular hardware configuration and so requires a deeper investigation.

Could you please create Acronis Report and Windows System Information as it is described in Acronis Help Post?

Please also do the following:

- Launch Acronis Report Utility once again and select the "Create Bootable Floppy" option;
- Insert a blank floppy disk in the A: drive and proceed with creation of the bootable floppy;
- Boot the computer from this diskette and wait for report creation process to finish;
- Collect the report file from the floppy;
- Rename the report created from under Windows to report_win.txt and report created using the bootabale floppy to report_diskette.txt.

Can you please also do the following?

- Start command prompt;

- Go to \Program Files\Common Files\Acronis\CDRecord folder;

- Run "cdrecord –scanbus > scanbus.txt" command and collect the scanbus.txt file.

Please keep your Sony DRU-500A DVD drive connected to SIIG pci controller card while creating both reports, Windows System Information and scanbus.txt file.

Please submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. We will investigate the problem and try to provide you with the solution.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Alexey,

Thank you for looking at this problem. In a roundabout way, I've resolved it, so you won't need to worry about debugging a problematic ROM BIOS on a 5 year-old machine!

I moved my hard drives, including the boot hard drive to the SIIG card, set the BIOS to allow "Option ROM" as the boot device, left the CD drive on the motherboard 2nd IDE channel - jumpered as a master.

Then added a second SIIG card into the system on which I put the DVD drive on the 1st IDE channel and jumpered as a master.

With this arrangement I can boot the TI9 CD from the CD drive with no problems. Otherwise I boot from the desired hard drive. This also worked when I put the boot hard drive on the 1st channel of the SIIG card and the DVD drive on the 2nd channel. Too many hard drives, hence I added a second SIIG card. Basically this seems to have been a problem with the machine's BIOS handing off the boot process correctly the way I had originally configured it.

Thanks again.

Mike

 

Hello Mike,

I'm really glad to hear that you managed to solve the problem.

I would also like to thank you for posting back with the solution.

If you have any further questions concerning Acronis software, please feel free to submit a request for technical support or post any of them on this forum. We will certainly try to help you in resolving any issues.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov