Dell 1525 doesn't boot w/o OS install disk inserted into optical drive

**CDsDontBurn** · 06-10-2011, 10:31 PM

I'm working on this Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop for a client of mine and I've already gotten Windows Vista installed on it and everything. I get both service packs installed and most of the drivers installed as well. So far only the chipset, display, LAN, WiFi, audio, and built-in modem drivers are installed. I still need to install drivers for other misc. Dell related stuff.

So basically what is happening is what I described in the title of the thread. The system will only boot if the Vista install disk is inserted into the optical drive. If I remove it, it will give me an error saying "No boot disk found. Please insert boot disk and try again".

I am thinking that the SATA driver must not have taken when I did the install for whatever reason. The weird part about it though is that the install process NEVER asked for a SATA driver to be installed. This is what has me confused about this whole thing right now.

Is there anything that can be done about this that will allow the system to boot up no problem? I don't mind reinstalling Vista if I have to. There's nothing really of importance on this machine that will keep me from performing another installation.

**Victor** · 06-10-2011, 11:51 PM

did you go into the bios and set the initial boot as hd and choose the hd to boot?

**CDsDontBurn** · 06-11-2011, 12:22 AM

Of course!

Or even if I hit the F12 key on POST to choose a bootable device, if I choose the HDD, it will give me this same problem.

**Blacksmith1** · 06-11-2011, 03:38 AM

sounds like the install never set up te bootloader. Is this a brand new unit or was it working before?

**CDsDontBurn** · 06-11-2011, 04:26 AM

It's not new. It's probably 2 - 3 yrs old.

Somebody else had looked at it before me. Whoever it was left a note saying that the original issue was a BSOD related to hiusb.sys or something like that. Whatever they did to try and fix it made, it worse. Basically, the partition/volume had been damaged to an unrecoverable state by the time I got the laptop. Getting the data off the drive took over 24hrs (I kept getting errors I wasn't there for to clear/by-pass otherwise it would have been about 8 - 10hrs) using a data recovery program.

**CDsDontBurn** · 06-11-2011, 09:10 AM

Ok, so I had this "Idea" that maybe I was having this issue because the SATA settings in the BIOS. It was set to AHCI and not IDE/ATA mode in the BIOS, so I set it to IDE/ATA mode to see what that would do. Knowing I would have to do another install, I did it anyways. There's nothing really on this machine for me to not want to get another install going. Changing from AHCI to IDE/ATA mode did nothing.

It's a long shot, but tomorrow I will put this HDD in another machine and check to see if the partition is set to "Active". By default it should be, but I'm just going to make sure it is.