my board wont boot from my hard drive

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rjplun
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Feb 02, 2004 6:30 pm

I bought a board on EBay. It posts fine but produces the message CAP security: Boot from HDD is prevented

Nothing in the BIOS seems to control this message and I have tried clearing the CMOS - doesnt help

The bios string is 07/24/2001-8605-686A-6A6LLF09C-00, which makes it a FIC board. Checking yahoo search implies PM133 chipset, but I cant find the board on the FIC site. It is S370 with AGP, 3 PCI and 2 Dimms.
The first screen shows a Hewlett Packard menu, so the board must be OEM, but the HP site is positively unhelpful.
The word VERONA is printed on the board in large caps ( no other identifier) and there is a sticker with Award 1999 oem/m6 269839557 in the corner.

How can I sort this out?
NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
Posts: 3145
Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

Identifying the board: Google finds
Edwin's HP pageswhich say:
BIG NOTE: ALL THESE BOARDS ARE OEM VERSIONS MADE FOR HP AND AS SUCH ARE ONLY SUPPORTED BY HP (BIOSES MUST COME FROM HP). NO EXCEPTIONS TO THIS RULE SO FAR.
Verona FIC FR35: Brio BA410


If it will boot from diskette you could try flashing the BIOS with the latest from HP - but that may also be protected....
Ritchie
BIOS Guru
Posts: 761
Joined: Wed Oct 30, 2002 5:17 am

The message you are getting maybe a strange message meaning that the BIOS cannot identify the boot files, or that the harddrive is unpartitioned or unformatted.

Do you have any data on the drive that you need?
I ADVISE YOU DO NOT DO ANY OF THE FOLLOWING IF YOU REQUIRE DATA FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE.
If you require data from your hard drive, I would consider experimenting with an empty drive until you resolve the problem, but then again only if you know enough about computer hardware.


If not, check the boot order in BIOS, I usually go for floppy, HDD, CD in that order. Once checking and saving this setting (and making sure HDD is detected) see again if HDD will boot.

Try booting from a floppy if that fails. Make sure it contains at least WIN98 boot files so it will recognise FAT32 partitions. If no data on the drive, I would see if I can access C: (pri HDD) and if so use the sys command and a spare floppy disk to SYS A: and then SYS C: to transfer the correct boot files from the HDD to the floppy (if Windows can find them) and then back to the HDD. If this works your boot files should be in the correct location on the HDD as required by the O/S and you can try booting off the HDD again.

If this fails boot off the floppy again and use FDISK to take a look at the partitions on the drive. Maybe there is no primary partition. Maybe the primary partition is not active. After correcting any problems you may need to reboot and format the drive. Then you may be able to install an O/S onto there, which is another procedure, and in theory you should be able to boot.

Hope this helps.
NickS
BIOS Bodhisattva
Posts: 3145
Joined: Fri May 03, 2002 10:34 am
Location: Thames Valley, UK

...and there again, it could have a special secure BIOS.

A couple or three years back there was flood of HP Vectra 486s chassis on the UK market which you could not do a thing with because of the secure BIOS. You had to know which wires to connect where and which switches to set before you could even flash it with a standard BIOS. I have the notes somewhere...

rjplun: More background please; does it do this with any HDD?
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