Problem with TMC AI5VG+ update

[Bluebeard]

The motherboard is a TMC AI5VG+. It originally had the U1 version of the BIOS but HD size limitations, in particular the requirement to use a MAXTOR 6Y080P0 80GB HD forced a BIOS upgrade. I have spent sometime searching and found newer BIOS's such as M589U3/U4/U4_J and the installer AWDFLASH. I also have the MAXTOR tool MAXBLAST 4. The particular model of Maxtor HD has a jumper to limit the reported size to about 33GB. When I install a U4 version bios the size is reported correctly and the C: drive can be written with an OS (such as Win2k or FreeNAS) but when it comes to booting the HD it fails everytime. I have tried it fullsize, the capped size, with a DDO installed by Maxblast but the BIOS can never seem to find the bootcode on the HD. I have spent hours and hours on this trying every possible combination.... Even Win98... But none will boot. Even if I restore the original U1 version and cap it to 33GB....
Anyone any idea what the problem is...??
Roger

[edwin]

Umm, so you install an OS on the harddisk and after doing so it can't boot from the harddisk? You made sure it is listed in the boot order? No other floppies/CDs in the machine at boot time? No boot sector/MBR viruses? You checked with fdisk from a floppy if your boot partition is indeed set active?

[cp]

on autodetecting the hdd select lba block addressing (that's option 2 or Y). limit the size of the hdd to 32GB and install a modern operating system (linux, windows xp sp2 or windows 2k sp4) to use the full size of the hdd despite the limiting jumper.

[edwin]

In this case I think it's either something lurking in the bootsector or a hardware problem with the disk or controller. Was this disk tried in an other machine already?

[cp]

to clean the bootsector use xfdisk.

[Bluebeard]

Thanks CP/Edwin. The HD had been is use elsewhere and all the things suggested to check/try had been. Having said that I now feel a bit silly in that I did something a bit odd and it is now working. I re-installed the U4 version of the BIOS (with no cap link on HD) so that 81GB was reported. I then ran MAXBLAST and after fiddling a bit clicked on to install the DDO. I am not really quite sure why I did that except that I had already gone through so many permutations... It is a bit of a silly thing to do since you would normally only do this to get the HD to run the correct size when capped....!! (Or that is my understanding...?). Anyway I went on to install Win2k from CD and as before it went through the whole of the install procedure up to the point where Win2k install does a restart. Always before it had failed but this time, as it should, it did a restart and carried on to complete the install....!!!!! The install version is without SP but I have the update to take it to SP4. Despite several restarts all has since gone ok..! If you can think of a reason..?? Just in case I ever need to re-install from scratch again???? But for the moment I am all up and running.. just puzzled? Roger

[edwin]

one of the things Maxblast does is putting or removing a hook to the workaround in the MBR. I have a gut feeling something else was lurking around there that should not have been there. To kick those things out use

fdisk /MBR

next time.