Phoenix BIOS unable to find OS menu on SATA drive after flash update

[Pappy12]

Background: I needed to update (flash) my phoenix BIOS on my Supermicro X6DA8-G2 motherboard (as instructed to by Supermicro support) because I discovered it wouldn't boot with RAM exceeding 8GB. After making do with 6GB for several years, I wanted to avail of more RAM.

Without touching the RAM, I first had to flash my BIOS with an update. This I was able to do successfully. The system would now boot up with the fresh BIOS update.

However, now that the BIOS configuration had returned to its default settings, it can no longer find my Windows 7 Ultimate x64 boot menu. This OS is already installed and working on one of two SATA Disks, but instead of booting into it, it responds with the message, "Operating system not found."

I know this must have something to do with the BIOS configuration, but I'm not knowledgable enough to know what I need to tweak for it to again find the OS boot menu.

Could it have something to do with "SATA controllers" ?
Note that I can still see the SATA drives in the BIOS, but it appears to have "lost" the information that connects/boots it into the OS

When I put in my Windows installation disk, it still can't seem to find a bootable copy of Windows on those drives, even though it can clearly see those drives and the OS has been left untouched.

Funnily enough, I still have an abandoned old copy of Windows still installed on the SCSI drive (which doesn't boot up properly anymore, hence abandoned) - Weirdly, the updated BIOS appears to 'see' the information to try and boot into that one. This makes me think all the more that it must be something to do with the way the SATA drives are configured by default in the BIOS.

For your info, the BIOS I'm using is Phoenix ServerBIOS 3 release 6.1 which was downloaded from here:

http://www.supermicro.com/about/policies/disclaimer.cfm?url=/support/resources/getfile.aspx?ID=175

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[Pappy12]

Looks like this has stumped the experts on this forum, so I'll update this with something new I've tried.

I thought, since I have two SATA drives, that I would try installing Windows 7 on my other drive to see if this would correct the problem and give me a dual boot menu from which I can leap into my other Windows 7 installation.

I was able to successfully install a fresh copy of Windows from the CD without any problems.

The system will now boot straight into the new Windows 7 installation, but sadly it does not see the previously working Compton the other disk. It doesn't give me any dual boot options.

Would I be able to configure BCDEDIT to find my normal version. If so, how?

Windows setup has obviously altered something in the BiOS or "master boot record"??!! that enables the BiOS to find and boot Windows.

This is crazy, I can't believe I would be alone in this problem.

 

[alexoiu]

Hi, It might be related to the SATA configuration when you first installed Windows. Try changing it in BIOS (if IDE, switch to AHCi a.s.o). Leave only the SATA drive with the Windows you want to boot from connected.
Can you provide a link to the board's manual?

 

[Pappy12]

Hi, It might be related to the SATA configuration when you first installed Windows. Try changing it in BIOS (if IDE, switch to AHCi a.s.o). Leave only the SATA drive with the Windows you want to boot from connected.
Can you provide a link to the board's manual?

Thanks for trying, Alex.
I have managed to get it working again after quite a bit of messing around, but it wasn't what you said. No settings in the BIOS resolved this issue.

I had to install Windows on a secondary SATA disk, then swap the SATA hierarchy in the BIOS and then force a Windows Repair using the installation Disk. Windows repair utility then recognised there were other installations on other SATA discs and offered to repair the boot menu and restart. It then offered me a boot menu with all the Windows installations.

Solved, but took 14 hours of time. Must be an unusual problem.