Can't boot RT from pc hard drive

[kander1]

Hi,

I have a PC with a removable hard drive successfully booting the RT software.  I have an identical hard drive that I am attempting to format in the same manner.  I have gone through the procedure for formating the PC hard drive as per instructions and I keep getting the following error message:

Reboot and select proper boot device

or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key

I know the new hard drive works because I can successfully boot to RT from a floppy disk.  For whatever reason the hard drive does not appear to be formatting correctly even though I don't get any errors after the format process is done.

Any help you can give me is much appreciated

Kevin

[eek]

Hi Kevin,

It sounds like your BIOS options might be the culprit to this issue. I would check the boot settings in the BIOS (press <del> upon rebooting the device to enter the BIOS) and make sure the ordering will make sure it searches the hard drive for the boot program.

Cheers,
Emilie K. | Applications Engineer | National Instruments

[kander1]

Hi Emilie,

I have another identical hard drive that properly boots so I'm pretty sure it's not the BIOS.  I double checked the BIOS anyway and shows the hard drive as the second boot device (behind the floppy).

Kevin

[Gary_H]

Hi Emilie,

Having formatted the new Hard Drive, how have you set up it's partitions ?

Does the new Hard Drive have an active Primary Partition, on which the operating system is loaded ?

regards,

Gary.

[eek]

Hi Kevin,

If I understand the issue correctly, when your system boots, it is not looking to the hard drive for its boot program. Rather, it believes the boot program is located on an external location. When you insert the floppy disk, the system boots properly. Correct me if I've misunderstood anything.

So at this point, I would ask a few additional questions:

What version of LabVIEW are you using? ETS? RTX?

Are you creating the boot disk utility in MAX? What version of MAX do you have installed?

What does your final configuration consist of? Are you running RT on the removable hard drive and Windows on the internal hard drive of the same PC? Is this a dual boot configuration?

I'm also curious to see what answers you have for Gary's questions regarding any partitioning of the hard drive. I think all of this information might prove useful in helping you with your issue.

Cheers,

Emilie

[MSATLAB]

Just as some more words of wisdom to collect with the other good responses before me, make sure that the hard drive that you are booting from is in the primary partition as well as in the Master position for hard drives.  I ran into this problem earlier this fall and it took me a while to find out what the problem was due to the fact that there was no descriptive error.  I hope that you solve your problem soon. 

Michael B

[kander1]

Thanks everybody for the all the advice.  I got the hard drive to work.  Using partion magic I discovered that there was no active drive set.  Once I set the active drive it worked

Kevin

[maji]

Hi kander1

how do you boot a pc as rt target?please describe step by step.

Thanks a lot.

[Stephen_S.]

Hi maji,

Take a look the article called Converting a Desktop PC to a LabVIEW Real-Time Target and its links, particularly the link to Using Desktop PCs as RT Targets with the Real-Time Module and see if this helps.

Regards,

Stephen S.