I've been having a major issue since i assembled my server.  I have the following hardware:

 

-ASUS A8N-SLI

-AMD64 3000

-Kingston DataTravellerII 4gb

 

I set the BIOS to boot up to the Kingston USB stick first, but when it gets to the IRC assignments it restarts the boot process.  I've tried clearing the CMOS (with jumpers and with battery removal), and by choosing the startup by pressing F8 and selecting the USB stick as boot-up device. I've confirmed that mobo settings enable all USB support.

 

Not sure what's going on here, or if I've set something up wrong on the mobo, but I thought that the hardware selected was all approved.  The one potential negative and source problem is that the board was bought on eBay.

 

I've tested the stick in another computer, and it booted without problems.  I also tried another data stick and put on Knoppix - that didn't boot either; however, it gave it another error, one that there was a disk failure.  Although, no error was found when booting another machine.

Getting the system to boot is the number one challenge so you should find countless posts on the topic ("asus boot usb" but without quotes should get you there).

 

Look for a BIOS setting that makes that USB equal to "FDD" rather than "Auto", "HDD", or other.

 

 

Bill

Have you gotten this board to boot anything?  First make sure that it *can* boot, by trying a DOS bootable floppy or bootable CD, such as a Windows system CD or any Linux live CD (adjust the BIOS options to boot from a floppy or CD).

 

My sig points to a Troubleshooting page with several options for boot problems.  Some have found that some boards need a flash disk formatted with the syslinux -ma command.  Also see http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=Best_of_the_Forums#USB_.2F_Boot_Issues.

I reformatted the drive and reinstalled with syslinux -ma, but that didn't seemt od ot he trick - or at leats maybe it got me closer.  I am now getting the "disk boot failure" problem as cited with the Knoppix disk.

 

That leaves me with changing the USB from HD to FDD.  Of course, nothing is easy.  My current BIOS does not seem to support this (of course). I've looked in all menus, and there is no "usb device management" option.  I'm trying to figure out how to flash my BIOS without a floppy to see how if i can upgrade the bios, but no joy so far.

 

Any thoughts on BIOS settings to get tis working if I can't see any usb-hd, us-fdd or forced support, or am i just missing something?

**RESOLVED**

 

I updated the bios, and although I still can't change the USB settings, it is loading and the array is configuring.