After upgrading to an dedicated Sound card, going from an integrated AC97 sound card to a Creative Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeGamer Fata1ity Pro (yes, it is a mouth full) I experienced some rather unusual side effects. I had inserted the card, booted up fine, installed the drivers and then restarted. During the re-boot process I was presented with (what looked like) a BIOS error message, with the most noticeable aspect being the text "Diskette drive 0 seek failure" and two options on the bottom of the screen "F1 to retry boot" and "F2 to setup utility". I found this as a shock, as my DELL Inspiron 531 first appealed to me by the fact of it having two PCI and one PCI-e slots for expansion and upgrades (which DELL was throwing that fact into your face) Through BIOS resets and pure luck, I have managed to take the photos of the errors (one main and one that I don't think is related), boot up my computer and upload them. The error screen A strange BIOS code?? Sorry for blurry images, I had to switch off flash to get a decent photo. Now, I takes a good while just to be able to boot up (if it even does!!). I am wondering if this a BIOS failure, Primary HDD failure or something else. Any help at all would be gratefully appreciated - Thanks! Computer Manufacture: DELL inc. Model: Inspiron 531 (New, desktop model) Specification AMD Athlon X2 5600+ @ 2800 ghz 4 gb 533mhz DDR2 RAM 2 x 160gb HDD Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate 32-bit Creative Sound Blaster X-fi XtremeGamer Fata1ity Pro Intergratated Nvidia Geforce 6150 LE w/ 256mb Nvidia nForce Motherboard
Is it the same if you the the X-Fi card out? Is there an option in the BIOS to enable/disable the FDD controller? If so, try and disable it?
EDIT: I don't know, but I do remember seeing a 1.44 /3.5 inch bay and the options to enable or disable. Is this it?
I did the same upgrade on my Mini ITX Hi-Fi and had no problems, although i'm running XP Home not vista. Have you checked all the cables and other connections? You've got the front ports for the X-Fi, and it could be these conflicting. remove the front ports and try again. If not, can you boot up, if the X-Fi is removed?
I went into my BIOS settings (which had seemed to be reset) disabled the FDD controller and checked that my onboard soundcard had been also disabled. After these had both been done, I saved the settings, exited and ... it booted without any problems. The error screen seen in the image is no more. I will check to see if this stays, and if it doesn't, I may be back I thank you all (mainly DougEdey and severedhead) for advice in this matter!
