BIOS Keeps Changing Boot Order Priority

[HoppaLong]

(Operating System is XP Pro_SP3)

I recently built a desktop with a Gigabyte mobo.

I have several USB and USB + eSATA external hard

drives. The SATA internal drives consist of two in a

RAID 0 configuration. There is only one operating

system installed on the RAID 0 internal drives.

Naturally, I set the RAID 0 drives to boot first in the

main BIOS setup. 99% of the time that's where the

boot begins for most of us. I've got the usual seperate

boot menu that allows you to boot from another device.

On the next reboot it reverts back to the normal boot

order.

I found out too late the this mobo randomly changes

the boot order. If one or two external drives are turned

on the boot order will be scrambled. This is beyond

insane because you cannot boot from something that

has no operating system, active partition, etc.

Google turned up a long list of posts on other forums

about this problem. It occurs with other mobo's besides

Gigabyte.

Someone suggested checking out BIOS Overlay's and

bootloader programs.

The only thing I remember about overlay's is that they

were used with an older BIOS that would not recognize

a partition over a certain size. A few years ago hard

drives capacities exploded but a lot of folks had older

mobo's that couldn't "see" these big drives.

Bootloaders or boot managers are usually used when you've

got two or more operating systems installed. Could this

type of program lock my system so it would always boot

from the active partition, even though I have only one

operating system installed? If the BIOS setup is always

scrambling the boot order, I don't see how a boot manager

could resolve this problem.

I've got double backups of everything. I'm willing to try

anything that one of you BIOS gurus might suggest!

[Ponch]

I found out too late the this mobo randomly changes the boot order. If one or two external drives are turned on the boot order will be scrambled. This is beyond insane because you cannot boot from something that has no operating system, active partition, etc.

Your Bios doesn't care about partitions, active or not, operating systems or not, only hardware devices matter.

Now if it is really random, you have a problem. Or a bad keyboard.

I don't know much about eSATA, but if when you boot with external drive "on" you get a submenu (a "+" for HDD in the boot order, check that it doesn't come before internal SATA.