Disk Boot Failure - Please Help Me!

[master_bacarra 0]

ok, i'll just cut to the chase, since i'm only using the pc from our school's library (this isn't free and my time's almost up). last night i was accessing my device manager so i could change my audio playing from digital to analog (so i could put the earphone on the cd jack). anyway, when i accessed it, my pc started to hang. but i was able to resolve it when i closed the program down. but that's not my problem (it's just my introduction). when i restarted my pc (since i had to do some other things), the pc couldn't shut down. after windows says "saving your settings", it just hangs there. when i pushed the reset button and my pc started running, i get the message "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter". i opened my cpu to check on the wirings, but everything's totally connected. at start up, there were times that the pc detects the hard drive but the message still occurs but there were times that the pc doesn't detect it and has the same message. yet, it detects the cdrom.i'm starting to freak out since i have a lot of deadlines and i'm losing so much time. please help me. i will check on this forum later when i have time. thanks everyone!

[terminal2k 0]

if you're receiving this message and the cables connecting you hard drive to the motherboard are connected properly you have most likely got some issue with the harddrive itself, it could be broken, but most likely when you have re-set the computer before its shutdown properly there has been some corruption of data on the drive itself. if you are of limited tech knowledge try and get a geeky mate to look at it for you, they may even be able to recover the data from the drive itself. otherwise try taking it to your local computer shop and see if they can do anything for you. If the data on it is not important to you at all, you can always look at re-installing windows and see if that fixes your issue (warning sometimes this will cause the harddrive to be formatted which will kill everything you had on there)

[Inspiron 0]

You have tried opening your PC case and looked into physical wirings and found no problems.There's a possibility, as what terminal2k suggested, that some Windows critical data might be corrupted, which might be still in handling at the time which you thought the PC had freezed, and manually forced the computer to reset by pressing the reset button. Likewise with powering down a computer while it is will processing data will most likely to cause data lose or corruption.However I think that your harddisk might be failing due to the fact that it is bought pretty long ago. Harddisk machanism will wear and tear everytime the disc spins. In other words, they will continue to wear and tear once your computer is powered on. This is unavoidable. However you can reduce the chances of damage and extend a harddisk lifespan by frequently defragmenting your harddisk partitions. Along time, file clusters are spreaded into many fragments on the physical disc when you create, modify, or delete files. Whenever your harddisk searches for a file, its acuator arm needs to locate the positions of the clusters and deliver them as a complete single file back to the user as a result. With multiple fragments for a single file, the acuator arm is stressed to search for those microscopic clustors. This will therefore degrades your harddisk lifespan faster. To solve, do defrag your harddisk frequently so as to extent its lifespan, as well as allow your harddisk to perform searches faster.I can suggest you to scan your harddisk for bad sectors and defrag all partitions when you are able to access back to your desktop again. Remember to backup all your important files as well. Otherwise, if you are unable to return back to desktop and the same error message keeps prompting, you might have do a full reformat to your hard drive. Also, be prepared to purchase a new harddisk to replace the faulty one if reformatting will not help. Please also note that you will not be able to recover any of your files on your current harddisk if you are unable to boot back to your desktop.

[Saint_Michael 3]

To pretty much sum it up your reinstalling your computer and worse case senerio you getting yourself a new hard drive.

[Galahad 0]

Others covered most possibilities, and most common reasons for errors that occured to you. I would just add a couple (one actualy ) of my own, from personal experience...I had a faulty IDE cable, which, at one point, when I added another HDD, and accidentaly moved this faulty cable, caused very freaky results... Everything worked, BUT... About 3 or 4 minutes after Windows would start, they would freeze, and I just had to restart my comp, over and over again... Until, one time... I just got, "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter"... I immediately froze, as I realized that my hard disk died at worst, or at best, I lost all my data, all I needed for work... When I realised it was due to faulty cable, I ripped it out, and I sliced it into tiny pieces, and actualy set it on fire in my yard Anyways, to cut the long story short, check your cables... If at startup your computer sometimes detects, and sometimes doesnt detect you hard disk, it may be due to a faulty cable... I am about 90% sure that you data is gone, but don't lose hope... There are ways to recover your data, even from damaged harddisk... Just don't format it, and install anything on it, before attempting to get the data out...And I agree, you should have some of your geeky nerdy friends check out what's happening with your hard disk... There are way too much possibilities, and way too little information, for us to correctly guess...Hope any of this helped just a little...Oh, and keep us informed on what happened to your computer...

[Earths Daughter 0]

The easiest thing to do would be to just restart in safe mode, and do a scandisk on your HDD, instructing it to fix any errors it finds.

[master_bacarra 0]

the problem is i have so many files that are really really important stored in the drive. my dad has files too and so as my brothers. i'm starting to freak out because i have a deadline tomorrow and on thursday so i really need to fix the pc. with that said, i don't have enough time to seek help from a geeky friend since it would take more time. most of my geeky friends live near the school while i live miles away. i wouldn't mind bringing it to a computer shop but unfortunately, most of the computer shops in our subdivision are quite inefficient.anyway, i've checked the cable connections again last night and they were all intact. and the pc can now detect the hard drive yet the message still occurs. i've searched it up on the net and some said that i need a boot up disk so i could fix the problem. some said it is included in the windows installer but i don't know where my brother placed our installer (and unfortunately, he's in japan right now and he is the only person who has the ability to fix the pc).it sucks to think that i'm studying computers yet i can't even fix my own pc. it's just that when you say you're a computer science student, people (and even i) assume that i can do those hardware stuff and all. or maybe i just need to buy a new pc.

[tuddy 0]

Can i ask, are you running Windows XP? If so, i suggest you try either Windows BOOT Disk or the Windows XP Disc in thier 'respective' drives and then try to boot up. I have a feeling something in your BIOS has changed due to resetting your computer. When booting your system, enter the BIOS (Usually by pressing F1,F2, DEL.), set defaults, then save and exit.I had the same problem, and that is what fixed it. I know it has something with the BIOS setting, as to which one, i haven't quite figured that out yet. Mainly BOOT settings i'd guess.

[epox 0]

ok man, first don't worry, all in this life has a solution, it seems to be you have a common problem, and afortunately it is no hard to resolve, may be you change the boot configuration and sure you are trying to boot your system from other device but your hard disk drive, and that's the reason you can't see the hated and loved windows logo bothering you. an important fact is that it seems you don't have damaged your operative system, and that's really good, or you will have to feconfigure your operative system, so in this order of ideas, i am going to tell you how i fix my computer when this kind os troubleshutings happends. here we go:1. start your computer2. when the machine starts, in the very beginning, there are a kind of messages that say like this: setup->f2 or setup->deldepending on what it says, press the key it says, and then you are in your BIOS3. search a tab that say system, or boot, or something like that.4, when you find it, there will be a series of configuration about the way your pc starts, likeboot sequence.fast boot.try other devices.5. set this values with the + and - keys, or simply take a look at the bottom of the screen and there will be a description of how to use the BIOS menu, change this values to:boot sequence->(hard disk drive where your operative system is running)fast boot->enabledtry other devices->enabled.with this settings it is sure your computer will start with your operative system, with the try other devices enabled, the BIOS search for all the drives installed on the machine, so you are not going to fail.if this doesn't work, sorry man, may be you will have to take a visit to some technic, or post back to Xisto. i hope it is useful

[master_bacarra 0]

Can i ask, are you running Windows XP? If so, i suggest you try either Windows BOOT Disk or the Windows XP Disc in thier 'respective' drives and then try to boot up.

i'm using windows xp home. the other hard drive is using windows 98. i saw from websites that i have to create a boot disk. i already have one but i don't know how to modify the boot.ini file.

5. set this values with the + and - keys, or simply take a look at the bottom of the screen and there will be a description of how to use the BIOS menu, change this values to:
boot sequence->(hard disk drive where your operative system is running)
fast boot->enabled
try other devices->enabled.

i have two drives one is using xp and the other is using 98. should i choose the former for the boot sequence? what do these actually do and how does it work?
Edited February 21, 2006 by mbacarra (see edit history)

[joeysicily 0]

Here is the most important question. Do you have a floppy in the drive???? There have been times I've seen no OS found or what have you , just because a floppy is in the drive. I think they should change that message to say cannot boot from boot disk A: or something like that.. cause that message is very scary.. But in your sense.. does seeem like a hard drive problem. Do you even hear the hard drive spinning up?

[Inspiron 0]

The thing is that he is sometimes able to boot to windows and sometimes not. And while in windows, sometimes his PC just halts suddenly. Hence it's nothing got to do with the BIOS settings nor the boot sequences. Simply, his harddisk is failing! Probably too old, or not well taken cared of. I suggest that when times you are able to boot into windows, copy all the important files into another harddisk. Or another alternative way is to buy another harddisk and clone your existing harddisk to the new one. That will save the trouble of copying files by files. I guess this is the most efficient and fastest way to solve your problem already.

[master_bacarra 0]

thanks for all the help guys! my pc is now working. although there's one thing that bothered me when i was fixing the problem. i used the bootup disk (and followed the directions according to bootdisk.com's steps), but when i used it, the pc reads from the disk drive (i.e., drive A:) but it doesn't read the bootup disk. so since this attempt didn't work, i tried epox's advice on the boot settings at start up. i have two drives (like what i've said before), one has xp home with ntfs and the other has windows98 with fat32. when i changed the boot sequence from disabled to the drive with xp home as the os, and then saved the settings and restarted the pc, it asks for the NTLDR file. but when i changed the boot sequence to the drive with windows98 as os, and saved and restarted, everything works perfectly fine. i can access both drives with ease.does xp with ntfs has its own bootup disk?

[Galahad 0]

Glad to hear you PC is working again... Now, at least we know what happened to your windows drive... If you are missing ntloader, than it means somehow, your boot files got damaged, and xp can't boot up... There is also the fact, that you can't access your files on NTFS drive, because Windows 98 doesn't have the ability to read NTFS... Any way you put it, you need another computer. with XP installed, so you can transfer all your important data from your drive, to another one, or you need XP installation drive... I'm affraid, your deadlines will be hard to meet...I hope we helped you, in potential future computer problems, if not in time in this situation...

[kevlar557 0]

Make sure you don't have a floppy in the disk drive if you have one. That is the usual error mesage you get if there is a floppy in the drive during boot.