Boot Disk Error

[Craig1]

I was wondering if anyone could help me with this annoying problem, during a install of winxp, I had to reset the pc to install drivers for the realtek net work card, instead of booting back into windows i got the following error message:'DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER'

so far i've changed the boot options in bios,changed cables, changed the hds postion, set it on another cable,even reset the bios, retried to reinstall winxp, which gets as formatting the hd, then when it boots back to windows, i get the same messahe, so i tried to install win98 which refused to install so i tried fdisk, which told me they was a disk error. After all , I decided to try another hd, same problems happened, i even tried fdisk and got the same results, anyone know whats happened here?

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

What you need to do is determine if the drive is good or not.

So, put it on the end of an IDE cable, with nothing else on the cable (no cdrom in other words)

Hook that cable to the primary IDE controller on the motherboard....boot..go into the bios and see if the drive is recognized.

If it is....boot to a boot floppy and see if you can run fdisk.

If the drive is bad it probably wont be seen by the bios....and also of course if you try to run fdisk it will say "no fixed disk present"

If the drive doesnt show up on the primary IDE controller you COULD also try it on the secondary controlle rin case the primary controller itself died.

Also of course the jumper on the hard drive needs to be set correctly....the easiest way is to set it on cable select but also you can set it on master (or single if its going to be by itself on the cable...some drives have a 'single' setting, some dont, some use 'master' for single, lol...so Isaid try cable select for easiness)

JP

[John Prophet]

Welcome to the forum!

What you need to do is determine if the drive is good or not.

So, put it on the end of an IDE cable, with nothing else on the cable (no cdrom in other words)

Hook that cable to the primary IDE controller on the motherboard....boot..go into the bios and see if the drive is recognized.

If it is....boot to a boot floppy and see if you can run fdisk.

If the drive is bad it probably wont be seen by the bios....and also of course if you try to run fdisk it will say "no fixed disk present"

If the drive doesnt show up on the primary IDE controller you COULD also try it on the secondary controlle rin case the primary controller itself died.

Also of course the jumper on the hard drive needs to be set correctly....the easiest way is to set it on cable select but also you can set it on master (or single if its going to be by itself on the cable...some drives have a 'single' setting, some dont, some use 'master' for single, lol...so Isaid try cable select for easiness)

JP

[Craig1]

thanks for the help but I've tried a different drive and had the same problem so I know its not the drive causing the problems.

Plus i've tried both drives on different ports.

[mlee97]

have you tried a different cable? Can you try a different power supply?

[Craig1]

Tried different cables and used connectors from power supply that work fine on dvd or rewriter

[mlee97]

hmmm ... how do you know they work fine these dvd and cdrs? kinda be hard to test when the hard drives don't work. Ive seen bad voltages wreck a computer but the drive motors would still work , such as spinning up and drive doors... anyway have you tried to force a low pio mode in the bios and see if they work?

[Craig1]

I know they work as i've accessed winxp on them and done an install to a drive using them, its when i try to boot using any hard drive, i get that message.

also what is a low pio mode?

Cheers