Boot disk error?

[Brondum9]

The Comp

AMD 2400+
Gigabyte Ga7ava mobo
512mb ram Kingston256 and 256mb generic
80gig Maxtor 7200rpm
ti4200
Windows xp pro


Now he has been running this system for four months and now when his computer is on for about an hour or so. He gets a black screen with the message "Boot disk error press enter"?

He pushed enter and it made a mechanical noise and flashed to the same message.

I have been over to check for beeps so this is all the information i have so far. HE said this is the second time it happen. He hadn't had any disk in the floopy and there wasnt any bootable cds either.

He does have two different brands of ram and maxtor stinks.

Let me know Thanks.

[John Prophet]

hmm..he gets it after he has been running an hour??

you mean he gets it when booting??

sounds like the drive is going bad and the bios is "losing the drive" etc..especially if he is hearing a mech type noise..like a "knocking" or a "grinding"

he needs to get norton ghost and copy the drive to another drive before it dies altogether

[Bovon]

The only time you will get a boot disk error is right after the BIOS is finished reading and detecting everything. If this is happening in Windows, is there a time lapse where the machine might be in the process of rebooting?. If the drive cannot be read or written to, and the machine is rebooted (this doesn't happen as a rule) then.. the BIOS does not find an operating drive, you could get that error...yeah, I know.. a long shot in the dark..but possible.

At this point, and with nothing else to go by.. I would get a new hard drive and do a Ghost backup of my stuff...that drive may very well be failing, and the loss of data can really make you sick.

[eagle1]

Yeah.. I'm not clear on this!
He gets the message while booting OR in windows.
If it is from windows that's weird ... maybe a program (virus, trojan, etc) is doing that.

If it is while booting, check if the BIOS is set to read (or boot) from any other drives first instead of the hard drive and check the drives for discs.

[Brondum9]

When he is in windows and running for about an hour. It happened again and he had been running for almost two hours. I think his hard drive is going bad. That was my first thought. I naturally want to cover all the bases.

[eagle1]

Have you run antivirus software, and ad software removal tools, etc?
That's is very weird.
Also, try disabling the Floppy drive (if there's any) from the BIOS (maybe the mechanical sound is windows trying to read the floppy).

[eagle1]

Also, try checking if there are any strange program starting up when windows starts.
Just run msconfig and check the startup programs that execute when windows loads.

[Bovon]

Please get him...to tell you exactly what happens, and a time period between "the dark screen" and the reboot session begins. This is important...it could be a Windows problem or a hard drive problem...and the timing may be only one or two seconds.