I recently had a problem with a computer in which XP Pro gave a random BSOD and then rebooted. Eventually the drive stopped booting and gave a “DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER” error. I booted up my XP CD and ran “fixboot” and “fixmbr” from recovery console. This took care of the problem and I could boot into Windows again. As soon as I shut the computer down, the problem returned. The only difference is that BIOS was taking forever to detect the disks. It literally took 2-3 minutes to detect the IDE drives. The computer was getting old anyways, so I just decided to replace it. I bought new everything and put the system together about 4 months ago.
The other day the exact same thing started happening on this new computer. The BIOS is taking forever and it gives the same error trying to load from the hard drive. The motherboard is a Biostar TForce 550, and the hard drive is a 40GB Western Digital. The hard drive is the only IDE device in this computer. The DVD drive is SATA.