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boot disk failure problem

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3 replies

by sumday

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i get the error message "Boot disk failure, insert system disk and press enter." when switching my computer on. it was fine about 2 hours ago but now this is happening. I checked in my bios to see if the disks were being recognized and they weren't. I panicked for a moment and then thought about obeying the error message so i put in the system disk and got to the recovery console, only to find that i could log onto my two XP installations and browse the directory structures just fine. so the windows setup application has obviously recognized my two SATA hard drives, but my stupid BIOS won't. Can anybody suggest a cause, solution or workaround for this problem? it would be most appreciated.

3 replies

by big ole jack

If Windows setup is picking it up during the install process, but not during the normal boot process, then it's definitely a driver issue because the driver is loaded off the CD media during the install. Your best course of action would be to perform an inplace repair of the XP OS, basically doing an install over the existing partition to fix any missing or corrupted files. Your BIOS is not picking up the SATA hard drives because you're confusing the drive detection process with IDE drives, not SATA drives. SATA drives are not IDE drives, and thus your BIOS will not see them as such. Try the inplace repair method and let us know if that fixes your problem.

by gboyd

Sometimes when you replace a hard disk (especially in a laptop) you may not get a good connection for the SATA drive. If your computer is telling you the drive has bad media, check cables, this is a good indication that this is the problem.

by ethaneh

YOU MAY NEED A NEW BIOS BATTERY IF YOUR CURRENT ONE HAS DIED THAN ALL THE INFOMATION IN BIOS COULD BE PISSED.

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