Win XP disk boot failure

Check the boot sequence in the BIOS, reset to look for the hard drive first, then any other next or some will allow boot from HD only.

Try doing an in place repair, boot to the CD the choose repair. It could be that the boot sector is damaged, boot to the CD, repair and do a format /mbr and reboot with out the CD.

I have done a FDSIK/MBR again and again and even loaded Windows 98 on top of Windows XP to delete that install and so wrote on the MBR (master boot records) many times. But the problem refuses to go away. Also in my BIOS if I remove the install CD(whether 98 or XP) as an option for boot up the system doesnt load at all. How do I change or reset o rewrite the BIOS software because I am also getting a FLASH BIOS UNKNOWN message at the POST message stage on powering on. But the BIOS version is shown from Award Software for 810ET.

I have the same problem. This is just my theory, but I'm thinking the HD isn't spinning up properly. By making the system check the CD Rom before going to the HD, its giving the HD time to stablize.

I've replace my power supply with a better one, and still have the problem. I've even put the HD on its own power rail, but it is still buggy.

I'm guessing impending failure.

That's what I get for buying recertified drives.

If it's an old drive, it may just be that the MBR sector is corrupted or physically damaged.

Try running the recovery console from the Windows CD and using FIXBOOT command to attempt to rewrite the MBR. If this doesn't work, I'm guessing what I said above is true.

I had this exact problem.
I surfed the web and tried all kinds of things.
I tried new cables, the hard drive in a different machine as a slave, I ran disk tests, I reinstalled twice, I checked for viruses, tested the power supply,...etc.
I submitted a question to the Western Digital folks to see if they had an answer. Nothing.
I was about to buy a new hard drive but decided to talk to the tech guy first.

Thanks to my local PC store tech guy he suggested I check the jumpers on the drive.

I have always set the Jumpers to Master when there is only one drive in the system.

With Western Digital this causes weird failure.
I totally removed the jumper and the system started beautifully. I then set the jumper to cable select and had the drive attached to the last connector and this worked beautifully as well.

Thus before trying all the other stuff look at the hard drive and the pins beside the data cable. There should be some indication as to what pins are for Master, slave, and cable select. Either remove all jumpers or go with cable select.

Hope this works for you.

I had the same problem with the "DISK BOOT FAILURE" and the need for the XP boot disk.

The BIOS boot sequence was HD1 instead of HD0.
It should never have booted in the first place since there was no HD1.
Found out the problem after I reset BIOS settings.

I suffered with the same problem while repairing a computer using new parts with the exception of the HDD (which was a 40 Gig) and the Floppy Drive. At first my error message showed that a hardware incompatibility conflict occurred during assembly and this is preventing the boot processes and post tests to be successfully completed. So I disconnected my floppy drive and removed the modem from the PCI slot. It got pass the post test and reached the boot skin screen with windows XP Professional logo, then automatically restarted and kept doing so all the time. All this time of troubleshooting every other piece of hardware one by one, even slaving the HDD to my machine, re-formatting and re-installing the OS was unsuccessful. Eventually after a day and a half of troubleshooting, I took a break to relax my vigilance and it occured to me, that it just might be the CMOS battery, it was a long shot, although I can remember resetting the CMOS jumper to clear the setting and that didn't work. I went to my workshop, changed the CMOS battery, and to my amazement, that was the solution. It was a defective manufacturers CMOS battery that was giving my all this headache, the last suspect. So if ever you should have this problem with 'DISK BOOT FAILURE - INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" message, and you're not passing that screen, try replacing your CMOS battery, reset the jumper to clear the utility setting , plug back in you power chord and see if that works. I learnt that not every new unsuspected pc part or component is functional. Happy fixing....

How I fixed it ...
I had to move my HD off the IDE 1 port on the motherboard to the IDE 2 port.
I disconnected the cdrom from IDE 2 so I only had my HD on IDE 2 and no cdrom connected.
Re-booted and it booted up without giving me the Disk boot failure msg.
I then connected the cdrom to the IDE 1 connector.
It all works fine like that, so basically just swapped the HD and cdrom over to opposite IDE ports.
Hope this helps someone in the future...

I have gotten this error about three times before, i fixed it in two different ways (each time needing a different fix) 1. reset the BIOS to defaut 2. power down the computer turn the PSU off (using the switch at the back of the computer) and unpluging the power cable on the computer. This has allowed me get into windows xp and not get the stupid error. Oh by the way plug back in all the cables and turn it on after you have unpluged it all. Hope this helps someone.

Yeah , the ubiquitous "Disk Error, Insert System Disk" :-(
I googled etc. & tried various remedies.
Things started off with a WinXP mesg to chkdsk after I installed the megaupload toolbar - which is apparently a spyware gateway.
1. Uninstalled the meagupload add-ins, chkdsk'd - some stuff got fixed- then the "Disk Error, Insert System Disk" came on.
2. Reinstalled WinXP Pro from scratch, still didn't fix.
3. Reformatted partition & reinstalled OS, still no dice.
4. Split partition into two : now they got D:, E: drive letters :-(
5. Tried reformatting & installing onto D:, no dice
6. Tried reformatting & installing onto E:, no dice
7. bootcfg /list indicated everything was ok, but tried fixmbr, then fixboot w/o success
8. Set up dual boot with linux (Fedora Core) on another partition, notwthings are interesting! Fedora comes up fine from another partition on the same drive. With Fedora, I can mount & see the contents of the NTFS partition (now E:) where I installed WinXP, but obviously, the bootup process has a problem. I tried booting WinXP from the dual boot, but that didn't work either - it just hung there trying to load WinXP after
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
chainloader +1

Any pointers, anyone - help mucho appreciated!

I'm not an IT guy at all. But I had this problem, and currently am experiencing the exact same problem, years ago and my very IT-savy ex-wife fixed it. I think she said that the boot files needed to be moved from the folder the os install was directing them to. I have 64-bit hardware, 3 internal HDs (1 SATA, 2 ATA), and have had no luck installing the drivers for the chipset, or MB. I've installed, and reinstalled, on every f'n drive on my system (fortunately I also have a laptop besides my desktop - the former I'm emailing from right now). I decided to join since I keep reading, and recieving vicarious sage advice from online and in person. NO ONE has been able to remedy this beside whatever my ex did in the past. I have a licensed-purchased version of MS XP Professional. MS wasn't able to help either. My ex is from Russian and is an IT professional. Never pontificates about PC problems. I just remember her saying, after many, many attempts at installing the latest drivers, that she moved boot files (or some sort) to another folder and then it worked. Not with her anymore and decided I would format and reinstall OS. No luck yet.