DISK BOOT FAILURE Please help!

[Me]

P3 -1 GHz
Windows 2000 Professional
SP 3 or 4
Maxtor 91024D4 (10 GB)
2 - NTFS partitions
Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X motherboard
First boot device in BIOS: Drive A:

My system has been working for years and now it does not want to boot. I
was hijacked about 2 months ago, but I used spybot search and destroy and
ad-aware and it seemed to be ok.

Today, my computer hung and then it gave me the blue screen of death. When
I rebooted, I got another blue screen. It said something about the
ntoskrnl.exe file and to try to reboot. I did not write down the rest of
the message. I rebooted again and got the following message:

Verifying dmi pool data...
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM Disk and PRESS ENTER.

I was able to move the hard drive to another Win2k pro system. The NTFS
partitions seem to be intact as I am able to browse through the folders.

Perhaps the Master Boot Record may be corrupted?

I do not have a current ERD (shame on me, I know).

Can anyone suggest how I may get this hard drive back up and bootable?
In addition to an ERD, what I can do to be able to quickly recover from such
a problem in the future?

 

[Pegasus \(MVP\)]

P3 -1 GHz
Windows 2000 Professional
SP 3 or 4
Maxtor 91024D4 (10 GB)
2 - NTFS partitions
Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X motherboard
First boot device in BIOS: Drive A:

My system has been working for years and now it does not want to boot. I
was hijacked about 2 months ago, but I used spybot search and destroy and
ad-aware and it seemed to be ok.

Today, my computer hung and then it gave me the blue screen of death. When
I rebooted, I got another blue screen. It said something about the
ntoskrnl.exe file and to try to reboot. I did not write down the rest of
the message. I rebooted again and got the following message:

Verifying dmi pool data...
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM Disk and PRESS ENTER.

I was able to move the hard drive to another Win2k pro system. The NTFS
partitions seem to be intact as I am able to browse through the folders.

Perhaps the Master Boot Record may be corrupted?

I do not have a current ERD (shame on me, I know).

Can anyone suggest how I may get this hard drive back up and bootable?
In addition to an ERD, what I can do to be able to quickly recover from such
a problem in the future?

You can probably fix the problem without an ERD:
- Boot the machine from your Win2000 CD.
- Select Repair when prompted, then Command Console.
- Enter these commands:
fixmbr
fixboot

You should now be able to boot normally.

I take it that you have good backups of your important data files.
If not then this would be an excellent time to think about your
backup strategy, and if it is a good idea to keep your irreplaceable
files all on the one vulnerable medium.

 

[Dave Patrick]

This article may help.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=KB;EN-US;Q287553

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft Certified Professional
Microsoft MVP [Windows]
http://www.microsoft.com/protect

:
| P3 -1 GHz
| Windows 2000 Professional
| SP 3 or 4
| Maxtor 91024D4 (10 GB)
| 2 - NTFS partitions
| Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X motherboard
| First boot device in BIOS: Drive A:
|
| My system has been working for years and now it does not want to boot. I
| was hijacked about 2 months ago, but I used spybot search and destroy and
| ad-aware and it seemed to be ok.
|
| Today, my computer hung and then it gave me the blue screen of death.
When
| I rebooted, I got another blue screen. It said something about the
| ntoskrnl.exe file and to try to reboot. I did not write down the rest of
| the message. I rebooted again and got the following message:
|
| Verifying dmi pool data...
| DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM Disk and PRESS ENTER.
|
| I was able to move the hard drive to another Win2k pro system. The NTFS
| partitions seem to be intact as I am able to browse through the folders.
|
| Perhaps the Master Boot Record may be corrupted?
|
| I do not have a current ERD (shame on me, I know).
|
| Can anyone suggest how I may get this hard drive back up and bootable?
| In addition to an ERD, what I can do to be able to quickly recover from
such
| a problem in the future?
|
|

 

[Me]

Pegasus,

Thanks a million for your timely suggestion. Unfortunately, my CD-ROM drive
died so I was not able to try it out yet. But the good news is that when I
placed the hard drive on my other system I ran Check Disk with the Fix It
and attempt recovery of bad sectors options.
I was then able to return the drive to its orginal system and boot it from
there. After about 5 boots, I got the blue screen of death again, but I had
scheduled the drive for another ChkDisk upon reboot.

I think that the drive is losing its "beautiful mind" so I am in the process
of cloning it. The hard drive was manufactured in 1999, so it may be
nearing its end of life.
When I get a CD-ROM installed, I will still try your suggestion because I am
curious to see what will happen.

By the way, I do keep backups of all of the data on my system. This one was
no exception.

Thanks again!

G