disk boot failure

[Guest]

WHen i boot up it states " DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT
SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENETR" the only problem is that i
have had a recent problem with my floppy disk and it
doesnt work and i do not have the floppy disk. I have
windows 2000 pro and i just bought a new graphics card.
Please help me!

 

[Dave Patrick]

That's a typical error message on a FAT volume formatted by MS-DOS; if that
helps you.

 

[Wolf Kirchmeir]

That's a typical error message on a FAT volume formatted by MS-DOS; if that
helps you.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

I doubt it will help the OP, who wants to know how to boot a system that
refuses to boot.

And that stupid error message shouldn't happen. The fact that it does
indicates that W2000 is faulty. (Another dumb little glitch making an
otherwise pretty good product almost unusable. Bah!) Presumably FAT volumes
formatted by MSDOS and W2K have different partition types assigned -- I can't
think of any other reason why W2k would balk at reading an MSDOS created FAT
volume. If you know exactly what the problem is, I'd be very grateful for the
information.

I note you are a Microsoft MVP, so you should know these things, right?

So: do you know a fix or work around? Does XP suffer from this silly flaw?

TIA

 

[Dave Patrick]

Try booting the recovery console and from a command prompt issue the
command;
fixboot

To start the Recovery Console, start the computer from the Windows 2000
Setup CD or the Windows 2000 Setup floppy disks. If you do not have Setup
floppy disks and your computer cannot start from the Windows 2000 Setup CD,
use another Windows 2000-based computer to create the Setup floppy disks.
Press ENTER at the "Setup Notification" screen. Press R to repair a Windows
2000 installation, and then press C to use the Recovery Console. The
Recovery Console then prompts you for the administrator password. If you do
not have the correct password, Recovery Console does not allow access to the
computer. If an incorrect password is entered three times, the Recovery
Console quits and restarts the computer. Once the password has been
validated, you have full access to the Recovery Console, but limited access
to the hard disk. You can only access the following folders on your
computer: %systemroot% and %windir%

Or try creating a boot disk. For the floppy to successfully boot Windows
2000 the disk must contain the "NT" boot sector. Format a diskette (on an NT
machine, not a DOS/Win9x, so the NT boot sector gets written to the floppy),
and copy ntldr, ntdetect.com, and boot.ini to it; and possibly ntbootdd.sys.
Edit the boot.ini to give it a correct ARC path for the machine you wish to
boot.

 

[Dave Patrick]

AFAIK the Windows 2000 boot sector doesn't contain this message. More likely
is the boot sector was overwritten and or possibly a boot sector virus.

 

[Wolf Kirchmeir]

AFAIK the Windows 2000 boot sector doesn't contain this message. More likely
is the boot sector was overwritten and or possibly a boot sector virus.

--
Regards,

Dave Patrick ....Please no email replies - reply in newsgroup.
Microsoft MVP [Windows NT/2000 Operating Systems]

That makes sense. Thanks.

 

[Wolf Kirchmeir]

Try booting the recovery console and from a command prompt issue the
command;
fixboot

....snip...

Thanks, Dave.

 

[Dave Patrick]

You're welcome.