disk boot failure

[madhur713]

Hey guys,
I have a problem and the message is **disk boot failure**...
tried to remove the flea power and tried to reseat the HDD and tried various option ie.., safemode,Last known good configuration...also restored the BIOS to default and still it did not work.. Now what can I try can anyone tell is the HDD gone bad or is it something withshould I have to purchase a new HDD I live in india so can anyine help me with it????

 

[Waynos_Face]

Hi, and welcome to PCR, hope we can help.

I take it that you get this when you turn the PC on?

It doesn't mean that the HDD is dead, although it could be, just that it can't find anything to boot from.

Are you on XP or Vista??

 

[madhur713]

it is an Xp MCE and I get that message as I turn on the computer and sometimes it goes to XP logo screen and after sometime it will give same message

 

[Waynos_Face]

Hi, do the have the XP CD that it shipped with?

If so stick it in and try a repair from the CD, remember to set it to boot from CD in the BIOS.

Also if in the BIOS you should be able to enable S.M.A.R.T HDD, this will tell if you the HDD is knackered or not.

 

[madhur713]

it is enabled and it did not give any message for the HDD.. and for repair i lost the cd so i think i have to take a new disc

 

[Waynos_Face]

Okay without the XP Disc options are kinda limited,

You can try taking the HDD out putting it back in and loading the settings in BIOS to default.

Apart from that there is not alot i can recommend, will either have to wait for some of the more knowledgable guys to come on.

Will keep looking though.

 

[Waynos_Face]

Was just thinking are you using SATA or IDE HDD?

And if using IDE do you have more than 1 HDD on the cable?

 

[madhur713]

it is SATA and the RAM is 1 gb....tried to connect the HDD in diff. ports!!!!

 

[madhur713]

Also I am with out computer from 2 days
and it is making me mad and is it better to get new HDD or should I wait for other solutions?

 

[psd99]

Hello I think you need a recovery CD, like an XP recovery CD. Not all XP cds have a recovery console.

Now what I am about to tell could make the contents of your drive inaccessible. However it may well work out well. It is up to you

Put the CD In the drive and make sure your computer boots from it. GO into your bios and make the first boot device the CD ROM.

Then once you are in you'll need to go into the recovery console by pressing R.

Once you are in it will as you which installation? Type in 0 for default
then
it'll ask for a password if you got one enter it if not leave it blank.

Now hopefully you will see c:/windows

in there type two commands separately.

1. fixmbr

2. fixboot

do them both and then take out the CD and restart the computer then tell me what happens.

 

[madhur713]

I have an pwd for my account does it matter if i do fixboot or fixmbr??
or is the issue with the hdd!!!

 

[psd99]

well on impulse I would say your hard drive is fine I would say it is what is written on the first sector of the drive more OS related.

Try fixmbr first
then restart
if that isn't good

then try fixboot

 

[madhur713]

botht he commands did not work and i tried to format the hdd and it worked that is good that my computer is back up but only thing i am unhappy is that i lost all my data

 

[Kapisonas]

well, formating wasn't nessesary. is some good utility named Hirens boot CD
it's free, and you can just google for it. just download it and burn to disk for the future.
at first with problem like that you should run from hirens and choose file managers/wolkov comander
run it with ntfs support ant let it load check disk, in most cases that helps.
and if not there is another utility named MHDD, it's in hard drive tools section.
performing test with remapping could help in some cases too.