Help - HDD won't boot

3

32andtwentyseven

Hi my Maxtor 200GB Sata hard disk won't boot my system.

I made no changes to my system, as far as I can remember, between the
time when it was working and when it failed.

I simply restarted it after installing something (some software, I
can't remember what).

When it starts I get the motherboard screen, and my maxtor screen, but
then instead of booting XP, it gives me a blank screen with something
alone the lines of "book disk failure. insert system disk and press
enter" at the top.

At the moment I am using a new installation of XP on a totally
different drive. I can access all the information from my maxtor drive
through windows explorer, but it still won't boot.

Help! :(
 
J

JAD

32andtwentyseven said:
Hi my Maxtor 200GB Sata hard disk won't boot my system.

I made no changes to my system, as far as I can remember, between the
time when it was working and when it failed.

I simply restarted it after installing something (some software, I
can't remember what).

When it starts I get the motherboard screen, and my maxtor screen, but
then instead of booting XP, it gives me a blank screen with something
alone the lines of "book disk failure. insert system disk and press
enter" at the top.

At the moment I am using a new installation of XP on a totally
different drive. I can access all the information from my maxtor drive
through windows explorer, but it still won't boot.

Help! :(

I have the exact same problem on my older rig. Event viewer (system) shows drive D with a
bad block. Further examination and the block is in the boot area of the drive. I can get
it to boot if I continuously hit enter at the error message, however sometimes XP wont see
all my drives. Getting ready to clean the boot drive and see if a format will fix it for
awhile.
 
D

Dennis Schmitz

32andtwentyseven said:
Hi my Maxtor 200GB Sata hard disk won't boot my system.

I made no changes to my system, as far as I can remember, between the
time when it was working and when it failed.

I simply restarted it after installing something (some software, I
can't remember what).

When it starts I get the motherboard screen, and my maxtor screen, but
then instead of booting XP, it gives me a blank screen with something
alone the lines of "book disk failure. insert system disk and press
enter" at the top.

At the moment I am using a new installation of XP on a totally
different drive. I can access all the information from my maxtor drive
through windows explorer, but it still won't boot.

Help! :(

Maybe I am misunderstanding your problem and I don't know if this will help,
but I had a similar problem a while back. Got the same error message as
yours. No changes made to the system just as your situation.

Turns out that the connector on one end or the other of the ribbon cable got
'sloppy' and wouldn't make proper connection. Got a new cable and problem
gone.

Good luck,
Dennis
 
F

Frank McCoy

Maybe I am misunderstanding your problem and I don't know if this will help,
but I had a similar problem a while back. Got the same error message as
yours. No changes made to the system just as your situation.

Turns out that the connector on one end or the other of the ribbon cable got
'sloppy' and wouldn't make proper connection. Got a new cable and problem
gone.
Good advice.
More problems caused by cables than most software.
 
P

peter

Try this
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/307654

specifically the following commands



fixboot writes a new startup sector on the system partition.
Fixmbr repairs the startup partition's master boot code. The variable
device is an optional name that specifies the device that requires a new
Master Boot Record. Omit this variable when the target is the startup
device.


peter
 
S

spodosaurus

JAD said:
I have the exact same problem on my older rig. Event viewer (system) shows drive D with a
bad block. Further examination and the block is in the boot area of the drive. I can get
it to boot if I continuously hit enter at the error message, however sometimes XP wont see
all my drives. Getting ready to clean the boot drive and see if a format will fix it for
awhile.

I've had windows xp report disc problems when the manufacturer's
diagnostic found nothing. Make sure the BIOS, its settings, and the
drivers are up to date (if XP keeps reverting the drive to PIO mode then
something is amiss, and a registry edit may be in order after you've
done the aforementioned updates).

Cheers,

Ari

--
spammage trappage: remove the underscores to reply
Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow transplant. Please
volunteer to be a marrow donor and literally save someone's life:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 
S

spodosaurus

Frank said:
Good advice.
More problems caused by cables than most software.

Had this happen to me recently with a sata connector that was just a
fraction loose. I thought I'd lost a drive in my server, but after
pressing in the cables it tested fine (I always check cables just in
case, but didn't notice the looseness at this time). A few days later
and the drive disappears again. This time I did notice the half
millimeter looseness (thanks to one of those LED flashlights, I *LOVE*
those things) and swapped the cable - problem solved and no file system
corruption!

Ari


--
spammage trappage: remove the underscores to reply
Many people around the world are waiting for a marrow transplant. Please
volunteer to be a marrow donor and literally save someone's life:
http://www.abmdr.org.au/
http://www.marrow.org/
 

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