Intermittent "Disk Boot Failure"

[Mark Barnes]

I'm using XP Pro on a Pentium 4 1.8GHz machine with two hard drives. At
least a couple of times a day, I'll hear two (2) beeps, and the machine will
suddenly stop responding. If I manually reboot immediately, the boot will
halt at "Searching for IDE drives," and I'll end up with a "DISK BOOT
FAILURE" message.

However, if I unplug the machine and wait a few minutes, I can reboot
normally. After a few hours, the cycle will repeat itself.

I've checked all my connections, and they appear to be sound. Could this
issue possibly be related to overheating?

Any opinions/suggestions on how to solve this problem would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Mark

 

[Len]

Just a thought... check your APM settings in CMOS. The BIOS may be shutting
down the hard drives without XP's knowledge. The two beeps may be from the
MB indicating it is putting the HDs to sleep!

FWIW,
Len

 

[Norm]

I would be curious if you can see any ide devices upon immediate reboot,
like your cdrom or burner? Do you have to unplug it? Sure does sound like
it's heat related and if I had to guess I would pick the power supply but
that's just a guess. What type of motherboard is it, maybe there is a
monitoring utility available like I have with my Asus board.