Boot Disk Failure

[Guest]

Hi, hope you can help.

I am receving the Boot Disk Failure message on booting up my XP machine, as
prompted I have inserted the system disk and pressed enter.

This seems to begin loaing files from the CD to the HDD but comes to a
abrupt halt with a Stop error (0X0000007E) followed by pci.sys and some hex
numbers

I have checked all cards and connections are firmly n place and still have
no luck, can anyone offer any additional advice on how I can get round this
problem, for informagtion, the PC does not have a floppy drive so I will have
to run any utilities etc from a CD.

Hope you can help
Pete

 

[philo]

Hi, hope you can help.

I am receving the Boot Disk Failure message on booting up my XP machine, as
prompted I have inserted the system disk and pressed enter.

This seems to begin loaing files from the CD to the HDD but comes to a
abrupt halt with a Stop error (0X0000007E) followed by pci.sys and some hex
numbers

I have checked all cards and connections are firmly n place and still have
no luck, can anyone offer any additional advice on how I can get round this
problem, for informagtion, the PC does not have a floppy drive so I will have
to run any utilities etc from a CD.

Hope you can help
Pete

I'd run a RAM test

you can make a bootable cd on another computer:

http://oca.microsoft.com/en/windiag.asp

 

[Ron Martell]

Hi, hope you can help.

I am receving the Boot Disk Failure message on booting up my XP machine, as
prompted I have inserted the system disk and pressed enter.

This seems to begin loaing files from the CD to the HDD but comes to a
abrupt halt with a Stop error (0X0000007E) followed by pci.sys and some hex
numbers

Those hex numbers could be quite important. Can you provide them, in
the same sequence as they are listed?

The error message names PCI.SYS so that is probably the file (device
driver) that is producing the error.

What sort of a "system disk" did you insert? Was it a Windows XP
Installation CD, a Windows XP System Recovery disk provided by the
manufacturer of your computer, or something else?

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Ron Martell]

Guys thanks for your advice, the full error details are as follows

*** STOP: 0x0000007E (0XC0000005,0XF853C0BF,0XF8988208,0XF8987F08)
*** pci.sys - Address F853C0BF base at F8535000, DateStamp 3b7d855c

Hope that means something to you

The system disk I have used is as suggested a Recovery CD as supplied by the
PC supplier

Those System Recovery CDs can be very bad news, especially if you have
any important information on the hard drive. The specifics of these
CDs vary from manufacturer to manufacturer but generally what they do
is a complete "nuke and pave" of the hard drive - everything is
deleted and a fresh new copy of Windows is installed exactly as it was
when the computer left the factory. Everything added since -
installed apps, emails, documents and other data files, etc. - is
totally and permanently erased.

At this point I have two suggestions for you:

1. Determine the brand name of the hard drive in your computer, go to
the manufacturer's web site, download their free diagnostic testing
utility and run that to check out the drive for possible hardware
related problems. If the factory utility says there are problems with
the drive then it is probably toasted and you need to obtain a new
hard drive.

2. Download Bart's PE Builder from http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/
and create a bootable CD with that. Boot the problem computer with
this CD and see if you can access the hard drive this way. If you
can then open a Command Prompt window and enter the following command:

CHKDSK C: /R

That may restore the drive to a bootable condition.


Post the results back here if you need additional advice or
assistance.

Good luck

Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP (1997 - 2006)
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca
Syberfix Remote Computer Repair

"Anyone who thinks that they are too small to make a difference
has never been in bed with a mosquito."

 

[Guest]

Ron,

Thanks for the continued support, I tried both options

Option1 - I ran the hard drives diagnostics 'Quick Test' which should take
aproximately 5 minutes. Left it running for 45 and then aborted it as I guess
it wasn't going to return any results

Option2 BartPE - Got this loaded and ran chkdsk this returned a result of
'Cannot open volume for direct access'

Finally I took the PC to a friend to swap out drives and was unable to boot
up using my drive, I then tried to utilise it as a slave but was unable to
see it in explorer.

I guess that seems quite conclusive really ... the disk is well and truly
trashed.

Thanks for all your help.
Pete