Boot failure

[Alan T]

I got my SATA Maxtor 250GB dual boot with Win2K at the moment.
Recently I got boot failure problem:
Just inside the BIOS, even before the option menu, it said something like
Non system disk please insert system disk...

I reboot it again, press F8 to select the first book disk, then it went to
the OS selection menu and boot into XP. However, its very slow and
somethimes it hung, in some occassions when I using LavaSoft AdWare scanning
my computer it was hung. I found that my partition is fragmented quite
seriously, is that make my computer so slow and even hang?

In addition, is there a way to repair/inspect my boot sector?

 

[Malke]

I got my SATA Maxtor 250GB dual boot with Win2K at the moment.
Recently I got boot failure problem:
Just inside the BIOS, even before the option menu, it said something like
Non system disk please insert system disk...

I reboot it again, press F8 to select the first book disk, then it went to
the OS selection menu and boot into XP. However, its very slow and
somethimes it hung, in some occassions when I using LavaSoft AdWare scanning
my computer it was hung. I found that my partition is fragmented quite
seriously, is that make my computer so slow and even hang?

In addition, is there a way to repair/inspect my boot sector?

1. Do you have a floppy or cd in the floppy or cd drive? If yes, remove it.

2. If no, download Maxtor's hard drive diagnostic utility from their
website. You will create a bootable cd or floppy with the file you
download. Since you are having difficulties with your computer, you'll
probably need to get the file and create the utility on a different
computer. Boot the troubled machine with the media you created and do a
thorough test of your hard drive. If it fails any physical tests,
replace it.

Malke

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I got my SATA Maxtor 250GB dual boot with Win2K at the moment.
Recently I got boot failure problem:
Just inside the BIOS, even before the option menu, it said something like
Non system disk please insert system disk..

Is there a floppy disk present? Take it out. Otherwise, there are quite
possibly some hard disk issues.
..

I reboot it again, press F8 to select the first book disk, then it went to
the OS selection menu and boot into XP. However, its very slow and
somethimes it hung, in some occassions when I using LavaSoft AdWare
scanning
my computer it was hung. I found that my partition is fragmented quite
seriously, is that make my computer so slow and even hang?

The drive failing will certainly do this.

In addition, is there a way to repair/inspect my boot sector?

Yes, there are.

But the first question should be about how recent your data backup is and
how valuable your data is. If it isn't recent and the data is valuable,
and if you have access to another system, take the disk out, attach the
drive to it and copy the data off.

Then you can safely think about playing around with fixing the drive, or you
can get another one. IIRC I paid about CDN$75 for a 250-gig SATA drive this
week. How much is your time worth?

HTH
-pk

 

[Alan T]

Hi,

My machine has 3 SATA harddisk, my second SATA has Vista installed, can I
bootup with my Vista and then backup my Maxtor harddisk (include the OS)
into my 3rd harddisk?
If yes, then is that I need to buy 4th harddisk and copy back to my 4th
harddisk and use this 4th harddisk to boot up my machine?

 

[Alan T]

Sorry, I did not mention I have dual boot with Win2K, that is my 1st
harddisk has partitions C and D.
Can I still copy my harddisk along with the OSes?