Can't boot without floppy or system CD

[Guest]

Have an NEC PowerMate ES desktop with an IBM HDD, have had it with no
problems for 3 yrs. When booted now, I get "Drive not ready. Insert boot
diskette in A:. Press any key when ready." It works fine when booted from my
system diskette. I tried using the Recovery Console ("bootcfg /rebuild" and
"fixmbr") but it still will only boot from the floppy or the XP CD. Anybody
seen this before, or have any idea on how to fix it?

 

[Mike Hall \(MS-MVP\)]

Zeebo

Your hard drive may be of the IBM 'DeathStar' variety, and most likely has
died..

 

[Yves Leclerc]

Have an NEC PowerMate ES desktop with an IBM HDD, have had it with no
problems for 3 yrs. When booted now, I get "Drive not ready. Insert boot
diskette in A:. Press any key when ready." It works fine when booted from my
system diskette. I tried using the Recovery Console ("bootcfg /rebuild" and
"fixmbr") but it still will only boot from the floppy or the XP CD. Anybody
seen this before, or have any idea on how to fix it?

I got this problem about three years ago. I needed to my the hard drive to a
different PC (as slave drive) and run a complete virus scan. It was a virus
in the boot sector which cause this for me.