Disk Boot Failure

[Guest]

When I got home today the computer had shut down on its own. When I started
it the message says "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter".
There were no other disks in any drives.
I had a dual boot but when I use my Boot Magic disks it does not show that
any drives exist. It shows under Partition "*:" (not C or D) and under Type
"Unallocated".
Is there any diagnostic tools I can download to see if the hard drive has
failed and if so where can I find them? Any other suggestions would be
appreciated.

Thank you.

 

[WTC]

Usually the manufacturer of your hard drive will provide you with utilities
you need, check their website. For example, if it a maxtor, use PowerMax as
the diagnostic utility.

 

[Rodney Kelp]

A couple simple checks will determine what's wrong.
First boot to the BIOS and see if auto-detect is seeing the harddrive.
Should show head, cylinders, sectors, drive type etc.
If not, the drive power or communication cable is not connected or the BIOS
is fried or the harddrive electronics is fried.
Second if the BIOS sees the harddrive, reboot to a dos start up disk or to
linux expert init3. Then run FDISK and do a show partitions.
You should see a non-dos or ntfs or linux partition. If not then the
partition information is bad. Try to create a partition. If you can't then
the harddrive has crashed mechanically.

 

[Ron Martell]

When I got home today the computer had shut down on its own. When I started
it the message says "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter".
There were no other disks in any drives.
I had a dual boot but when I use my Boot Magic disks it does not show that
any drives exist. It shows under Partition "*:" (not C or D) and under Type
"Unallocated".
Is there any diagnostic tools I can download to see if the hard drive has
failed and if so where can I find them? Any other suggestions would be
appreciated.

Thank you.

Try MBRWORK from the free downloads section at http://www.bootitng.com

Good luck


Ron Martell Duncan B.C. Canada
--
Microsoft MVP
On-Line Help Computer Service
http://onlinehelp.bc.ca

"The reason computer chips are so small is computers don't eat much."