Need Help - hard drive won't boot up

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jethro
  • Start date Start date
J

Jethro

I installed Vista from DVD and it seemed to work fine.
But I have found out that the only way my system will boot up is if
I have the Vista installation disk in the drive, which of course it
normally would not be.

When the disk is not in the drive, I get an immediate message saying
Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter.

What am I missing?

Thanks

Jethro
 
Obviously your passing the bios post test.... sounds like the MBR sector
has been corrupted and is unable to load into ram as you say it had been
working fine, the first step is to ensure the hard drive is being
detected in bios set up..

..if so then it sounds like the mbr boot sector is corrupted which can
be due to many things. Vista does not have a recovery console so looks
like a possible re-image or a re-install see-:

'John Barnett's Windows Vista Support: Windows Vista Repair Options'
(http://vistasupport.mvps.org/windows_vista_repair_options.htm)

Davy
Click to expand...

Thanks for response Davy.

No - I didn't mean to say it had been working fine - actually I had
left the installation disk in the drive all day - and now a day later
I remembered that I had done that, and so removed the disk. It was
then that I could no longer boot up. I don't think I ever booted up
without the disk in the drive quite by accident.

I just made a wild guess that I needed the disk in the drive, and
voila I booted up! I guess it is picking up what it needs for the
boot from the disk.

So I guess the mbr may be the culprit - I hope I don't have to
re-install again. What a pain.

Jethro
 
Make sure you go to device manager when you boot of off the DVD and
check that there are no question marks by your HD controller. Maybe it
didnt have the driver for it and Vista cant recognize it.


12
 
Jethro said:
I installed Vista from DVD and it seemed to work fine.
But I have found out that the only way my system will boot up is if
I have the Vista installation disk in the drive, which of course it
normally would not be.

When the disk is not in the drive, I get an immediate message saying
Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter.

What am I missing?

Thanks

Jethro
Click to expand...

Check your bios making sure it is set to boot from the proper HDD, not
the DVD.
If that's not the problem insert the Vista DVD, boot from it and select
startup repair.
Frank
 
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