retry or insert boot media

[bob brown]

I have a customer who has a computer which they use mainly for
receiving FAXES using winfaxpro 10 and banging out an occasional letter.

every couple of days, when they come in to the office
the screen is black with the words "retry or insert boot media"
rebooting the computer puts everything back to normal again.
this has gone on over a month now. I have even reinstalled windows XP
professional for them. it only happens over night, never during the
day.

I have stripped any auto loading programs, put the power feature
on never shut down hard drive.

I can't find much on google other than people who mainly can't boot up at
all or the hard drive is not recognized .

Would this be a hardware i.e. motherboard or hard drive problem or a
winfax problem?? I am thinking a hard drive problem....

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I have a customer who has a computer which they use mainly for
receiving FAXES using winfaxpro 10 and banging out an occasional letter.

every couple of days, when they come in to the office
the screen is black with the words "retry or insert boot media"
rebooting the computer puts everything back to normal again.
this has gone on over a month now. I have even reinstalled windows XP
professional for them.

Was this a clean install, a repair install, or... ?

Repair installs use the same user registry, and consequently can't fix many
things.

it only happens over night, never during the
day.

Is this system plugged into an adequate UPS? Is there the possibility that
a night-time power event is causing a power interruption? Say, for
example, a cleaner tripping a breaker?

I have stripped any auto loading programs, put the power feature
on never shut down hard drive.

What's the date of manufacture printed on the hard disk label?

I can't find much on google other than people who mainly can't boot up at
all or the hard drive is not recognized .

Would this be a hardware i.e. motherboard or hard drive problem or a
winfax problem?? I am thinking a hard drive problem....

About the only way Winfax would be involved in this is as part of what's
triggering a crash that restarts the system.

The system event logs should tell you more details about this. And you
might want to turn off "restart on crash" to help catch the source of the
problem.

HTH
-pk

 

[philo]

I have a customer who has a computer which they use mainly for
receiving FAXES using winfaxpro 10 and banging out an occasional letter.

every couple of days, when they come in to the office
the screen is black with the words "retry or insert boot media"
rebooting the computer puts everything back to normal again.
this has gone on over a month now. I have even reinstalled windows XP
professional for them. it only happens over night, never during the
day.

I have stripped any auto loading programs, put the power feature
on never shut down hard drive.

I can't find much on google other than people who mainly can't boot up at
all or the hard drive is not recognized .

Would this be a hardware i.e. motherboard or hard drive problem or a
winfax problem?? I am thinking a hard drive problem....

Probably a dead cmos battery
and the bios settings were lost..

but if all you had to do was reboot the computer to get it going again...
I am amazed that the customer would take all the time to bring it into your
shop
just to do something that would take them two seconds to do