Windows XP SP3-Disk Boot Failure

[rpiz]

I attempted to boot up windows this afternoon and got the following: "Disk Boot Failure, insert sytem disk

and Press Enter". Given I have no experience with this part of the windows operating system I will need

the capable assistance of those here on the forum. Please help me get back up and running with my

Windows XP. Thanks.

[zlim]

First make sure there is no floppy disk in the drive if you have one and be sure no USB stick or USB external hard drives are plugged in.

 

Here are reasons why, if neither the above is true, you would get that message:

(1) Incorrect BIOS settings

(2) Corrupted operating system (Windows)

(3) Electrical or Mechanical failure of hard disk drive

 

For reason 1, press the proper key to get into the BIOS (you will see what key this is because at bootup, it says press <key> to enter setup). Make sure that your hard drive is the first boot device and check to be sure that the BIOS sees the hard drive.

 

Post back if you still have the problem after you have done this.

[rpiz]

zlim,

 

Hi! The floppy drive is empty, and no USB sticks are inserted, nor USB external hard drives attached.

The BIOS is setup properly, and has worked fine for months without an issue. At this juncture I am

at whits end in trying to figure what to try next? I have my fingers crossed hoping that something can

be done and that the worst isn't close at hand.

[zlim]

Next there are two things to try: replace the ribbon cable between the hard drive and the motherboard and boot up and if you have another computer to test, attach the hard drive through the USB port to see if it is working.

 

If neither of these work, you may have to use a CD to repair the MBR.

Hopefully, someone can recommend how to do this. I've never done it. When my computers act up, I restore an image made with Acronis True Image.

Edited September 5, 2012 by zlim

[frapper]

If neither of these work, you may have to use a CD to repair the MBR.

Hopefully, someone can recommend how to do this. I've never done it. When my computers act up, I restore an image made with Acronis True Image.

 

With True Image you can check the option to restore the MBR. That is, if you have a good Acronis image.

[crp]

Before changing the cables, try to take the harddrive out the chasis but keep connected to the MB. Power up (actually if you have a floppy put it in) and try to determine if the harddrive is drawing power. Also listen for pings like a ping pong ball dropping. If you hear a sound like that, turn off ASAP and look up harddrive restoration people in your area.

[amenditman]

PartedMagic Live CD/USB has an excellent MBR repair tool for Windows systems. Supports everything up to Windows 7 currently.

If your hard drive passes the test post back and I'll give exact directions needed.

[rpiz]

amenditman,

 

I downloaded and burned to cd PMagic_2012_07_08_i486. With that said please provide

appropriate direction as to how to proceed to recover my Windows operating system.

Thanks so much.

[rpiz]

As a followup I decided to try once more to fire up Windows and believe it or not, it started

up as it should without the error message. This is crazy, eery, and defies explanation. Now at

this point I need help in plotting a course of action prior to this happening again. I secured a

copy of Acronis True Image, but I have never used it in the past. What should be the steps

that I can take to allow a restore of my system if this does happen again?? This has been a heart

pounder so far the past couples of days.

[amenditman]

If the problem is a corrupted MBR, there is a simple tool in PartedMagic to fix this. The nice thing is, if that is not the problem this will not make it any worse.

 

Boot the PM Live CD. Choose the default (number one on the bootloader options screen). If this fails then choose the option listed with VESA in the name, usually around number 4 on the list. It will take a while to load from CD.

 

Once it is running you will have a simple desktop with icons, a conky monitor on the right, and a panel across the bottom.

Open the terminal by clicking the black icon that looks like a monitor on the panel across the bottom.

 

Once in the terminal, type

ms-sys

You will get a bunch of output that is explaining the options available for this program.

You mentioned you are running Windows XP, so scrolling down you see the option for XP is -m.

 

Type in

ms-sys -m

and that will write a new Windows XP MBR to your disk. There may be some output telling you what it is doing and then telling you it is finished. After it is done, remove the CD from the drive and reboot. Let us know what happens.

 

P.S. Ian feel free to edit this and add it to your Clonezilla Tutorial.

Edited September 5, 2012 by amenditman

[amenditman]

As a followup I decided to try once more to fire up Windows and believe it or not, it started

up as it should without the error message. This is crazy, eery, and defies explanation. Now at

this point I need help in plotting a course of action prior to this happening again. I secured a

copy of Acronis True Image, but I have never used it in the past. What should be the steps

that I can take to allow a restore of my system if this does happen again?? This has been a heart

pounder so far the past couples of days.

At this point, if you do make an image of your HDD, you should mark it as iffy. You have something weird going on and this is not an ideal situation in which to make an image you will depend on in the case of a disaster.

That being said, you should definitely make an image prior to doing any serious digging around in your OS. A poor image is better than no image at all.

Edited September 5, 2012 by amenditman

[Tushman]

As a followup I decided to try once more to fire up Windows and believe it or not, it started

up as it should without the error message. This is crazy, eery, and defies explanation. Now at

this point I need help in plotting a course of action prior to this happening again. I secured a

copy of Acronis True Image, but I have never used it in the past. What should be the steps

that I can take to allow a restore of my system if this does happen again?? This has been a heart

pounder so far the past couples of days.

 

Sounds like to me a hard drive that is failing. I would run a check disk first. At the run command line, type the following with no quotes.

 

"chkdsk /r"

 

Notice there is a space before the slash. Windows will tell you that it needs to run it at the next system boot up and ask for permission. Type 'Y' for yes.

 

As for using Acronis True Image, there is nothing to sweat. It is extremely user friendly and easy to figure out. Documentation and user manuals can be found below. It will depend on the version you have.

 

http://www.acronis.com/support/documentation/

Edited September 6, 2012 by Tushman

[rpiz]

Tushman,

 

I followed your suggestion, and entered 'chkdsk /r' at run; then on reboot I

received a message "volume is clean". I guess my next question would be,

what do I make of this now? Can you please provide additional suggestions or

is there another course of action? Thanks.

[ross549]

I would find a way to run system file checker. I think this has to be run from the install CD.

 

If nothing else shows up, I would look at running Spin Rite on the drive, if you know someone who has a copy. That will very thoroughly check the physical surface of the drive so you can be sure it is not failing.

 

Adam

[Tushman]

I would find a way to run system file checker. I think this has to be run from the install CD.

 

If nothing else shows up, I would look at running Spin Rite on the drive, if you know someone who has a copy. That will very thoroughly check the physical surface of the drive so you can be sure it is not failing.

 

Adam

 

Just to add to what Adams has suggested here, Spin Rite (although a very good utility to have) is not free. The full version is $89 if you do not own a previous version of Spin Rite. As an alternative to spending money, there are some additional ways to check the HDD. Both Western Digital & Seagate offer hard drive diagnostic tools that you can download from their website at no cost. The last time I used Western Digital's diagnostic utility (called Data Lifeguard), there was an option to run a quick scan and a full (more thorough) scan. I would definitely choose the latter. There are two versions of the Data Lifeguard, make sure you choose the correct version for your HDD (SATA or EIDE).

 

And if you want to run the system file checker in Win XP, yes you will need the original XP installation disc. If you have a restore disc provided by an OEM like Dell, it will not work. I shoudl know, I've tried it before - you'll need the original installation XP disc.

 

"sfc /scannow"

 

Again - do not type the quotes.

[rpiz]

Tushman/Adam,

 

First, Spin Rite 5 indicates it is to be used on FAT partition and I have NTFS partitions. I am not aware

if this has changed in a more recent version of Spin Rite???

 

Second, I attempted to run "sfc /scannow" without the quotes and using Windows XP SP3 slipstreamed

CD but no joy. Evidentially, running this command didn't like something on the above mentioned cd??

 

At this point I'll track down Western Digital's 'Data Lifeguard' and give it a go. Then I will report back with

the results, hopefully only good results?

[ross549]

Hmmm... I am surprised that SpinRite even cares about the filesystem on the disk, since it is thoroughly checking the surface of the disk.

 

However, other sites point to Spin Rite 5 not working on NTFS, so I would not bother trying.

 

Adam

[Guest LilBambi]

Isn't it SpinRite 6 that handles the newer drives?

 

SpinRite 6 is what I have.

[ross549]

Yeah. I think Spinrite 6 is filesystem agnostic.

 

Adam

[Guest LilBambi]

Yep! It's great!

 

By operating directly upon magnetic storage media at a level below any installed operating system, this major milestone release of SpinRite is able to operate on all Windows XP NTFS formats, all DOS FAT, all Linux file systems, Novell, Macintosh (if temporarily moved into a PC) or anything else — it can even be used to repair and recover the hard drive from an ailing TiVo!

[rpiz]

OK! I ran HD TunePro on this drive and there were no damaged blocks. I don't

know how this software stacks up against other similar pieces of software in regard

to the issue I initially posted? Currently I am backing up my data in order to have

a fresh copy preparatory to taking any additional action. But in the meantime

suggestions on a course of action are still welcome. Also, in another tab of HD

TunePro it indicated that everything was OK under the listing of the 'Health' of each

aspect of the drive.

[ross549]

there is another way to check the integrity of a drive. However, it is destructive, and will wipe the data. It also requires slightly more than a passing familiarity of linux.

 

Adam

[rpiz]

After a day or so I am back to indicate that the issue has not resurfaced. Further, I ran

HD Sentinel Pro and it showed that the drive is perfect and the 'performance' and 'health'

are 100%. This is definitely strange and without explanation. At this juncture I don't know

where to turn, and can only hope that in my efforts to run antivirus, anti-malware, etc, along

with the other pieces of software, that the nemisis is gone?

[Guest LilBambi]

Sounds like it might have just been a corruption error, unrelated to bad hard drive stuff.

 

 

Could be an intermittent hard drive or maybe an intermittent electronics board issue on the hard drive, or an intermittent issue with the cable.

 

You have already replaced the cable if I remember correctly so that could already have been taken care of.

 

It could come back if it is an intermittent electronic issue on the board on that hard drive.

 

If it were me, I would keep a separate copy on another drive of the information from that drive for a few months just to be sure. Till that drive proves it's reliability.

[rpiz]

Well I am back! I wanted to report on the progress, hopefully not pre-mature, that I have

accomplished since my last post. Believe it or not, the issue happened to be the power supply.

I noticed peculiar sounds and behavior in both drives, which encouraged me to test the power

supply. I have a small gadget that is designed to check the power supply, and sure enough it

indicated that it was failing or at best not at 100%. I replaced the power supply and after waiting

days to verify the result, I can state that the intermittent problem has not reappeared. Thank goodness!

Aren't computers great when they are functioning properly???

[Guest LilBambi]

Good deal. P/S can be a real pain. Glad you tested it. Didn't realize you were having issues and noises from both drives. Did you mention that earlier?

 

Excellent! Glad you figured it out! Still might want to make sure you keep a backup just the same for a while.

 

Yes, when they function properly computers are great! When it's intermittent problems like that (almost like a ghost in the machine, can be downright frustrating). But when you figure it out. What a relief!

[Tushman]

Glad to hear you figured out the problem. I tend to replace my power supply every 4-5 years. Not all power supplies are equal. A good quality PSU should last you atleast 5 years or more.