PC Meltdown

[Shaun]

My main PC has gone into meltdown, and I'm like a fish out of water trying to figure it out.

First error message during boot up said 'Boot System Error' press f1 to continue. I was able to log into windows after pressing f1, but now the error message (after rebooting) says disk boot failure.

I've looked in the bios and the Hard Drive is showing as there....I just can't boot into my operating system.

Tried a 'boot fix' with my windows disc using windows repair...still nothing.

Any gurus out there have any ideas?

HELP!

[Excalibur]

My main PC has gone into meltdown, and I'm like a fish out of water trying to figure it out.

First error message during boot up said 'Boot System Error' press f1 to continue. I was able to log into windows after pressing f1, but now the error message (after rebooting) says disk boot failure.

I've looked in the bios and the Hard Drive is showing as there....I just can't boot into my operating system.

Tried a 'boot fix' with my windows disc using windows repair...still nothing.

Any gurus out there have any ideas?

HELP!

As you all know I'm an absolute whizzkid with PC's, but I'll let my mate Callum answer this.

[CRAZY K]

Sorry to be negative but when things get to that stage its usually time to ring the Computer repair man--

Sounds like something major--

Unless anyone has any other tests you can do--?

CRAZY K

[Jiggles]

You either have a catastrophic hard disk failure, or your BIOS has
decided not to even look for a HDD to boot from. 'Boot disk failure'
means it didn't find a disk at all (on most BIOSs), as opposed to 'non
system disk', or various other errors, which mean that the disk was not
bootable. You can get there by screwing up the master/slave/CS jumpers
and cabling, but if it happens in a previously working system it isn't
good news.

Seeing as its showing in the BIOS. Is it still selected for
booting? Is it the first boot device in the list? Is the appropriate
EIDE channel enabled (not turned off in the BIOS).

If not, is it powered up, is the data cable still attached, is it going
round (you can usually hear that)?

It could (hopefully) be a cable / motherboard / etc. fault. It could
also (and more likely) be that the hard disk (electronics, spin motor,
whatever) has failed rather seriously.

I'd debug this by sticking the disk in another PC (as a slave) and
seeing if it was readable.

[Excalibur]

Sorry to be negative but when things get to that stage its usually time to ring the Computer repair man--

Sounds like something major--

Unless anyone has any other tests you can do--?

CRAZY K

Seriously, I'd disagree Crazy, I'd be surprised if it weren't a simple fix. But then again I know nothing.

[Daryll]

You can have a look http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic40225.html.
some good advice.

I hope it`s not a hard drive failure, but all is not lost.
If your BIOS can see the drive , it may be possible to get data back.
If I remember the last time this happened to me, I removed the defective drive , put another drive in, installed Win xp as per usual, then shut down, put the old drive in as a slave.
After reboot, you will boot into the drive you have just installed win on, with a bit of luck it will see the old drive, and you can copy across any data you need.
Hopefuly the techspot forum method will work .

cheers

Daryll

[funkymike]

I had a similer problem and all it was, was the bios battery, 3 quid from tescos soon sorted it out. If its not plugged into the mains (assuming its your gigging pc) the battery drains very quickly, around a year.

hope that helps

Mike

[Tony Scott]

Have you tried going into BIOS and doing a simple(quick) hard drive diagnostic check to see if it can find the HDD?

[One Vision]

My main PC has gone into meltdown, and I'm like a fish out of water trying to figure it out.

First error message during boot up said 'Boot System Error' press f1 to continue. I was able to log into windows after pressing f1, but now the error message (after rebooting) says disk boot failure.

I've looked in the bios and the Hard Drive is showing as there....I just can't boot into my operating system.

Tried a 'boot fix' with my windows disc using windows repair...still nothing.

Any gurus out there have any ideas?

HELP!

Hya Shaun, it does sound like your hard drive is playing up mate.
I assume your just getting either the blue screen or the system just keeps restarting.
A simple diagnostic test to verify this would be to unplug your c: drive and put another one in that has windows installed.

It could also be the ram or processor or both, are you getting a single beep from the PC speaker when you try to boot the system?

[Jiggles]

Hya Shaun, it does sound like your hard drive is playing up mate.
I assume your just getting either the blue screen or the system just keeps restarting.
A simple diagnostic test to verify this would be to unplug your c: drive and put another one in that has windows installed.

It could also be the ram or processor or both, are you getting a single beep from the PC speaker when you try to boot the system?

Its something to do with the hard drive. If it was a problem with the ram them it wouldn't give that error. It just wouldn't POST.