Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests computer question hard

Well i had knopix installed on my computer and also windows xp. After installing knopix the computer woulnt dual boot so i installed lilo and changed the lilo config but it woulnt take that comfiguration. So i gave up on knopix and decided to just format the hard drive and run just w2k and xp. After formating and doint the xp instalation, i restarted the computer and during boot sequence it tells me taht Disk BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. Ive tried changing harddrives and operating systems and still nothing. Most of the time the bios sees the hard drive but sometimes it doesnt. any ideas guys?

Which one did you install first?

The best thing to do is FDISK in a dos prompt. Delete all partitions. Then boot from a Win98 or W2K floppy and at the c:\ prompt type c:\format c:/s so it will format it as a system disk and make it bootable.

always install operating systems oldest to newest, with linux being last. That tends to give the best system stability i found. Also, are you sure that all your hard drives are in working order? I would take a known working hard drive hook it up and see if it gets to boot then trun it off. Also make sure there are no disk any any drives, and make sure all your IDEs are securly attached. I would unplug the connectors from both ends and replug them in.


Good luck

all my harddrives are in working order and all ide cables are connected properly. Windows xp was installed first and knopix was done months later.

So what exactly is happening now... I didn't get it from your first post.

What I read was that you installed all that, then went back and tried installing XP over it all, and after that, the computer won't detect the hard drive all the time?

It sounds like either the HD is fried or there is some conflicting other device on the same IDE channel.

Sometimes different brand HDs don't like to work together, even if the jumpers are set right. I've got 1 Seagate (80GB) and 1 Western Digital (also 80GB)... I can't put them both on the same channel w/o the computer not detecting both of them or displaying weird characters/spaces where it would normally tell the drive. Take one out and they work fine.

well ive changed different calbes and all of the harddrives work with each other. Actually right now im only runing one drive while i do the install. Usually i run 7 but the always work with each other. IDE chanel works because the bios detects the drive most of the time.

If it's only seeing the HDD in the BIOS 'most of the time' it's either your HDD, cable (check it's seated correctly and not broken) or your motherboard.

Boot to a floppy and see if you can access the HDD. If you can, then write a new MBR to it. If you can't access it, test your HDD in another system, and teset another HDD in your system. If your HDD works in another system, and another HDD doesn't in yours, replace the cable. If it still doesn't work, try resetting your BIOS/flashing it.

FDISK /MBR [enter]