HELP: Cannot start windows without CD

[srjrol]

Whenver I try to start windows on a system I just finished building I get a message that says, "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." I have found a way around this by inserting the windows disk and restarting and it boots up fine, what could be causing this problem?

 

[lederhosen]

a) make sure there is not a floppy if you even have a floppy drive
b) go into bios and check to make sure it is recognizing your hdd

 

[CraigRT]

hard drive not setup as a bootable device in the BIOS?

 

[srjrol]

There is no floppy drive, and all the hd's show up once I get into windows, I am guessing that also means that they are setup as bootable. One odd thing I noticed is that when I get into windows mt hd that has windows installed on it is the E: drive while the C: is just one I use to store data. Could that be the source of my problems? If so how would I go about fixing that?

 

[lederhosen]

No I do not believe that would be affecting things. So when you put the windows disk in you boot into safe mode, or what?

 

[srjrol]

No thats the odd thing. When I put the cd in it comes up with the press any key to boot from cd... I let it continue and dont press anything and it starts up as if nothing is wrong. Loads windows fine and i am good to go from that point.

 

[Cook1]

Get into the BIOS and set your boot order up differently. I have noticed that on older PC"s I have to...HAVE to put the Hard drive first in the boot order.

 

[CraigRT]

Originally posted by: Cook1
Get into the BIOS and set your boot order up differently. I have noticed that on older PC"s I have to...HAVE to put the Hard drive first in the boot order.

Yes, I still think it's a BIOS issue.
it can be detected no problem, but if it's not setup as a bootable device, Windows will not load.

 

[srjrol]

Ill try that but this isnt an older pc by any means.

 

[Cook1]

Well, just take a gander in the BIOS, the Disk Boot Failure message you are getting is after post but before Windows loads up, so it's not a Windows issue.

Check your BIOS settings and play around with the boot order and such, and then I'm pretty sure the issue will be resolved.

 

[srjrol]

Originally posted by: Cook1
Well, just take a gander in the BIOS, the Disk Boot Failure message you are getting is after post but before Windows loads up, so it's not a Windows issue.

Check your BIOS settings and play around with the boot order and such, and then I'm pretty sure the issue will be resolved.

I tried changing the settings in BIOS and no combination seemed to work. I also tried using the menu to select the drive I wanted to startup and that didnt seem to work either.

How is it not a windows issue if when I insert the windows cd it boots fine?

 

[cryptonomicon]

windows installed on it is the E: drive while the C: is just one I use to store data. Could that be the source of my problems?

erm, does anyone know if it matter what partition you put your OS's on?

if the bios detects more than one on a hard drive, wouldn't it give you that 'select boot device/operating system' menu?

you not having your OS on C:\ scares me... so many programs and executables look for c:\, i don't see how you could use an OS without c.

 

[Andres3605]

unplug the storage and try booting with just the e: drive, check the jumpers and set the windows one as a master and the storage as slave.

 

[srjrol]

Originally posted by: cryptonomicon

windows installed on it is the E: drive while the C: is just one I use to store data. Could that be the source of my problems?

erm, does anyone know if it matter what partition you put your OS's on?

if the bios detects more than one on a hard drive, wouldn't it give you that 'select boot device/operating system' menu?

you not having your OS on C:\ scares me... so many programs and executables look for c:\, i don't see how you could use an OS without c.

I only have 1 hard drive with the os installed on it and I check in the computer management utility and it is setup as the boot drive, but for some reason its labeled as E:

I am installing SP2 to see if that fixes anything.

 

[srjrol]

Originally posted by: Andres3605
unplug the storage and try booting with just the e: drive, check the jumpers and set the windows one as a master and the storage as slave.

I have 1 master IDE HD and the rest are SATA drives, threfore I dont think the master/slave rules apply.

 

[Coherence]

Boot from CD and check your HD for the basic boot files (ntldr, boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntoskrnl.exe, etc.). If one of those files is missing, you'll often get that message.

Also, if you are running the OS on a partition other than C:, boot.ini may be pointing to the wrong partition, so open the boot.ini file and make sure all the entries are correct.

If any of the boot files are missing, you should be able to enter the Recovery Console to restore them.

 

[srjrol]

Originally posted by: Coherence
Boot from CD and check your HD for the basic boot files (ntldr, boot.ini, ntdetect.com, ntoskrnl.exe, etc.). If one of those files is missing, you'll often get that message.

Also, if you are running the OS on a partition other than C:, boot.ini may be pointing to the wrong partition, so open the boot.ini file and make sure all the entries are correct.

If any of the boot files are missing, you should be able to enter the Recovery Console to restore them.

I didnt notice any files missing, so I booted into the windwos cd and when looking at the existing partions I noticed some erros, which are as follows:

The drive letters are incorrect. For the E: Drive which has windows and all pr programs installed on it is labeled as the F: Drive. The drive labeled as E: shows that its empty. Is there a way I can just change these drive letters? I tried doing it in the computer management utility and it wouldnt let me change the C: or E: drives because they are the system and boot drives. I am at a loss of what to do next...

One other thing that might help make sense of this is that at first I was trying to setup a RAID 0 Volume and had problems with it so I then decided to just install windows onto a single drive. Although I did destroy the array..could this be the source of the problems?

 

[Nocturnal]

Have you checked your BIOS settings to see what it is set to boot first off of? I had this happen to me and lo and behold the order of my hard drives had my storage drive first and my OS drive second thus the system was looking through the storage drive for the ntldr information to get Windows going.

 

[srjrol]

Originally posted by: Nocturnal
Have you checked your BIOS settings to see what it is set to boot first off of? I had this happen to me and lo and behold the order of my hard drives had my storage drive first and my OS drive second thus the system was looking through the storage drive for the ntldr information to get Windows going.

Yah I checked that and just double checked it, it is setup to start the drive with windows on it first. Any ideas on the problem with the drive letters being the cause of this?

 

[Cook1]

As someone has mentioned before that the C:\\ is looked for, so that might be an issue.

Could always changed your drive letters and see if that helps. I'm sure there are a few ways to do this but I always right clicked on My Computer then selected manage.

 

[GuitarDaddy]

I have a similar problem I've been dealing with since I setup my machine months ago.

I have 1 IDE drive set at master, and 2 sata drives in a Raid0 array. I originally installed XP SP2 on the IDE C: but never activated it, then added the sata raid array F: and installed the OS on F: and activated it. I have been using F: as my boot drive ever since.

My machine boots up and gives me the option to boot from either drive, I just select the second one and it boots to the F: drive no problem. My boot priority in bios is 1 C: 2 F:, if I change it to 1 F: 2 C: or remove C: completely from the boot priority it gives me "Disk boot failure" and I have to put the Windows CD in to boot.

I know this has something to do with the fact that I originally set the machine up with only the IDE as C: and loaded windows to it. And I haven't bothered trying to straighten it out as its only a minor inconvience to select the F: durring startup. And I have no problems running the OS and progams from F: and keeping all my data on C:

But I would eventually like to get rid of the Windows install on the IDE and have only one boot drive, bypassing the selection screen at startup. If someone knows how I can accomplish this without reformatting the drives and starting over fresh, I would greatly appreciate it. Is it simply a matter of making sure the correct boot files are on the F: drive and they all point to F:? or do I need to swap the drive letters? Or is reformatting and starting over my only option?

 

[kitkat22]

I would start over. Set your OS and program drive to C:\ and your secondary drive to whatever. I would beat a slice of cheesecake it fixes the problem. As was mentioned above, I feel queasy with the whole idea the OS partition is set to something other than c:. The other thing to keep in mind is setting up your firewall, etc before connecting to the internet. You would be very surprised how quickly things get screwed over without all that stuff.

 

[CraigRT]

maybe the boot.ini file is screwed up

 

[srjrol]

I have tried that but I ran into the problem that I mentioned before.

I tried doing it in the computer management utility and it wouldnt let me change the C: or E: drives because they are the system and boot drives.

I am just going to remove all the drives except the two raptor that I want to use in raid and install like that. Ill let you know how it works out.