Help with booting a harddisk

[Bang321]

Hello everyone,

I'm having some problems with a computer I'm working on and am unable to resolve the issue. I was hoping maybe someone here could help. I am reinstalling Windows XP on a system for someone, however, I am not able to boot into the drive. I get this error message on startup. "DISK BOOT FAILURE" and it takes the BIOS just a little longer than normal to detect the harddisk.

I am able to boot with a Windows XP CD which during the installation can see the harddrive and also partition and format it. It will then proceed to copy the neccessary installation files for the Windows install, however, when the system reboots to boot from the HDD for installation, I get the error message again and it refuses to boot.

I've tried to use the windows recovery console to fix it with "FIXMBR" and "FIXBOOT" but it doesn't work.

If I attach the disk to a USB enclosure, I can see the files and everything just fine and also partition and format from within disk manager. I just have no idea why the drive can no longer boot. Any help would be much appreciated.

One thing that I might be thinking may have caused this is that the computer previously had Norton Go Back on it. I hope someone can help. Thanks.

Sincerely,
George

 

[LouPoir]

Sounds like you need to go into the bios and set the hard drive as the first boot device

 

[sieistganzfett]

i freaking hate norton go cr@p. it prevents a hd from showing in windows when moved to another pc. always had to uninstall norton go cr@p. i dont even remember if the hard drives showed for me to format them, its been a while since i was a tech at a local repair shop dealing with residental computers with that stuff on it.

if you were able to get the drive to show under a different computer under bios and under that computer's windows, its no longer the go cr@p, you managed to format it, and use an xp cd to install to it but it wont boot on 1st restart. could this hard drive be failing? it passes the manufacturer's HD diag right? could you try a different xp cd? (does this exact cd work on a known working computer if you were to install using that HD if it passes?)

try something like a new cable for the hard drive, what were the problems with the computer that prompted the need to do a reinstall on it? from what your saying i can only guess a failing hard drive that caused windows corruption, which is why your are t/s'ing the thing.