Inaccessible Boot Device Windows 2000

[Gronich]

My friend's computer is failing to boot - It's getting passed the BIOS, showing the Window's bar, the dropping to a BSOD with the Inaccessible Boot Device message.

I have transfered it into my PC, and tried to boot (from my own drive {An ATA IDE-133 drive}) having set the problematic drive to SLAVE and attached it to the Secondary channel. I now have three drives:

Channel 0 Maxtor 200Gb ATA IDE-133 My boot drive
Channel 1 Maxtor 80Gb ATA IDE-133 The problem drive - Set to Slave
Channel 3 Maxtor 300Gb SATA A Storage drive - No boot partition.

The motherboard is a DFI LanParty NF4 Ultra-D running a AMD X2 processor.

I have set the boot sequence to boot from Channel 0 in the BIOS and have tried to boot.

Each time I try to boot it starts from channel 0 if boots from the problem drive!

I have tried Cable Select and reversing the order in the BIOS but it refuses to boot from my own drive.

Any thoughts?

 

[redbeard1]

I'd say to put his drive back in his system. Then boot with a 2000/XP cd. Choose the recovery console option. When there, normally you would press 1 and supply it with the administrator account password. Then run chkdsk /r. This will fix some of the systems with the error you are seeing.

 

[Gronich]

Thanks for the reply. I think I will try that next...

I think what is happening in my machine is that his drive is a C: drive for booting while mine is
F: and it is preferring to boot from his!

If the above way doesn't work I will try it as Slave on the same cable as my Boot drive.

 

[Old Hippie]

You never mentioned what you are trying to do. If you're trying to recover data from the bad drive, I've had good luck with mounting them in USB connected external enclosures, or booting from the Ultimate Boot CD, or Bart's PE.

 

[imported_Baloo]

Might he have has a USB device such as a flash drive plugged in when he shut it down, then removed before booting up again? tell him to plug it in and try again. I know, seems stupid, but I've seen it happen, and it gives the exact problem described in the OP.