Unable to boot

[RobFDB]

1. Overview of the problem
   Can no longer boot into Windows.
   
2. Full description of the problem and symptoms
   When I start my PC it sees the three hard drives connected to it but when it comes to starting Windows it says it's unable to find the boot drive, please insert and press enter.
   
3. Did it work normally at one time, or has the problem always existed?
   Computer was fine until Thursday night. Windows update appeared and informed me that IE8 was available so I allowed the download and went to make some food. Came back and the install was done and I rebooted my PC. From that point on I've been getting the boot disk error.
   
   
4. Is the problem consistent and repeatable, or entirely random, or semi-random?
   Happens every time.
   
5. I already tried these steps:
   The boot order of the drives is unchanged but I've manually selected the boot drive and start up with no luck. I've run Hitachi's DFT advanced scan on all three hard drives on my PC (twice) and all of them come back 0x00 (no errors/problems). Today I grabbed a copy of Knoppix 6 and I can access the boot drive in that without a problem. Windows is installed on one of my 7K250 250GB hard drives.
   
   
6. My software:
   • Windows XP SP2
7. My hardware
   • Asus Striker Extreme
   • Intel QX6700 Stock
   • Video card(s) brand & model
   • 2GB Dominator PC8500
   • Gainward SLI 8800 GTX
   • HGST 1TB 7K1000
   • 2 x HGST 250GB 7K250

[/quote]

 

[RobFDB]

Booted to the recovery console and ran chkdsk before giving fix* commands a go. Qucik chkdsk found nothing but chkdsk /p found some errors. Uses chkdsk /r to fix them and the system booted straight after. Going to backup my boot partition to an external drive now. Also the HDD is pretty old so I'm going to replace it with a newer model. Might just replace both the 250GB drives in my computer as prices are so cheap at the moment.

 

[Porter21]

Yes, I have seen this issue multiple times. Sometimes a computer will work fine for years, and then all of a sudden the computer will not be able to boot. The recovery console helps a lot, but there could be deeper problems. I would go ahead and take precautions just in case the drive goes bad.

good luck