Windows XP PRO Disc boot failure??

[Boxxman]

I have windows XP PRO installed on my Athlon 64 3500+ PC. It's been running great for months and months but now if I restart I get the 'Disc Boot Failure, Insert Systems Disc and Press Enter' prompt. I have no disc in the floppy drive or dvd-rom. My boot sequence is this:

CD-ROM, Floppy, Hard drive.

The weird thing is that I didn't make any changes before this happened. I scanned my whole hard drive with norton AV and found no virus.

I CAN GET INTO WINDOWS but what I have to do is hit F8 on startup (when the BIOS is detecting Hard drives) and then select the hard drive as the boot device. It then boots fine. The other weird thing is if i move the hard drive to the front of the boot sequence it still doesn't work.

Any ideas??

 

[Harvey]

Try powering down and unplugging and reseating all of your drive cables.

The other side of this is, your drive could be starting to fail. Download your drive maker's diagonsitcs and run them. Most of the more in depth test progs will take a long time so start it when you go to bed and hope it finishes by the time you get through your morning coffee.

 

[larryj133]

I am having a similar problem on an Asus motherboard with both IDE and SATA.
Asus support has suggested that the bios chip on the motherboard needs to be reflashed/replaced. I just got their reply so I don't know if it fixes the problem.

Might be worth a try with your problem, a new chip is only about $20.

Maybe some more knowledgable people here could comment?

 

[Boxxman]

Hmm, that sounds interesting. I to have an Asus MOBO, more specifically I have the A8N-SLI Deluxe. I flashed the BIOS to 1014 and i swear it worked for the first reboot but now it does the disk failure again.

Any additional info?

 

[Nocturnal]

Try and check your BIOS to see if your main hard drive with your OS is set to boot from that hard drive. I know that if it's set to anything else it'll give that error.

 

[Boxxman]

I'll check, but I've tried having my hard drive the first in the boot sequence and i didnt see it fix the problem.

 

[The Linuxator]

The way I got around this issue with my setup , and don't laugh it works great but I am not sure if you will find it practical , anyway I have this 3 GB HDD , so what I did was installed win 2k on it , and then booted from that , from there I put in the Win XP Pro CD, and it prompts me for an install type I choose a fresh Install instead of upgrade (from Win 2k), then asks where to install it, I select my 74 GB Raptor , it copies the installation files to my Raptor and then the whole fresh install starts from there, if you want to think about it, if you already have Win 2k all you need is a cheapo HDD < $10. This method can be replicated with (win 2k/ME/98SE)

2nd method (if you have win 2k/ME/98SE), is that you install Win 2k/ME/98SE) and then upgrade from there.(you don't get a fresh Install that way, but hey things do work out in the end).

The methods above might not be the greatest but they work, the first method is higl recommended why ? Well because that way you always have that small HDD with win 2k all you have to do is boot from it everytime you want to install XP Pro again.

Hope I have been helpful.

 

[Boxxman]

I like your creativity but getting into Windows isn't an issue yet, its just not booting correctly. If I hit F8 to go to the Boot Menu I can select my Raptor with Windows XP on it and it runs from there. I also have Windows XP on an external USB harddrive so if i ever need to boot from that I can too. I'm trying to solve the BIOS / other issue with it not automatically booting up.

 

[The Linuxator]

Originally posted by: Boxxman
I like your creativity but getting into Windows isn't an issue yet, its just not booting correctly. If I hit F8 to go to the Boot Menu I can select my Raptor with Windows XP on it and it runs from there. I also have Windows XP on an external USB harddrive so if i ever need to boot from that I can too. I'm trying to solve the BIOS / other issue with it not automatically booting up.

OOPS !! I have yet misread another post, I thought you were having problems booting from the Win Xp pro CD , I thought you have the same problem as I do, well I'll look up your problem and see what I can do

 

[larryj133]

Mine is a P4P800E-deluxe. I have both an IDE and a SATA hard drive installed. Windows is on the SATA drive. When I cold boot the BIOS does not detect the IDE drive unless I go into the BIOS. When it does detect the IDE drive it automatically puts it into the first drive slot so I get the disc boot failure message unless I change that setting too.

It's not identical to your problem but it does sound similar in that the BIOS isn't detecting your drive. If you hit tab you can watch the post messages and see if it's listing the drive (it can go by fast though).

Here is a copy of Asus's reply to my problem:
Please start by clearing the system c-mos memory following the procedure in your manual. Make sure the power AND the battery on the motherboard is removed before shorting the CLR RTC solder points or jumper pins. Short the pins for at least 10-15 seconds.

If this is still not working, you can have your old BIOS chip reprogrammed or order a new, reprogrammed chip from us. You can also call our RMA department at (510)739-3777 option 3 at the prompt. Have the serial number of the motherboard handy when you call. OR you can send an E-mail to RMA@asus.com with your name address and phone number, and the serial number of the motherboard.

 

[D1gger]

Many years ago I had a similar problem when the CMOS battery on the mb went bad.

 

[Boxxman]

From these posts I'm going towards the BIOS chip or the battery. My BIOS detects all my drives, SATA and IDE and its worked correctly for almost a year. Without changing anything I have a hard time believing my BIOS stopped detecting them (plus I can see them on POST). Thanks for the help and I'll let everyone know what fixes my problem.

 

[RVN]

Originally posted by: Harvey
Try powering down and unplugging and reseating all of your drive cables.

Try changing out your cables.

 

[Boxxman]

I don't think its the cables b/c everything works fine except for on boot. they are detected by the BIOS, I can select it from the boot menu and it boots, and they all function fine in XP.

 

[RVN]

Is your bios set to 'fast detect'?

 

[Boxxman]

Yes, but as I've said earlier my HDs are still detect on POST and its been booting fine for the first 10 months.

 

[RVN]

I had a situation with similar symptoms. It turned out that on restart, fast detect didn't have the information to find the hard drives on cycle up and hung up giving the same message and on a complete shutdown and a cold start it would work fine (or vice a versa). Everything had been working perfectly for a long time and it seemed that "out of the blue" the condition developed. Hard drive jumper settings were correct and the bios was configured correctly. Not thinking about having been cold swapping hard drives and moving data; I didn't look at the possibility of the hard drive cables failing ...but they did. Standard IDE cables are extremely flimsy and their connector strips are extremely vulnerable. Upon close examination, I found the pin connector strips in the middle of the cables had loosened excessively and couldn't reliably be re-positioned on the ribbon.

Simply changing the cables would have save days of attempted trouble-shooting. Part of my problem was not broadening my mind to realize that what may have seemed senseless since the box and cables were only a year old and I'd never had much older ones ever fail before. Sticking some new cables out of one of the many boxes of retail hard drive kits that I had laying around would have solved things for me alot sooner.

I realize to post here, you've already tried alot of things and your frustration is elevated. Keep an open mind. It might be something simple.

 

[Boxxman]

Being that I have time this weekend to do some tests like that I'm sure i'll be able to narrow the issue, if not fix it. I have SATA drives so i dont know how much better those cables are. for now i'll try changing the fast detect, just to see. Expect another post on what worked and what didnt (if i get it fixed this weekend) soon.

Thanks everyone.

 

[Boxxman]

Well I'm back sooner than expected. While browsing through my BIOS to turn off my quick boot I noticed something that had hard drive order, not boot sequence. Somehow my boot drive got put to the 2nd HD (not the 2nd boot device). Basically I changed it to the first and left on quick boot and everything works!

I don't know how it happened since I have no jumpers b/c my drivers are SATA, but who cares its fixed.

Thanks for the help everyone