disk boot failure

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
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Guest

The message I get at boot-up is "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk and
press enter." There is no startup disk to allow separate boot-up. There is no
floppy disk. I tried a Norton anti-virus disk, which ran with no errors. I
would like to write a new boot sector, but how. The Restore disk does not
boot up. Please help.
 
Unfortunately, that did not help. In any case simply rebooting, as a
temporary, not a permanent, fix is not sufficient. Rebooting did not fix the
problem even temporarily.
 
doug289 said:
Unfortunately, that did not help. In any case simply rebooting, as a
temporary, not a permanent, fix is not sufficient. Rebooting did not
fix the problem even temporarily.
Click to expand...

Then either your hard drive or your motherboard connector to the drive
has died. Can you still see the drive in the BIOS? If not, reseat the
cable, swap out the cable, try the drive on a different connector or in
a different machine. If the drive isn't seen in a different machine's
BIOS, then you know the problem lies with the drive and it is toast.

If you can see the drive, run a diagnostic utility on it from the drive
mftr.'s website.

Malke
 
Thanks for helping me out on this. You may be right. The system is an AMD
Athlon 3000. The main drive is a Samsung 160 GB. Memory is 512 MB. I tried
the drive in my WinME machine, and got the same Disk Boot Failure message.
The initial boot-up display shows all the channels and then gives the message
"Channel 1 no 80 conductor cable installed", whatever that means. I think it
means a defective drive, so I am tending to believe that at this point until
someone proves to me otherwise. Thanks again.
 
doug289 said:
Thanks for helping me out on this. You may be right. The system is an
AMD Athlon 3000. The main drive is a Samsung 160 GB. Memory is 512 MB.
I tried the drive in my WinME machine, and got the same Disk Boot
Failure message. The initial boot-up display shows all the channels
and then gives the message "Channel 1 no 80 conductor cable
installed", whatever that means. I think it means a defective drive,
so I am tending to believe that at this point until someone proves to
me otherwise. Thanks again.
Click to expand...

Your drive has gone to Drive Heaven. Replace it. ;-)

Malke
 
"no 80 conductor cable installed" does NOT mean the drive is bad, it simply
means that you have an ATA66 or higher controller and are using a 40 instead
of an 80 conductor cable.
 
Dave said:
"no 80 conductor cable installed" does NOT mean the drive is bad, it
simply means that you have an ATA66 or higher controller and are using
a 40 instead of an 80 conductor cable.
Click to expand...

Yes, but the OP had a working system before the troubles so his cable
could not have automagically become a 40-wire instead of an 80-wire
cable all by itself. That added to the fact that he put the drive in
another known-working computer and had the same failure pretty well
tells us his drive died.

Malke
 
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