disc boot failure - Help

rusty baker · July 14, 2006, 09:12 PM

About 3 months ago a power surge fried the dial-up modem on my wife's XP. We changed to DSL. It was running hot so I changed the fans. About a week ago when I turned it on it would only say "Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM:disc boot failure, insert system disc and press enter." Does this mean I need my original XP home disc. I hope not. It was stolen. Is there anywhere on line I can get a patch or anything?

floorman67 · July 15, 2006, 12:02 AM

that error means your system bios is trying to boot to cd and/or cant find a valid system disk to boot up the computer to dos or windows.

It doesnt give you the option to boot from the hard drive at all ?

Boot up the computer and continually tap the f8 key and you should get a system boot menu.

if listed, select BOOT TO HARD DRIVE ... your hard drive should be listed there, if not listed as the words hard drive, then as a number or code, sometimes it lists the manufacturer or model number as a chioice.

see if that works.

if not, then try booting and entering the system bios setup utility to see if the bios is even recognizing the hard drive (some systems use the delete key for this).

If the system bios doesnt recognize te hard drive STILL, then its either a bad IDE/SATA channel on the motherbard, a bad hard drive, a bad IDE/SATA cable, a loose IDE/SATA cable, or a loose power supply connection to the hard drive.

let us know what you find out and we wil ltry to help you further.

Jim McClain · July 15, 2006, 12:14 AM

I wonder it that error means there is a CD in the drive it thinks is a start-up disc. If you have set up the boot drive order and have boot to CD first, it will try to boot to the CD if there is one in the drive. Sometimes if it's not a system disk or one that will allow the system to start with it (like a utility or a virus program disk or something like that), you might get an error.

Once I left a disk in the CD drive, but didn't know it and it wouldn't boot up. Kept giving me errors. I finally found the Windows disk and opened the CD drive to put it in and there was a music CD there already. I took it out and rebooted and all was well in the neighborhood.

Or maybe that's not it at all.

floorman67 · July 15, 2006, 03:23 AM

well, bios has redundancy for that exact *problem* you mention jim, in that there is a list (usually up to 3 or 4) startup items in the setup utility you can set that will look for floppy drives, hard drives, then cd rom and you can set the order, and bios is *supposed to* revert to the next one on the list if it find no *system disk*.

the only case where I seen it fail is where someone went in, screwed around with their bios, changed the setting and told bios not to check. Even if it defaults to factory setting, I am pretty sure it wil set all 3 as default.

heck who knows it very well could be as simple as a disk in the drive, as buggy as some system are.

those settings would be a good thing to check also if it isnt the disk, to endure bios is looking for the floppy drive first, cd rom drive second, and the hard drive third (at least thats the way I have mine set up).

what concerns me is from that bios error it is almost like it isnt even recognizing the hard drive at all.

Nick Arrera · July 15, 2006, 04:39 AM

Rusty , Sounds like hard drive failure. Since it can't boot from the hard drive, it's trying to boot from a bootable CD which apparently isn't available.

Can you tell (on screen) if the hard drive is being recognized during POST?

If not, is it seen in the BIOS/CMOS Setup?

Can you tell if the hard drive is spinning? (While lightly touching it, power up the PC).

Remove and reinsert both ends of the ribbon cable and the power connector a few times to clean the contacts.

If it's spinning but the system still can't boot from it, I'd start with the appropiate Hard Drive Diagnostic Tool:

Hard drive diagnostic utilities are used primarily for determining the physical condition of your hard drive, (drive integrity and read/write verification).

floorman67 · July 15, 2006, 01:54 PM

well you want to try all non-mechanical means before digging in your system hardware rusty.

Please try the boot/setup options i mentioned before cracking open your box and touching anything.

If you DO crack it open, you want to take static electricity precautions so you dont inadvertently ruin any internal components, as well as unplugging the power cable to the unit for protection against electrical shock.

rusty baker · July 15, 2006, 09:24 PM

Thanks everone. I'm still trying to work on it. It will probably have to wait a few days till I have time.

Nick Arrera · July 16, 2006, 02:34 AM

If you are having computer problems which you suspect are hard drive related, you can test your drive with the following: these are great little utilitys Rusty . you just need to know what hard drive you have .

* Fujitsu "Diagnostic Tool"
About Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc. : FUJITSU United States

* IBM/Hitachi "Drive Fitness Test"
Support | Downloads

* Maxtor "PowerMax"
Log In

* Seagate "SeaTools Desktop"
SeaTools - Seagate Technology

* Western Digital "Data Lifeguard Diagnostic for DOS (Floppy or CD)"
http://support.wdc.com/download/ind...&pid=999&swid=2

* Fujitsu "Diagnostic Tools"
http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/.../utilities.html

Note: In most instances you download the file to your hard drive then (extract)/execute it to create a bootable diskette or ISO CD-ROM image.
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