Topic: Another boot problem

[Simon]

Another friend, not the one who wants the laptop, is having trouble booting up his PC.  He keeps getting the Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk And Press ENTER error message, but after rebooting several times, it usually fires up.  He had the same problem about 18 months ago, and replaced a hard drive cable, which seemed to do the trick, but now it's acting up again.  Could it simply be a cable again, or could it be an indication of imminent hard drive failure?

[Sandra]

I sometimes think that modern pcs boot up so quickly that they sometimes misread the MBR.

The first thing I would try is to boot off the XP CD and use the recovery console.
At the C: prompt type FIXMBR or FIXBOOT then press enter and see if that sorts it.

[Reno]

Sounds like classic hd failure to me. Try replacing the MBR like sandra says, and maybe he'll get lucky and you won't have to replace it.

[Simon]

I sometimes think that modern pcs boot up so quickly that they sometimes misread the MBR.

The first thing I would try is to boot off the XP CD and use the recovery console.
At the C: prompt type FIXMBR or FIXBOOT then press enter and see if that sorts it.

Thanks Sandra, he doesn't have the patience or knowledge for that, so I will have to do it for him.    Hopefully I will see him over the weekend, so I'll let you know how we get on.  I should say, it's not a new PC though.  I built it for him just after I built mine, so it's almost identical, apart from a different mobo, I think, making it about 4 to 5 years old.

Sounds like classic hd failure to me. Try replacing the MBR like sandra says, and maybe he'll get lucky and you won't have to replace it.

Thanks Bob.  I'm hoping for the best!