[rdrjunkie1]

Hey a few years ago a friend helped me build a pretty nice computer. Well I recently upgraded to Vista Ult and another friend telling me that it was a Ram hog hooked me up with a few 1g sticks as I was only running with 2x 512 sticks total. I shut everything down and disconnected anything that might possibly give the system power and installed the ram. After that was done I tried to power up and got a boot disk error. I've tried just about everything I can think of to include going back to just the 2x 512's and still the same issue. The Motherboard LED still comes on and it sounds like everything is getting power I just can't get past the error. Is it possible that I just disconnected a cable to the HD or have I completely done that system in?
Any help is appreciated.

[rdrjunkie1]

Hmm. I got the email that said Dave responded but can't see it.

[philthomas]

Recheck the IDE Cable to your HDD and to the mobo, make sure it is firmly seated at both ends.

What is the exact error message and at what point during boot up is this showing ?

Are you getting any beeps at boot up ?

Did you alter any drives or jumpers ?

Did you change any bios settings ?

[rdrjunkie1]

Hey thanks for the response.

I rechecked the IDE cable and it seems to be a tight connection.

The error message says "Boot disk failure. Insert system disk and press enter" and this comes up right after "press delete to enter setup"

I didn't hear any beeps but all fans are running and the motherboard light is on.

I haven't messed with any other cable but when I was taking the side panel off on if the cables did start coming with the fan. That does have a loose end that says Sata on one end and the other is connected to the PSU,but I've never noticed if it was connected to anything at the other end before.

The only thing I did with the BIOS was to make sure that it was booting from the HD.

I'm really hoping I don't have to install XP again since I just moved from the east coast and can't find that disk lol.

[philthomas]

Well the only thing I didn't ask you to verify was the power connector to the drive, from the PSU, but I'm sure you checked that.

The message you are getting in bios "Boot disk failure" is pretty specific and indicates that the system cannot find a boot drive.

This could be one of a couple of things :

1. Hard Drive Failure

2. The Master Boot Record (MBR) has become corrupted.

If 1. above, you will need a new Hard Drive and a reinstallation of XP.

If 2. above, you may be able to fix things, but you will need the XP Installation disk, to fix the MBR .... having said that when the MBR is corrupted the message usually reads "BOOT FAILURE", "NO OS FOUND"

If you can find the XP disk, you can try to fix the MBR as follows :

Boot with the XP installation CD.
When prompted, press R to repair a Windows XP installation.
If repairing a host with multiple operating systems, select the appropriate one (XP) from the menu. If you have only one operating system, enter 1 to select it.
Enter the administrator password if prompted.

To fix the MBR, use the following command:

fixmbr

If that doesn't fix it, then it's quite likely the Hard Drive has died.

HTH

[rdrjunkie1]

Got it thanks