Disk boot failure, insert system disk

[DarkCyber]

Ok, this is something that is driving me nuts. I leave all my pcs on all the time...24/7. Sometimes when I come into my office in the mornings my pc will have the black boot up screen and at the bottom it says "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter".

I can reboot the pc from there (usually killing the power to power supply and turning it back on) and the pc will boot up fine and run fine. This may happen once every couple of weeks...not very often. I have recently upgraded my pc with a newer motherboard, ram and cpu. This problem happend with my old stuff and with the newer stuff. I've run test on the hd's and get no problems.

Any suggestions...do you think it's the power supply?

Thanks!

[HDBox2d1]

Happend to me last week..
Check all your components that use Molex Connectors.
Make sure Everything having to deal with power is plugged in.

Make sure your boot hard drive is setup as #1 in your bios.

[TheBluePill]

+1, Could be a failing Power Supply.

[S1nF1xx]

What's your boot order?

[vmerc]

Do you have a BIOS option to increase the disk spin-up allowance? Why is your computer on when you get to work? Does it turn on with a timer?

If the drive motor is getting weak on the HDD it will take longer to spin-up. This is a prelude to complete failure. If your system turns on once, after being cold for a while, and the drive fails to spin-up in time for the boot attempt, you will see that error. Rebooting allows the system to try again, but since the drive is already in motion and warmed up it's getting spun-up in time the second time around.

If I ever get that kind of error consistently I immediately replace the HDD or at least back-up everything that's critical.

[SmokeRngs]

I would immediately backup everything on the drive that you need. Getting the error consistantly like this has in my experience been the prelude to drive failure. Sure, sometimes you can keep the drive going for a while even with that, but it's dying and will probably go soon. I would definitely replace the drive as I would not trust it.

I defintely go with this option over any other since the drive is common between both systems and my experience.

http://www.hardfolding.com/ftag1.php/mem/207.png (http://www.hardfolding.com?go=38&id=207)

[DarkCyber]

Boot order is floppy, cdrom hdd1.

This pc stays on al the time, never turn it off.

I replaced the power supply and it did it again over night last night.

What is a good hd diagnostic program? I have 2 Western Digital 80 gig 7200 rpm hd's in this pc and I downloaded the latest Data Lifegaurd tools and booted up with it and I no longer see the hdd checker they use to have. :eek:

[DarkCyber]

Ok, went back to Western Digitals web site and noticed they have broke these into two seperate things now. Data Lifeguard Tools and Data Lifeguard Diagnostics.

I ran Data Lifeguard Diagnostics Tools and it shows both hdd's passed the S.M.A.R.T. test and the Diagnostics test.

Anymore suggestions?

[z-lite]

Maybe the RAM or motherboard, run memtest (http://www.memtest.org/) to check the RAM and if that passes, perhaps it's the motherboard. Try disconnecting everything from the motherboard that's not necessary (leave power, cpu, hd, ram only) before you leave and see if you get the same problem tomorrow.

[vmerc]

Well if it says that the boot device is not present, then something is rebooting your system while you are gone. The system doesn't look for a boot device just whenever; Only when the system is booting. If the drives fail while in run-time you're just going to get a lockup or a bluescreen.

[z-lite]

Windows may be set to restart on blue screen. Uncheck "Automatically restart" from Control Panel, System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, Settings. Also check the Event Viewer to see if there are any errors/warnings under the Application/System listing.

[vmerc]

Windows may be set to restart on blue screen. Uncheck "Automatically restart" from Control Panel, System, Advanced, Startup and Recovery, Settings. Also check the Event Viewer to see if there are any errors/warnings under the Application/System listing.
Oh yeah. Event viewer. Man I forget about that thing all the time. It's really useful too. :o

[DarkCyber]

Thanks for the suggestions!

I didn't even think about the auot reboot on error thing...it was turned on. I got it turned off now...maybe it will just give me a blue screen of death and I can track down what's causing this. I will check the event thing to.

[DarkCyber]

Wow! There is a lot of stuff in the Event Viewer...any specific type error or anything I need to be looking for?

Most things in there have a little circle type icon with a question mark in the middle and a few things have a red circle with an X in them.

Here's a couple of things I'm thinking it could be...I see Diskeeper and Norton Ghost listed in there and I think I have those scheduled to run overnight. Hopefully I can get a blue screen crash or something and nail it down.

[vmerc]

Red circle with an X is your main concern. Those others are usually things like "Service failed to start", and they don't crash the system.

Edit: Not saying they WON'T cause a crash, just that they usually don't.

[z-lite]

What I would do if I were you is clear all three lists out (right click each listing and go to "Clear all events" and click No to not save it), reboot the machine and then look for Warnings/Errors . If you see none, just let the machine run until you or someone sees a blue screen.

[DarkCyber]

What I would do if I were you is clear all three lists out (right click each listing and go to "Clear all events" and click No to not save it), reboot the machine and then look for Warnings/Errors . If you see none, just let the machine run until you or someone sees a blue screen.


Thanks...will try that!

[DarkCyber]

Ok, I finally got a blue screen crash today and here's what it said.

PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

I checked the Event Viewer after I had to reboot the pc and didn't see anything in there with any red circles and an X in them. I checked under System and Apps both. Under system there was a Browser Warning with the little yellow triangle and ! in it, but that error showed a time stamp of an hour before.

I pc had been idle while I was gone to lunch. I came back in and was starting up FireFox 1.07 and got the crash. :eek:

Any additional suggestions now with this error?

Thanks!

[vmerc]

Ok, I finally got a blue screen crash today and here's what it said.

PFN_LIST_CORRUPT

I checked the Event Viewer after I had to reboot the pc and didn't see anything in there with any red circles and an X in them. I checked under System and Apps both. Under system there was a Browser Warning with the little yellow triangle and ! in it, but that error showed a time stamp of an hour before.

I pc had been idle while I was gone to lunch. I came back in and was starting up FireFox 1.07 and got the crash. :eek:

Any additional suggestions now with this error?

Thanks!
Bad driver or some such thing.
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=334

[DarkCyber]

Bad driver or some such thing.
http://www.osronline.com/article.cfm?id=334

Thanks... :( Here we go with the needle in the hay stack thing...near impossible to probably figure out what it is.

[DarkCyber]

Well, ruled out memory problems. I ran Memtest all night long and it passed 46 times with 0 errors.

Back to looking for that needle in the haystack :eek:

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone!