Disk boot failure

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by kat731, Jun 13, 2008.

  1. kat731
    Honorary Member

    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Hi all,

    repairing a PC for someone. When i first got it, the BIOS had an overclock fail, reset the BIOS, (why they wanted to o/c a 3.0Ghz???) anyway, windows(Vista) was wrecked, UBCD sorted it to boot properly, Trojans etc have been removed, completely updated, Dskchkd several times, ok, DFTd from HDD manufacturer, ok. Thing is, intermittently it gets the Disk boot failure, reset fixes it.
    1. Change the SATA cable, cheapest and easiest.
    2. HDD failing?
    3. IDE controller problem?
    4. PSU problem?
    5. M/B problem
    It just dosent happen everytime, weird one, well its me, i always get these ones!! Love em though, i never give up!

    Kat:biggrin
     
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  2. greenbrucelee
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    greenbrucelee Zettabyte Poster

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    did you have to reinstall anything like the chipset drivers?

    But sounds like the mobo may have got fried with the overclock
     
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  3. Mathematix

    Mathematix Megabyte Poster

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    Had a similar thing happen to me with one of my harddrives. Reinstalling didn't fix it, so I used UBCD to completely wipe the HD (overwrite the entire writeable surface with zeros to remove any trace of problems), then reinstalled XP. Been fine ever since.
     
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  4. Modey

    Modey Terabyte Poster

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    Sounds like the HDD to me. Might be worth running the manufacurers own diagnostic on it to see if that brings anything up.

    I'd also try sticking in a known working hard disk in there and seeing how that goes. Doesn't sound like a fried mobo to me, but that's just a hunch.
     
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  5. Mathematix

    Mathematix Megabyte Poster

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    Yes, forgot to mention that bit! I tested my HD and it reported a number of bad blocks that were fixed using the method described. :)
     
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  6. kat731
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    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Thanks, as i said, ran the drive fitness test, returns 0x00-no probs!!

    Ummm,

    K
     
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  7. neutralhills

    neutralhills Kilobyte Poster

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    I had a machine in my shop this past week that acted like the memory was flakey, but it passed all the diagnostics. I wound up swapping the memory with some known good spare sticks and the problem went away. So much for the UBCD in this case. Don't trust the diagnostics 100%. I'd take Modey's advice: clone the current drive to known good spare and pop that in. See if that makes things better.
     
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  8. kat731
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    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Thanks Neut,

    AARRRGGHH, just done it again...

    Right new HDD and Acronis it!!

    K
     
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  9. rax

    rax Megabyte Poster

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    When you get the error what exactly does it say? Or does it just say "disk boot failure"?

    I had 2 problems like this recently.

    One of them was fixed by swapping out the IDE cables but I notice you've tried this already.

    The other was something to do with a boot file not being found, can't remember the name now, but it was due to a faulty ram stick. I think it was dropping the file during the boot. But I think Neut mentioned trying the ram.
     
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  10. kat731
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    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Hi Dave,

    yeh just disk boot failure, insert system disk.

    RAM is sometimes a culprit i agree, im gonna check the prices between RAM and HDD and see, probably change RAM 1st i think.

    K
     
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  11. neutralhills

    neutralhills Kilobyte Poster

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    Sometimes you'll get electronics with intermittant failures that only show up when the component reaches a certain temperature and then...kablooey. These are always frustrating to troubleshoot and usually require a lot of component swapping to nail things down as diagnostic software is unreliable in cases like this.
     
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  12. kat731
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    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    Excellent point Neut.
     
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  13. kat731
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    kat731 Megabyte Poster

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    ok, i reset the bios to floppy, cd, hdd, and it aint appened since. K
     
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  14. Stoney

    Stoney Megabyte Poster

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    I would also test the PSU just to make sure that the power being fed into the system isn't causing the problem.
     
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  15. UKDarkstar
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    UKDarkstar Terabyte Poster

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    If you can spring for it (about £150) this is an excellent hardware tester which boots from CD with it's own o/s so is not Windows dependant :

    http://www.eurosoft-uk.com/pc_check.htm

    Have used it many times over past ten years from various jobs and it can identify motherboard failures such as hd controller.
     
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