Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press Enter 3

[KingofSnake]

I have no idea why this is happening, but today I went to turn on my computer on when my BIOS got to "Detecting Primary Master [Press F4 to Skip]", my computer emmited this terrible scary dot-matrix printer type scaning/(scraping?) sound. After a little more loading stuff, but before Windows 98 is loaded, I get "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER".

This freaked me out, because I haven't made a boot disk! Luckily, I reset the computer (and I got the same scary dot-matrix printer sound), but no DISK BOOT FAILURE error message.

I've made a boot disk to be safe, but now I'm scared to shut this computer down for fear of killing something.
KingOfSnake - The only sports drink with ice crystals
(and marshmellos!)

 

[ramani]

HI
The cracking sound might be the death knell for the harddisk. You better get the important data backed even before restarting the computer.

If the zero point of the harddisk gets bad, the whole hatddisk will crash. On the contrary, since the systm is up and running, it is better you take backup of important files before shutting down.

Best of luck
ramani :-9
(Subramanian.G),FoxAcc, ramani_g@yahoo.com

 

[rjkrash]

That sound could be your floppy drive seeking or your cdrom drive. IMHO if your hard drive had made that sound the heads would be ruined and you wouldn't be able to boot at all.

Still not a bad idea to backup critical data and then try a complet chkdsk/scandisk on the system with repair on and see if you get a lot of errors.



The two rules for success are:
1. Never tell them everything you know.

 

[zigzag77]

Just as a sidenote....I have an IBM Deskstar in my system. Not too long ago it started making a similar high pitched "dot matrix printer sound" whenever it was accessed. Low and behold, after having kittens at the prospect of losing my favorite drive, I found a bad connector on the power plug for that drive. Loss of voltage on one of the pins was causing the drive to make some very wierd noises and spit up some incredibly long transfer times. Its a longshot, but worth looking at perhaps.

 

[tempo21]

how old is the drive? Have you got primary boot on IDE0 or floppy? Try full defragment/cleanup and then formatC if u must.

Interesting note zigzag77 - power connectors could be the cause.... T3/\/\p()
tek-tips regular.
_________________

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http://www.strikeforcecenter.com

 

[KingofSnake]

it's pretty recent.
KingOfSnake - The only sports drink with ice crystals
(and marshmellos!)

 

[ceh4702]

I had a similar problem. Go to scandisk and deselect the fix automatically. Sometimes when fix automatically is selected, a drive will make a sound like chung, chung, chung, chung. It can be a made by the drive motor and the heads moving back and forth over bad data, or a spot on the harddrive that is irrepairable. Sometimes a harddrive will try to read and reread the data in an attempt to rebuild the damaged area. This can take forever. My harddrive did this for a couple hours one day so I took a chance and let it just keep going. It eventually fixed the problem. When it was done I also ran the Disk Defrag program. Once it finishes running what happens is it usually marks the area as being unusable.

Will the disk be ok? Maybe, maybe not!

Other probllems can cause this type of behavior. The Hard Disk can have a hard crash where a head actuall touches the Disk and scrapes the surface. The disk drive motor can be slowing down right before it wares out! It is hard to tell. I definitely would back up the data! If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

 

[shirleyowl]

Hi folks, well I know this is an old subject but this has just happened to me, thank goodness I bought my iMac four weeks ago, so I have another access point to this forum.In February or thereabouts
I made a boot disk with Norton AV but when I tried to make all the other rescue disks and tested them they wouldnt work. I bought a new set of Floppys and tried again , but again they didnt work, so I just left it. I thought perhaps my A drive was faulty and meant to get it looked at but didnt.
Then today I was working on my PC cos I needed to print some photos off and my Printer is attached to the PC. when I think I gve it a couple too many commands in quick succession and it locked up on me. I tried CTRL ALT DEL but it still wouldnt work, or restart So I restarted using the reset button It was after that that I recd the message that started this thread. I had defragged my whole disk in October and been on holiday or using my iMac so have hardly used it since then .
BUT what do I do now. I was using MGI Photosuite at the time.
My system is Celeron 111, 433 proc. 30gb master +8Gbslave
running Windows ME
About 11GB free on the master and 7GB free on the slave.
Please can anyone help.
Or is this my punishment for going to Apple. [:-(


Learn something new every day.

 

[wolluf]

Sounds like your drive may have died. Have you got a win98 boot disk? (

http://www.bootdisk.com

has a variety). You can boot PC from that and see what's 'visible' from the dos prompt. Also use fdisk to view drive & partition information.
Is the main drive still being detected in the bios (do its details appear on POST screen)?

 

[shirleyowl]

HI Wolluf,
well thank you for your reply but luckily when I turned the computer on this morning all seemed OK.
The problem I now have is that If what happened ever did occur irretrievably I wouldnt have a basic rescue disc. The Boot disk I had worked but I couldnt do anything else. How can I make my rescue set and ensure they work. Can you think whether the 'a' drive isnt writing properly or could there be another fault?
Only because the rescue set didnt work on test.

Regards
shirly
Learn something new every day.

 

[shirleyowl]

On initial boot I had a whole string of .dlls said to be missing.e.g. RSTRUI.exe, stmgr-SMGR.dll
Explorer OLE32.dll
Explorer BROWSE.dll
Explorer RASAP132.dll I stopped it then and
restarted, and it suggested I do system restore, so I did this back to Oct 31 cos I went on holiday after that and it had been working OK.
I am sure I did a NAV update when I got back.
Then I decided to restart, again
and it opened in safe mode.
I tried scandisk and it wanted to install new hardware, but doesnt tell me what, it couldnt find any 'driver' I tried this twicebut still same result
So I clicked on cancel. I then received
this
ENUM\Htree\ROOT\O
SURegcreatekey failed
Has anyone any idea what is going on?
Regards
Shirley Learn something new every day.

 

[rockerfellerz]

I think the rescue disks you are refering to will help you with virus related problems but if your hard drive fails they will not help at all. the only cure for that is a good backup and a new hard drive. As to why it won't make the disks in the first place, is this a "store bought" copy of norton? There is rumored to be a cracked version going around( so I hear) where everything works fine except for the rescue disk part which probably was removed to save space.It is still shown as an option but just doesn't work.
RocKeRFelLerZ

 

[shirleyowl]

I bought this from my computer supplier when he rebuilt my system with a new HDD last year. So that may be what has happened. What do I have to do now. Can I download a version, except I cant see my last post on this.
ridiculous system. If that is the case. At least they could have warned us about it.
Regards
shirley Learn something new every day.

 

[wolluf]

Sounds like something is failing on your PC (quite likely hard drive). Can you run scandisk - try the thorough option. If problems - back up and buy & new drive before you lose everything!
If that's ok, I'd probably think about backing up (onto second drive if possible), and trying a clean reinstall of ME (ie, format the drive before reinstalling). If you get problems during that install - you've almost certainly got a hardware problem that isn't your hard drive.

 

[shirleyowl]

Is it likely that my hard drive is failing it is only a year or so old I did a complete defrag in October, and it seemed fine then I think. How can I back up everything if I cant get into it? Learn something new every day.

 

[wolluf]

Is there room on your second drive to install ME? If so, you could make slave the master, install ME on it, put problem disk back in as slave and get access to it that way (hopefully can scandisk it 'properly' too).

 

[shirleyowl]

I have 8GB on second drive so should be bale to, But I just had to shut it all down again by pushing power button, could that have damaged the drive at all , its not the first time I had to do that. I didnt like it but even CTRL ALT DEL didnt work. Learn something new every day.

 

[wolluf]

Just pushing power button shouldn't damage the drive (just upsets windows sometimes - but yours is already)

 

[shirleyowl]

HI again Wolluf, I have to go out now but maybe we can pick this up again, when could you be available. I find your assistance very helpful
cheers
shirley Learn something new every day.

 

[teysir]

Hi ...
It looks that your hard disk is dammeged.
Try to get a backup before any thing else.
good luck,