I've been spending the last approximately 7 hours trying to get around this, oh-so-annoying screen.
I've just today replaced my motherboard (using asus M3N-HT with an amd x2 5000+ with 1 sata drive as my main and an IDE for storage) Now, upon replacing my motherboard, everything seemed to work fine, except that my mouse would freeze at startup. I put this down to a motherboard/old hardware error, so i reformated.
Usually after a reformat I'd be all set to go, but this time, I installed windows and all that fine, it went to boot windows and prompted me once again with "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"
Yes, I have set my boot order correct in BIOS, both HDD's are in working condition, as is my optical drive. I've checked the connections, and even completely chose a different SATA connector for my HDD.
Upon choosing the new SATA connector I got into windows, started to do some work, and then I soon after had to reboot for some software/driver installs.
Now, guess what happened upon this reboot? You guessed it. "DISK BOOT FAILURE"
I am seriously at a loss here, as it's apparent it DOES work, but I'm not sure what in the hell is stopping it from booting to windows now. As I was JUST in it prior to this reboot.
any help would be GREATLY appreciated.. i'm 100% at a loss.
It seems as if it will ONLY boot with the disc in the drive now, if I don't have the XP disc in or have any other disc in, it will give the failure to boot error
If I leave the XP disc in, it will boot to windows, but this is extremely annoying and I'd like to fix, if possible. Thanks
It sounds like some sort of BIOS problem, but since you already check that, make sure that nothing is plugged in to the USB ports, I.E. flashcard card readers or printers with flashcard readers. Make sure there isn't any disks on the cdrom or floppy also unplug the ethernet (lan) cable. And see if that helps, if not:
1.) make sure that your boot partition is setup to be an active primary partition and not an extended partition.
2.) run a scandisk on the boot partition with the boxes check to automatically fix any errors found.
3.) check the bios and see if you can set the sata drive to run in IDE compatibility. (or vice versa if it's already set for IDE compatabilty.
4.) see if you have a program available that has a "boot corrector" bootcd. Example "avanquest partition commander version 10", "paragon partition manager version 9.0" or "paragon drive backup 8.5". each has a bootcd that can reslot your partitions, edit your boot.ini file, modify drive letters.
5.) If nothing works, you might have to install windows on your IDE drive and use your sata as the data drive.
I did end up getting it working. I'm unsure as to what exactly it was I did, as prior to reading your post here, I had unplugged 1 monitor which in turn, had a flash card reader and flash card plugged into it, plus I had also unplugged my LAN and then did a COMPLETE reformat using NFTS (not quick) and everything's been rock solid since then.
