Disk boot failure...please insert system disk????

Question

My PC froze on me about 3 mths ago & I couldn't get it to respond at all so I switched it off at the mains. When I switched it back on it wouldn't start up.
I've taken it to get looked at but was told the Mother board was probably gone. I'm beginning to doubt that Since getting answers to another question I'd posted here on YA
When I switch the PC on, a message appears saying "disk boot failure please insert system disk & press enter" However I don't have the system disk as it got chewed by my rottwieler.
The fan starts up & the CD drive is working. The orange light comes on ...on the front of the PC, flickers for a while then just stays constant.
Would that indicate to you that the Mother board has gone?????
I did make a recovery disk a while ago but thats not doing anything.
The name Compaq appears on the screen & then it just stays like that. Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks very much.

Also, is there another way of getting it start up without a disk??

I'm getting a message saying "primary slave hard disk fail" if that helps at all guys.

I've checked & there are no floppy's in the drive.

There's just the one hard drive.
Also when I turn the PC off & then on again it goes straight into "starting compaq system recovery" it goes as if it's going to recover then the name "Compaq" comes on the screen & it just freezes there.

Stupid question coming up...is it possible that a virus can cause the hard drive to fail?

Answer 1

First off, whoever looked at your computer is most likely retarded or just wanted to get your money from you. Obviously he, or she, didn't know what was the problem. I've done PC upgrading, troubleshooting, and repair for the last ten years, in case you were wondering.

After examining your problem through what you've supplied here I've determined the following. Your motherboard IS NOT the problem. If it were, your computer wouldn't respond period, by that i mean it wouldn't even turn on. You get the famous "system disk" screen because your hard drive is bad. There are two ways of handling this problem, one which is free, and the other is gonna cost you a bit.

The free way is to boot it up to the DOS prompt and run a program called check disk. It's a little complicated to do, but I can walk you through it. Feel free to email me and I'll be more than happy to explain in detail. The more costly of the two, though easier, would be to get another hard drive. It would be less complicated, but if you have any data that you don't wanna lose I'd run the check disk thing first.

Answer 2

Doesn't sound like a mobo hardware problem. I would try the following:

See if the BIOS correctly recognizes the drive. Go into setup (F12 or F1 or ctrl-esc or ??? as the machine is booting) and then go to the disk settings. Unless you have an _old_ machine, the motherboard should be able to auto-detect the drive.

If it doesn't find it, turn everything off, open the case and reseat the power and IDE cables to the hard drive and mobo. (they can sometimes come loose.) Then go back and try #1 above.

If your bois doesn't detect the drive, the drive itself may have failed. Can you boot from a floppy disk or CD? If so, this is another indication that the drive has gone bad.

Got any friends that can help? Give 'em a call before you spend more money with they bad mobo guy.

Answer 3

if a message comes on the screen then the motherboard is working just fine.

that message does not mean you need a system disk, it means that it is having trouble locating your operating system (windows) for booting up, the system disk it refers to is your hard drive.

the cause of this could be a number of things.
firstly the hard drive could be broken,
secondly you don't have a floppy disc in the floppy drive do you? if so remove it.
it could be that the hard drive has its jumpers set up wrong although this is unlikely in your case as the pc was working perviously.
a wire on the hard drive could have come lose.

the bios may be set up wrong and trying to boot from the wrong hard drive if you have more than one.
if you don't know how to check the bios then leave it to the computer shop.

and lastly widnows could have been corruupted but this is probably not the case as it would i think get past the system disk message if this was what happened.

Answer 4

It's not the motherboard. The boot sector on your hard disk has failed. You'll need to reinstall Windows. If you registered your copy of Windows and you send Microsoft the chewed disk, they'll give you a replacement. If not, you'll need to buy a new Windows installation or recovery CD. You can find slightly dodgy ones on eBay.

Answer 5

You get the error message "primary slave hard disk fail". This would assume you have two hard drives? If this is true, open the case and remove the power and data cable from one of the hard drives, reboot. If this doesn't work, replace cables to hard drive and disconnect cables from other drive. reboot

Answer 6

A good registry cleaner I use is CCleaner. It's a reliable tool to get rid of worms, trojams, malwares and viruses that affect your pc performances. Free download here http://j.mp/UrAC7G
It's the best software of its kind.
Bye

Answer 7

My computer did that very same thing and I took it to the shop and the hard drive had crashed. I got that same message and went out and bought a copy of Windows xp to find that it wouldn't work either.
Good luck with yours. I know what you're going through.

Answer 8

nope da (mb ) has not gone 1 check there is no disk in any drive at all 2 try to load pc in safemode and go to ms config
hit on start > run type in da box
msconfig
hit on startup tab check mark all box hit on apply & ok restart pc

Answer 9

Check there isn't a floppy in the A: drive. Sounds stupid but foxed me for a while.


xxB

Answer 10

hello i feel that your main hard drive as failed. if thats the case then you will need a new hard drive and a new installation of your operating system.