PC not starting, Please help

WLB79 · 16 Dec 2008 at 11:55

About six weeks ago the power supply on my PC failed and I replaced it with a new Corsair 450. Two weeks after that my Hard drive failed and I lost all information on it, I replaced it with a new Samsung 750gb SATA 2 drive.

My Computer was configured with two hard drives an old 80gb IDE drive as C and my new 750gb as F with windows on the F drive. This was workiing well untill this morning.

I'd left my PC on all night, when I turned the monitor on this morning there was a message in the corner saying something like "Could not save file C:\ please save in a different location" I clicked on the message and it disappeared. Everything seemed to be working and I could still access the internet, however the curser would pause for a few seconds every half a minute. I thought that the PC would crash so I restarted it. It now won't start.

After restarting, and every time I turn the PC on now, startup gets to the point where it would check for a CD then diplays the message "Disk boot failiure, insert system disk and press enter". It displays this message with or without a CD in the drive, I have tried my windows CD and the motherboard CD. I tried changing the boot order from Hard drive to CD but it had no effect, I've also tried removing the second hard drive but this too had no effect.

I am not able to even get to a point where reinstalling windows would be possible as it is not reading CDs.

Any help or advice would be very welcome, as I would like to get this working again in the next few days.

ryu · 16 Dec 2008 at 13:25

this might not be a long term solution, but ive been able to get passed this by booting into safe mode, immediately restarting and letting it boot to windows again. try it a few times

WLB79 · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:02

I would try that, but I don't get to a point where I can boot up in safe mode.

linktoinsanity · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:27

You could try resetting the CMOS? Also try a spare PSU if you have one, it may not be supplying enough power to the drives for them to operate.

Shash · 16 Dec 2008 at 15:44

Remove the CMOS battery for about 10 minutes and putting it back in, try starting it with one hard drive and see if you can get into bios to change the boot priority around to see if you can get into the Windows installation

WLB79 · 16 Dec 2008 at 16:01

I've never tried removing the battery from the motherboard before. How do I go about that and could I damage anything by trying it? I take it that there is only one battery on the mother board?

Edit: I don't have a spare PSU, the last one broke.

XysteR · 16 Dec 2008 at 16:38

You don't need to remove the battery, just use the cmos clr jumper, usually 3 pins with a jumper over two of them.. move the jumper over the other two for a few secs and place it back the way it was before. To be honest if you can see the drive listed in the bios and nothing changed from when it worked before then i'd not clear the cmos, thats not really gonna help and will only end up with you having to redo all of the settings..

You'll probably have to borrow a cd/dvd drive off someone to fix this. Then get a XP home cd pref with SP3 preinstalled (providing your using xp). boot from the CD and select 'R' to repair xp. When you get to the command prompt type chkdsk /r then press enter. leave the computer to repair itself. Do not switch the computer off during this. This should sort you.

If i were you though i'd get that old 80 gig drive out and install the OS on the new sata drive.

WLB79 · 19 Dec 2008 at 07:38

Thanks for your help,it's fixed now. I bought a new IDE cable which a friend suggested but this did not seem to work so I removed the battery for 10 seconds, I couldn't see the cmos clr. I had to reinstall windows and I can't use my old Hard drive but I havn't lost any information on the other drive.

Thanks for all your help.