"DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER."

[reuelreuel]

I've been having this problem for a few days now (and doing personal research in addition to requests for help on EggXpert and Anandtech) and I was wondering if any users on Tom's could help me out with this issue.

I have the ASUS P5N-D motherboard and after installing Windows (and formatting all the drives) my computer tells me "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER."

So when this pops up, I found that if I leave the Windows XP CD in, it asks to boot from CD (which I just let it run without pressing enter) and Windows starts up normally. I changed the boot sequence so it goes HDD, CD, then REMOVABLE... but it didn't seem to solve anything.

I have 3x 250GB WD Caviars (all OEM from Newegg) and from what I've seen they read/write/function normally in Windows. Two of the HDDs are set in RAID 0 and in the boot sequence, this is the first HDD listed (with the backup being second).

I tried taking out hte battery on the MB and put it back in to reset the CMOS as has been suggested. Now instead of loading Windows while having the CD in, it loads the XP installation CD instead of the OS itself.

With no luck finding any solutions, I totally reformatted everything -- I deleted and reinstalled two of my HDDs and put them back in a RAID 0 setup and partitioned that setup to a C/D type of deal like before. Installed Windows and got the same issue.

This is really frustrating me because my roommate built the same exact build (except he's using the equivalent Seagate 250GB HDDs). He's thinking that it may be a problem with the HDDs, but so far it seems like all three of them are working fine. Again after reformatting, getting the same error, and putting the Windows XP CD back in... it loads Windows. Though this is nice... I'd like the system to start without having the CD in there.

I could really use the help as I dropped a good 1600+ on this system

Thanks guys! Any help is always appreciated.

 

[mtyermom]

I would suggest trying to install the OS with only a single HDD installed, non-raid. If this works flawlessly then at least it gives you a baseline to start troubleshooting your raid setup. Something wrong with the raid controller, perhaps? Hope this helps.

 

[reuelreuel]

Makes sense...

I am pretty new at this (this is my first home built system and most of my knowledge comes from the hours of research I put into each part before putting the build together) so could you tell me what I could do to check the raid controllers? Basically what my roommate did is copy the files that the ASUS drivers CD gave him and put it on a floppy. Worked flawlessly for him so this is why he thinks it's the actual HDDs.

 

[mtyermom]

I'll assume, then, that you're using an ASUS motherboard. You might try checking the ASUS website for newer versions of the drivers. Drivers on included discs are almost inherently out of date, an effect of the time it takes once the product is manufactured and its driver disc written and packaged to the point that you receive it. Maybe your WD drives are more picky about the raid drivers than your friends Seagates, though this seems unlikely (though it's worth checking). Of course, there's always a chance you have a bad motherboard.

 

[Smoked Turkey]

Did you set the RAID partition as bootable in the RAID BIOS?
Sounds more like a configuration issue than an actual HW/SW issue. Also check that in the Motherboard BIOS you have the correct SATA drives set to be members of the RAID.

 

[firetatoo]

sounds like a boot order snafu

 

[notherdude]

Try booting with only the OS HD in the system. Does it boot?

 

[mtyermom]

sounds like a boot order snafu

or it could be as simple a problem as this ^

 

[reuelreuel]

Try booting with only the OS HD in the system. Does it boot?

It's definitely not a boot order snafu and I am definitely booting from the RAID drive. I will, however, try to boot the OS HD without the backup HD first and see what happens.

Thanks for your help guys.

 

[gliderp1]

I had nearly the same exact problem with my Asus P5ND2-SLI a while back.

I had just installed a second SATA 300 GB hard drive. After rebooting, I got the "Disk Boot Failure" message. I also found that just the presence of the WinXP disk in the CD drive would allow the computer to boot normally. I didn't have to boot from the CD, just have it in the drive. If I disconnected the new hard drive, everything worked just fine as before. Finally after much searching, I was able to solve the problem by updating the motherboard BIOS from the Asus website. If you haven't done so already, I'd try that.

Hope this helps.

As a side note, I also experienced an intermittent problem with WinXP hanging during boot. I finally found that if I did not install the chipset drivers that came with the motherboard, the problem never resurfaced.

 

[pesh]

I had a few problems like this before, but it was my fault cuz i didnt check my jumpers on the cd drive and the hard drives, making sure they were set to cable select... wait, your using sata drives... hmm i dunno. soz

 

[swifty_morgan]

Make sure the cables are pushed in firmly and try again. check the floppy cables too if you're using one, or make sure it's disabled if you aren't... in bios

 

[jalpaugh1978]

Make sure the cables are pushed in firmly and try again. check the floppy cables too if you're using one, or make sure it's disabled if you aren't... in bios

I also had the "Disk Boot Failure" message recently and that us what worked for me....I got my message after getting the BSOD while playing Supreme Commander...lol...I thought it was maybe because of my overclock but after countless tries to get back to windows I opened up my tower and mad5e sure everything was connected and that seemed to work

 

[frangagn]

I'm having the same problem.

ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe, Athlon 64 dual 4800, three hard drives installed, 3G of RAM.

Had Windows XP running, installed Vista 64 ultimate (from CD, as you can't install 64 bit version from the 32 bits XP) on a separate brand new hard drive (as I didn't want to run the risk of loosing everything! God I'm happy I did!)

The system reboots fine in Vista as long as the installation CD is in. As soon as I remove it and try to boot from Vista, I get the infamous "Disk Boot Failure etc...".

The system will indeed boot normally from the old XP Hard Drive.

Updated Bios, pushed every cable in, tried MS utilities in the Vista recovery console to rebuild the MBR, nothing works.

It seems that the Vista Boat Loader does not get installed on the new hard drive... Anybody knows how we can do this? In XP, fdisk /MBR would do the trick, but not anymore.....

I'm so desperate, I'm thinking of installing LILO on that drive, but would prefer avoiding path solutions...

 

[Proximon]

Tag because it's interesting

 

[frangagn]

Gotta pay my dues: problem solved!

After much searching through the internet, I discovered that some people had successes by changing the actual order of the SATA cables.

My new hard disk was on SATA port 3 or 4 I think. I disconnected the Port 1 HD and connected the new target master HD on Port 1.

Did a fresh reinstall.

Everything boots normally now....

Microsoft never told me this.... They refused to help me, thinking I was trying to hack their software which I paid a good $300 for... p.o.ed!!!

 

[wipcguy]

This is a late add, but other searchers may benefit:

I just went through all this today, while getting my disks setup to rebuild a RAID mirror. I had originally backed up my source drive with driveimage.xml (http://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm). Then, to test my backup, restored that image to another drive, and when booting that drive got the "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" message. -This was even after I set the new drive (where I restored to) to "active" in Disk Management.

What I discovered was, with all the drive switching around on my SATA ports, the BIOS was set to boot off the wrong SATA port. So you need to be sure that your boot order in BIOS matches the drive you actually want to boot from.

Then, I needed to rebuild the master boot record on that drive. Fortunately, I had a UBCD4Win disk around (http://www.ubcd4win.com/), but one could use a regular Windows Boot CD. I booted into recovery console and did a fixmbr on the drive, rebooted, and was good to go!

I've since installed the RAID card, installed the drivers, moved the drives to the RAID card, and am now in the process of rebuilding/resynching the mirror.

Weee! (This took me all of about a day)

Hope it helps someone...

Jay

 

[joshallen79]

Another late post hope it can help.

System: Asus a8n-sli Premium MB
3gb Ram : xfx 8600gt
opteron 185 dual 2.6ghz

Disk: 2xseagate 250gb raid 0 "OS and Sysfiles only:
1xwd raptor 150gb "Games Only"
1xwd 750 gb "Media Content Only"

Ok I had the same problem as eveyone else tried every possible configuration.
This is what worked for me

Step 1: disconnect all other disk except the raid array do a fresh install on that. "note build your raid array as a boot device through your nvraid bios utility." after the install is complete I recomend intalling all updates as well.
Step 2: reconnect all other disk drives. worked for me.

I thinkg what happens is the sata controller lables the boot device wrong with the other disk drives connected and therefore the boot disk failure. Good luck

 

[Guest]

Hey mate,

I just had the exact same problem. I have 1 150gb raptor with my os on it and a 500gb caviar(WD).

I was adding some new ram to my comp which didnt really work for some reason, so I changed back to my old ram, then I started getting the msg you described.

I realised that in the bios, the order of my hdd's had changed, so that my comp was trying to boot from the 500gb caviar which did not have an os on it, hence the error. So my advice is check your bios and make sure that it is booting from the raid hdds and not the other which doesn't have the os on it. Hope that solves the problem

 

[jamecomeon]

Error Messge: "DISK BOOT FAILURE".

http://www.hddoctor.net/error-messge-disk-boot-failure/

 

[munro_d44]

I just got the dreaded 'disk boot error message' in a machine I built about six months ago. The mobo is an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe running in a RAID 0+1 array. There are four SATA HDD's (320gb each) that were working perfectly the last time I powered it down. The next time I tried to boot the box, I got the boot error message. Running WinXP Pro w/ sp3 & 4gb of Corsair DDR2 ram...yes I know that XP Pro won't run all 4gb of the ram since I'm running it in x32 mode, but it uses somewhere around 3.5gb of it. I've tried clearing the CMOS, changing SATA cables & just about everything I've read on the net, but nothing changes. I can't even reload WinXP cuz it either gives the blue screen of death or just freezes when trying to reload. I looked in the BIOS & it recognizes all four drives in the correct 0+1 RAID array. Tried rebuilding the MBR to no avail. I know that a bad HDD could cause this, but the RAID array should still boot unless the OS is on the possibly defective drive. Does anyone have any ideas regarding what I should try next? Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Guest]

This is a most common problem, there is a solution what u have to do is Disk Boot Manager CD is available in the market just get it and install it then your HDD problem will be solved and u can work with ur system as usually try to get the Disk Boot Manager CD. Dont do any other things which destructs ur pc bye..... try it.

 

[hoffhines]

I'm new to this board but i have a similar problem. Here's my setup:
ASUS Crosshair II with a WD 300gb raptor drive with windows 7. I also have two other drives as one master the other slave (non SATA)
I updated my bios and installed windows 7 on the raptor. I too am getting this boot disk error message. If i leave the disk in, it boots fine. I've checked the bios and all drives are accounted for and the order is set to boot on the raptor first. I've reinstalled 7 and checked all the cables.....what is going on???? Please help!

 

[email2cliff]

I had this problem on a new Acer X1300 SFF desktop for weeks. At first it would hard reboot ok, but then not at all, so I felt forced to use the Win7 'repair boot sector' feature which actually ruined the hard drive completely according to Future Shop technical support.

Acer then replaced the SATA hard drive but soon I started to have the same problem again. Finally I tried changing the bios hard drive setting to 'IDE' versus the default 'ACHL' setting (or whatever its called), and so far that has finally fixed the problem completely!.

IDE drivers were immediately auto-installed by Win7 after making that bios change, and that has been a total cure for several weeks. I don't know if its related, but I after making that change I got some actual hard drive information in the bios, which was not there before, and noticed the on board 'SATA 1' connection is to the DVD, with the hard drive connction to 'SATA 2', which doesn't look right, but there seems to be no need to change that anyway.

 

[Guest]

I had this same problem on an old ASUS A8N Mobo used to build an HTPC and running a fresh install of XP Pro. The system included a DVDRom, 500 GB HDD, and 1 TB HDD (all SATA). The 1 TB was formatted and loaded under Windows 7 but the 500 GB was a new Western Digital used for the OS. The XP install went normally (aside from me forgetting to plug in the mouse). Once the XP CD was removed the machine would fail to restart and gave the "disk boot failure" message. I checked and rechecked my BIOS settings and couldn't find anything wrong.

The Mobo has 4 SATA ports (and 4 more unused SATA RAID ports). I had the 500 GB OS disk on SATA1, the 1 TB data drive on SATA2, and the DVD on SATA3. My problem was solved simply by unplugging the data drive from SATA2 and plugging it into SATA4. This might be worth a try for others experiencing this issue.