Disk boot failure

Piscenian

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Jul 20, 2011
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Alright well here is what I'm experiencing,

few months ago computer stopped loading windows 7, would get to the loading windows 7 settings screen (just before the log in screen) and would restart.

Bought a hard drive enclouser, reformated the hd (did not format the hd correctly is what it said)

Bought a new hard drive today, unconnected the old hard drive, trying to reformat now with windows vista (yea i know :( )

Anyways, now i am getting the disk boot failure, i tried switching to sata3 instead of 1 (sata2 is my dvd drive) and still i am getting the same error message.

so far ive invested:

43$ at computer heaven for diagnostic (they said it was a virus.....)
30$ for a hard drive enclosure to hopefully format the first hard drive so i may re install fresh (as the computer would not let me log in to the machine, which is where it wanted to begin the re-install)

44$ for a brand new hard drive (purchased only 1 hour ago) and im getting this Disk boot failure, please insert system disk and press enter.


Would greatly appreciate any help on this.

Machine is :

M3n72-D
M3n78 Pro asus mobo
Amd phenom x4 9500 2.2ghz
8 gigs of ram
2 hard drives (first one is a 750gig) the new one is a 160gig


thanks in advance.
 
Just to clarify

Did you put the _new_ drive in the system and try to re-install Win7 by _booting_ from the installation DVD? Did you disconnect _all_ other drives before doing this?

It sounds like you are willing to re-install, which makes the troubleshooting easy for us. One issue may be that if you have a _bootable_ drive in the system, add a new drive, and install the OS, the system will install part of the OS on the old, bootable drive. So you want the new drive to be the _only_ drive attached to the system when you try the install.

If you have partitioned or formatted the new drive with Vista already, delete all of the partitions on it with Vista and allow the Win7 installation process to partition it. This will have two advantages. First, the sectors will be properly aligned on 4K boundaries. Second, although some consider this to be a disadvantage, Win7 will create a 100 MB boot partition at the front of your drive, separate from the OS partition.

If you intend to dual-boot Vista and 7, let us know before you continue, because you probably want to do some other procedure.

Good luck.
 

Piscenian

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Jul 20, 2011
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The only HD that is connected is the new one i just purchased, other then that the only other sata is the dvd drive that im using to run the *windows vista* os cd.

basically took the old hd out, put the new one in its place (same stata#) got disk boot error, switched to a diff sata# and still getting same error, with only the new hd and the dvd drive connected to sata.

not planning on any dual boot at the moment, just want this pc to work :)
 
Are you able to boot from the DVD? If not, this could be as simple as going into the BIOS and making sure that the DVD drive is on your boot list.

If it was already on your list but the system fails to boot from it, that is a second issue. Now it sounds to me as if it's one of these two, since you get disk boot error even with the boot DVD in the drive.

Third possible interpretation was that you are able to install to the HDD but not boot from it.

One more thing to check - does the BIOS detect the new drive? Is the controller set to IDE, RAID, or AHCI mode?

Someone who knows more about this please help - does Vista install nicely in AHCI mode, or does it only know about IDE mode?
 

Piscenian

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Jul 20, 2011
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it is seing the the dvd drive,

ive installed the the hd, trying out a ahci mode now.

but so far the bios is recognizing everything, just cant install the os

edit

did not change anything in ahci mode, it was previously in ide mode.

Is it possible that the dvd drive is being recognized but possibly not spinning?

the post detects the hard drive, dvd drive as well as ram/cpu/vid card.