Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk?

[BobaCrazy584]

SOS! i have two Windows XP OS, one on my C drive and one on my E Drive. I used partition magic 8 and formatted my C drive and now i cannot boot with anything. I get a message saying DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. What can i do to save my computer? any help is appreciated.

 

[BobaCrazy584]

btw, C drive and E drives are both partitions on one single HDD.

 

[Stinky Chicken]

Why do you have two OSes on one hard disk?

 

[GilesGuthrie]

Boot off the XP CD, repair either of the installations.

 

[TruenoEightSix]

What happened is, you deleted the partition containing the boot information, and may have modified the Master Boot Record (MBR). XP does have some MBR repair tools (though stupidly, you have to have a partially working MBR to use them) included. The other option is to use your handy OS install CD to repair the install partition.

 

[Stinky Chicken]

Yeah, there's a little repair function on there that does the trick. When you load up the OS install CD and it appears with the "To install windows now - press enter" screen, there will be a second option, which can repair Windows. use that, it works nicely.

A little info for those who didn't know - you know how you can't install an older OS after a newer OS on the same disk? If you use that repair function, it smooths that problem out I've found. 👍

 

[halfracedrift]

Or go through the bios and make sure you have actually enabled the hard drive on boot up. If you recently plugged a hard drive into it and have disconnected it, it screws up the boot sequence. Happened to me.