Need Help - hard drive won't boot up

I installed Vista from DVD and it seemed to work fine.
But I have found out that the only way my system will boot up is if
I have the Vista installation disk in the drive, which of course it
normally would not be.

When the disk is not in the drive, I get an immediate message saying
Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter.

What am I missing?

Thanks

Jethro

Obviously your passing the bios post test.... sounds like the MBR sector
has been corrupted and is unable to load into ram as you say it had been
working fine, the first step is to ensure the hard drive is being
detected in bios set up..

...if so then it sounds like the mbr boot sector is corrupted which can
be due to many things. Vista does not have a recovery console so looks
like a possible re-image or a re-install see-:

'John Barnett's Windows Vista Support: Windows Vista Repair Options'
(http://vistasupport.mvps.org/windows...ir_options.htm)

Davy

On Fri, 6 Apr 2007 07:08:46 -0500, davy <>
wrote:

>
>Obviously your passing the bios post test.... sounds like the MBR sector
>has been corrupted and is unable to load into ram as you say it had been
>working fine, the first step is to ensure the hard drive is being
>detected in bios set up..
>
>..if so then it sounds like the mbr boot sector is corrupted which can
>be due to many things. Vista does not have a recovery console so looks
>like a possible re-image or a re-install see-:
>
>'John Barnett's Windows Vista Support: Windows Vista Repair Options'
>(http://vistasupport.mvps.org/windows...ir_options.htm)
>
>Davy

Thanks for response Davy.

No - I didn't mean to say it had been working fine - actually I had
left the installation disk in the drive all day - and now a day later
I remembered that I had done that, and so removed the disk. It was
then that I could no longer boot up. I don't think I ever booted up
without the disk in the drive quite by accident.

I just made a wild guess that I needed the disk in the drive, and
voila I booted up! I guess it is picking up what it needs for the
boot from the disk.

So I guess the mbr may be the culprit - I hope I don't have to
re-install again. What a pain.

Jethro
>

Make sure you go to device manager when you boot of off the DVD and
check that there are no question marks by your HD controller. Maybe it
didnt have the driver for it and Vista cant recognize it.


12

Did you check that the HDD is recognised in bios., is it set for 1st
boot, note after the installation all the remaining drives can be
disabled, since we will never need to boot from them again hopfully it
also knocks a couple of seconds of the boot up time's.

Is the hard drive configured correctly, alway's do thing's in a logical
order, once we have established things are right here we can then
proceed to the data on the drive.... pointless doing anything if things
aren't configured correctly.. let's lead to conclusions rather than
jump to them.

So... has this problem occurred during the un-finished installation,
the confusion arose when you said it was working fine.... in which case
back to basics, check the drive links on the hard drive, check that it
is shown in bios and is set as the 1st boot device, the CD ROM can be
the 2nd, don't worry about the rest of the drives... these two are the
one's that you'll need for the install or whatever.

Disc boot failure mean's the hard drive isn't being seen or that the
boot sector data is corrupt due to many causes, hard drive, ribbon cable
are common amongst other's.

Davy

Jethro wrote:
> I installed Vista from DVD and it seemed to work fine.
> But I have found out that the only way my system will boot up is if
> I have the Vista installation disk in the drive, which of course it
> normally would not be.
>
> When the disk is not in the drive, I get an immediate message saying
> Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter.
>
> What am I missing?
>
> Thanks
>
> Jethro

Check your bios making sure it is set to boot from the proper HDD, not
the DVD.
If that's not the problem insert the Vista DVD, boot from it and select
startup repair.
Frank

On Fri, 06 Apr 2007 08:23:21 -0700, Frank <> wrote:

>Jethro wrote:
>> I installed Vista from DVD and it seemed to work fine.
>> But I have found out that the only way my system will boot up is if
>> I have the Vista installation disk in the drive, which of course it
>> normally would not be.
>>
>> When the disk is not in the drive, I get an immediate message saying
>> Disk Boot Failure, insert system disk and press enter.
>>
>> What am I missing?
>>
>> Thanks
>>
>> Jethro
>
>Check your bios making sure it is set to boot from the proper HDD, not
>the DVD.


It was! Dumb on my part! Thanks

Jethro

>If that's not the problem insert the Vista DVD, boot from it and select
>startup repair.
>Frank

Jethro wrote:

>
> It was! Dumb on my part! Thanks
>
> Jethro
>


Life is simple! :-)
Frank

davy;23742 Wrote:
> .... in which case back to basics, check the drive links on the hard
> drive, check that it is shown in bios and is set as the 1st boot device,
> the CD ROM can be the 2nd.... Told ya check the hard drive

Davy