Disk Boot Failure

T

TherealChessnut

New Member
I am building a new computer and at first when the computer finished the POST it would say "NTLDR is missing.” I poked around on Google and read through a half a dozen explanations of how that could happen. Eventually I changed the jumper settings of my DVD drive and my hard drive. Both are now set to master and now I get a different error message (also after POST) "DISK BOOT FAILURE INSERT SYSTEM DISK ANS PRESS ENTER" Of course I put in my Windows disk and press enter, I get the same message on a different screen. I am using a copy of Win2k that we had laying around. When the Win2k disks didn't work I tried Win NT, same problem.

Here are a couple things I am guessing you would want to know:

1) The hard drive and DVD drive are on the same IDE cable. The motherboard I have only has one IDE connector. Does it matter which of the two plugs goes to which device?

2) My DVD drive is not listed under the IDE devices since I set it to master. (Is the hard drive some how blocking out the DVD drive since they are both master on the same cable?)

3) All the components are new except the DVD drive, hard drive and floppy drive. The hard drive was reformatted in the last computer it was on.

4) I get the same message regardless of whether I boot the CD-ROM drive, hard drive or floppy drive first.

5) First I manually set up the bios, and then I tried the optimized defaults and the fail safe defaults.

6) I have tried using an old CD-ROM drive in place of the DVD drive and I get the same message.

7) Ever since I put both the hard drive and the DVD drive on master the computer runs through the POST much slower.

Okay, more there than I thought. I am probably doing something really stupid, but it that is the case so much the better it should be fairly easy to fix then. I am not sure if “disk boot failure” was exactly what I was hoping to get after the “NTLDR is missing” went away. Thanks for reading, any advice is appreciated. :)

TherealChessnut
 
If the dvd drive is set to master, have you changed the ide cable accordingly?

I know this s for XP but it might give you an idea of what you have to do:

'Windows XP users

Insert the Windows XP bootable CD into the computer.

When prompted to press any key to boot from the CD, press any key.

Once in the Windows XP setup menu press the "R" key to repair Windows.

Log into your Windows installation by pressing the "1" key and pressing enter.

You will then be prompted for your administrator password, enter that password.

Copy the below two files to the root directory of the primary hard disk. In the below example we are copying these files from the CD-ROM drive letter "E". This letter may be different on your computer.

copy e:\i386\ntldr c:\
copy e:\i386\ntdetect.com c:\'
 
I did try swapping the IDE connectors but I had the same problem so I put it back. (I also tried setting the hard drive to slave while the connectors were swapped)

I think I might have read the thing for Windows XP in my searching around on Google. Problem is it won't recognize my disk. Thank you for the reply nffc10, I really appreciate it.
 
I tried booting it with just the floppy drive and the hard drive, it didn't work. I am going to go work with the jumper settings a little more I think, so could be very slow with replies. Glad to have someone helping me, I need it.:D
 
YES! It appears to be working now. I took the jumper completely off the DVD drive... I am not sure what that sets it to, but hey, Win2k is installing the setup files. Thanks again for you help!
 
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