Hi there, I have a Windows XP pc which has developed a problem during start up. after about 10 secs it shows a dos screen saying windows boot failure,insert boot disk in floppy drive. Sometimes it would work if I turned power off completely and retried but now it wont even do that. I dont have a boot disk and what does a boot disk do anyway if i have one? does this mean the end of my pc and all my stuff that i had on it? the important docs and photos i already backed up but had loads of other stuff/programs any help wud be massively appreciated Zak
Hmmm... I had exactly the same problem. The first time I lost ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING! The second time I decided to try some stuff. I opened the computer and unplugged the plastic plugs attached to the floppy drive; cd drive/re-writer; hard disk. BINGO! Plugged them back in and started the computer up and it went straight to Windows and I didn't lose anything. Hope this helps
also try unplugging all USB devices - no mouse, no printer, just a keyboard and screen, and see if that helps. We had a USB printer that clogged up a fairly new PC from booting.
Aaaah...this is occasionally happening to one of our PCs in the house. It's a bad IDE cable. Typically I'll wiggle it and it boots fine. I need to replace is asap. RMX
Could be an IDE cable problem like Remix suggested. However, could also be a bad sector etc.. I typically find that if you have your Windows XP CD, boot off of that then when you get into the Windows XP Setup screen hit R for to get into the Recovery Console. Once you're in run the command "chkdsk /r" without the quotes. That will repair any bad sectors with the harddrive (most of the time..unless it's really f'd). If you need additional help reply in this thread. Don't PM me.
