Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press Enter

I have no idea why this is happening, but today I went to turn on my computer on when my BIOS got to "Detecting Primary Master [Press F4 to Skip]", my computer emmited this terrible scary dot-matrix printer type scaning/(scraping?) sound.  After a little more loading stuff, but before Windows 98 is loaded, I get "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER".

This freaked me out, because I haven't made a boot disk!  Luckily, I reset the computer (and I got the same scary dot-matrix printer sound), but no DISK BOOT FAILURE error message.

I've made a boot disk to be safe, but now I'm scared to shut this computer down for fear of killing something.

KingOfSnake - The only sports drink with ice crystals
(and marshmellos!)

HI
The cracking sound might be the death knell for the harddisk. You better get the important data backed even before restarting the computer.

If the zero point of the harddisk gets bad, the whole hatddisk will crash. On the contrary, since the systm is up and running, it is better you take backup of important files before shutting down.

Best of luck
 

ramani
(Subramanian.G),FoxAcc, ramani_g@yahoo.com

That sound could be your floppy drive seeking or your cdrom drive.  IMHO if your hard drive had made that sound the heads would be ruined and you wouldn't be able to boot at all.

Still not a bad idea to backup critical data and then try a complet chkdsk/scandisk on the system with repair on and see if you get a lot of errors.

The two rules for success are:
1. Never tell them everything you know.

Just as a sidenote....I have an IBM Deskstar in my system. Not too long ago it started making a similar high pitched "dot matrix printer sound" whenever it was accessed. Low and behold, after having kittens at the prospect of losing my favorite drive, I found a bad connector on the power plug for that drive. Loss of voltage on one of the pins was causing the drive to make some very wierd noises and spit up some incredibly long transfer times. Its a longshot, but worth looking at perhaps.

how old is the drive? Have you got primary boot on IDE0 or floppy? Try full defragment/cleanup and then formatC if u must.

Interesting note zigzag77 - power connectors could be the cause....

T3/\/\p()
tek-tips regular.
_________________
www.european-vikings.com
www.strikeforcecenter.com

it's pretty recent.

KingOfSnake - The only sports drink with ice crystals
(and marshmellos!)

I had a similar problem.  Go to scandisk and deselect the fix automatically.  Sometimes when fix automatically is selected, a drive will make a sound like chung, chung, chung, chung.  It can be a made by the drive motor and the heads moving back and forth over bad data, or a spot on the harddrive that is irrepairable.  Sometimes a harddrive will try to read and reread the data in an attempt to rebuild the damaged area.  This can take forever.  My harddrive did this for a couple hours one day so I took a chance and let it just keep going.  It eventually fixed the problem.  When it was done I also ran the Disk Defrag program.  Once it finishes running what happens is it usually marks the area as being unusable.

Will the disk be ok?  Maybe, maybe not!

Other probllems can cause this type of behavior.  The Hard Disk can have a hard crash where a head actuall touches the Disk and scrapes the surface.  The disk drive motor can be slowing down right before it wares out!  It is hard to tell.  I definitely would back up the data!

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

Hi folks, well I know this is an old subject but this has just happened to me, thank goodness I bought my iMac four weeks ago, so I have another access point to this forum.In February or thereabouts
I made a boot disk with Norton AV but when I tried to make all the other rescue disks and tested them they wouldnt work. I bought a new set of Floppys and tried again , but again they didnt work, so I just left it. I thought perhaps my A drive was faulty and meant to get it looked at but didnt.
Then today I was working on my PC cos I needed to print some photos off and my  Printer is attached to the PC. when I think I gve it a couple too many commands in quick succession  and it locked up on me.  I tried CTRL ALT DEL but it still wouldnt work, or restart   So I restarted using the reset button It was after that that I recd the message that started this thread. I had defragged my whole disk in October and been on holiday or using my iMac so have hardly used it since then .
BUT what do I do now. I was using MGI Photosuite at the time.
My system is Celeron 111, 433 proc. 30gb master +8Gbslave
running Windows ME
About 11GB free on the master and 7GB free on the slave.
Please can anyone help.
Or is this my punishment for going to Apple. [

Learn something new every day.

Sounds like your drive may have died. Have you got a win98 boot disk? (www.bootdisk.com has a variety). You can boot PC from that and see what's 'visible' from the dos prompt. Also use fdisk to view drive & partition information.
Is the main drive still being detected in the bios (do its details appear on POST screen)?

HI Wolluf,
well thank you for your reply but luckily when I turned the computer on this morning all seemed OK.
The problem I now have is that If what happened ever did occur irretrievably I wouldnt have a basic rescue disc. The Boot disk I had worked but I couldnt do anything else. How can I make my rescue set and ensure they work. Can you think whether the 'a' drive isnt writing properly or could there be another fault?
Only because the rescue set didnt work on test.

Regards
shirly

Learn something new every day.

On initial boot I had a whole string of .dlls said to be missing.e.g. RSTRUI.exe, stmgr-SMGR.dll
Explorer OLE32.dll
Explorer BROWSE.dll
Explorer RASAP132.dll I stopped it then and
 restarted, and it suggested I do system restore, so I did this back to Oct 31 cos I went on holiday after that and it had been working OK.
I am sure I did a NAV update when I got back.
Then I decided to restart, again
 and it opened in safe mode.
I tried scandisk and it wanted to install new hardware, but doesnt tell me what, it couldnt find any 'driver'  I tried this twicebut still same result
So I clicked on cancel. I then received
this
ENUM\Htree\ROOT\O
SURegcreatekey failed
Has anyone any idea what is going on?
Regards
Shirley

Learn something new every day.

  I think the rescue disks you are refering to will help you with virus related problems but if your hard drive fails they will not help at all. the only cure for that is a good backup and a new hard drive. As to why it won't make the disks in the first place, is this a "store bought" copy of norton? There is rumored to be a cracked version going around( so I hear) where everything works fine except for the rescue disk part which probably was removed to save space.It is still shown as an option but just doesn't work.
             RocKeRFelLerZ

I bought this from my computer supplier when he rebuilt my system with a new HDD last year. So  that may be what has happened. What do I have to do now. Can I download a version, except I cant see my last post on this.
ridiculous system. If that is the case. At least they could have warned us about it.
Regards
shirley

Learn something new every day.

Sounds like something is failing on your PC (quite likely hard drive). Can you run scandisk - try the thorough option. If problems - back up and buy & new drive before you lose everything!
If that's ok, I'd probably think about backing up (onto second drive if possible), and trying a clean reinstall of ME (ie, format the drive before reinstalling). If you get problems during that install - you've almost certainly got a hardware problem that isn't your hard drive.

Is it likely that my hard drive is failing  it is only a year or so old I did a complete defrag in October, and it seemed fine then I think. How can I back up everything if I cant get into it?

Learn something new every day.

Is there room on your second drive to install ME? If so, you could make slave the master, install ME on it, put problem disk back in as slave and get access to it that way (hopefully can scandisk it 'properly' too).

I have 8GB on second drive so should be bale to, But I just had to shut it all down again by pushing power button, could that have damaged the drive at all , its not the first time I had to do that. I didnt like it but even CTRL ALT DEL didnt work.

Learn something new every day.

Just pushing power button shouldn't damage the drive (just upsets windows sometimes - but yours is already)

HI again Wolluf, I have to go out now but maybe we can pick this up again, when could you be available. I find your assistance very helpful
cheers
shirley

Learn something new every day.

Hi ...
It looks that your hard disk is dammeged.
Try to get a backup before any thing else.
good luck,

I can only get in via safemode
can I do anything from there?

Learn something new every day.

Most windows functions work in safe mode.
But, I think you need to work out what you want to achieve now. I don't know how much data which needs backing up you have on the drive that is causing the problems - but my first priority would be to do that. That's why I suggested installing windows on the second drive - hopefully you can back up what you need on that drive too (personal data is not usually too large - unless you have lots of MP3s or videos - in which case, do you have a CD writer you could back up to? Once backed up, you can investigate the bad drive. An obvious option would be to wipe it clean & install fresh copy of windows. If both the formatting operation and the scandisk before windows installs run ok, its likely drive is ok, and your problems have been software based. I would go on using it in this case - reinstall you software etc. Keep a watch for odd behaviour though (although, unfortunately you have windows ME, which by general consensus is worst version of Windows! - so odd behaviour is not uncommon). If there are problems with formatting or scandisk, would suggest disk is not reliable. I'd retire it in this case.
All this will take a fair amount of time - I don't know how much you wish to spend. You could just carry on using smaller drive as master with windows & make the problem drive slave (if it formats ok).
Enough of this rambling. Hope its of some use.

I dont believe, this I am hoping it is not my hard drive as this is just the problem I had when I bought the new hard drive. I think I may take it into my supplier, a local small firm not a big retailer nd see what they say. If I dont get any joy with SCandisk, which starts and then tells me it has found new hardware, but not what it is so I dont know what driver o look for.
I tried starting in the mode where I could tell it which progs,devices to load and dropped the scanner from thte list but it still wnats a driver for new hardware.
My 8Gb drive was my main. I bought Win ME becaue 95 wouldnt recognise my 30gb hard drive except in 2 gb partitions.HO HUM
Will try out suggestions tomorrow.
then if all else fails take it to Swanley computers on Monday.
thanks for helping so far anyway.    but really

regrds
shirley

Learn something new every day.

I tried installing WinMe this morning by putting the disc in the CD drive, but nothing happens, It still searches for new hardware.
I am going to try unplugging  all my peripherals and then boot it up. See what happens. Otherwise it will have  to go for more specialist help as I have tried all that I know just to get into the machine.

Learn something new every day.

Shirley,

Have you set machine to boot from CD rather than floppy/hard drive (bios setting) before booting with ME disk in drive?

Oh No I didnt realise. I wondered how to do it and in the end gave up and took it to the supplier in Dartford . they built the machine for me last year so know it and hopefully will get it sorted. I am cross that I couldnt do it myself, but I did want to get it working properly again as I use it for my card making  and my scanner only works on my PC, It is so old it wont work on my iMac.

BUt I thank you very much for your help. and will star your responses even tho I had to get it fixed elswhere.
I will post back later if they can tell me what went wrong as this may help other people.

Thank you very much for your time.
regards
Shirley

Learn something new every day.

I would suggest that your hard drive is on the verge of pegging out. Back up as much data as you can and have a new hard drive installed. If you are lucky, you may be in time for the contents of your hard drive to be cloned to the new drive before the old one dies.

I wish I had seen this post sooner...
Most hard drive mfgs. Have utilities posted on their sites to diagnose drive problems like the ones that have been noted here. Many also have an automated RMA system that will allow you to return a drive that is still under warranty. I had a recent experience with Seagate that was refreshingly pleasant. I was able to confirm the drive was still under warranty via their site. After running the diagnostic as instructed, I posted the noted error code and received the info. for processing the return. New/replacement drive showed up promptly and I was back in business! Of course, data loss is a typical casualty in this type of event, and they assume no liability for that portion, but they do stand behind their equipment! Something to think about the next time you hear a drive going bump in the night...
Mike V.

Ok thanks to everyone who posted on here to try to help me. I will put the result on here when I get my computer back. I suppose the warranty only lasts one year cos you can bet I was a monh over that.
Anyway As I said the people looking at it are the ones who fitted it so that should help
I may also put a 2nd OS onit Probably RedHat
cheers and have a beer or whatever on me. I'll pay U when I C U
to everyone, I will be back soon.

regards
shirley

Learn something new every day.

WEll I had some good news but mostly bad,
My floppy drive worked.my 8 gig is still OK, funny I have had that ages and it is fine except for the glitch last year but that must have been a softwar problem, couldnt get pst the welcome screen. However
The bad news was that my hard drive was originally instlled on 1st November last year and #Fujitsu said, In the vein fo hard luck matey!!!! [2thumbsdown] if there isnt a smiley? for that there needs to be can someone produce one please. I dont know how, but if someone could teach me I can try .
The other thing is I do not know the cause of the problem,
so its cost me £125. to get it all sorted out. the drive cost 79.99 which was 50 quid less than it cost last year. but still all the labour and everything added up. I have put Win98 back on but it will take a bit of gettting used to after ME and I have installed my NAV as the first thing I did and updated it properly so that should run except the liveupdate facility is disabled. so have to sort thta out or put an email reminder to myself.Cos I already had bugbear this year which I didnt realise disabled NAV.
Anyway enuff rambling
thanks to all the techs who tried to help. will get back soon and post the stars tomorrow as its late and my bed calls.

Cheers everyone.
Shirley

Learn something new every day.

Friends,
Going through the replies of this post made me feel that the essence of the post itself has been long lost. Hard disk emitting grinding noises...to installing WinME....phew!!! And what are those stars for....I wonder!!

Zigzag77 made the only decent suggestion in the entire post. Might not sound very technical at the first instance though, but did KingofSnake pay heed ??

Another suggestion - since ideas seem to be flowing pretty thick and fast (more thick than fast!!) - detach the Hard Drive and put it in the freezer overnight. Take it out the next morining and allow it to thaw in normal/room temperature for about an hour or so (hope you don't live close to the North or the South Poles). Wipe the drive clean and reinstall it in the PC. This should hopefully solve your problems. Remember to wear rubber-soled shoes while cleaning the drive. Hopefully that will simulate a static-free environment.

Best Regards,
Yours sincerely,
Udai.

udaisengupta,
Thank you for your post it gave me a laugh on a Monday morning - that is always a god start to the week.

However, I feel I must take you to task over the cursory nature of your post.

You neglect to say whether the hard drive should be place in a plastic bag or any other container.  You omit to mention the temperature the freezer should be set to.  You totally ignore the problem of placing flesh on freezing cold metallic parts.

Further, Wives, mothers, fathers and the cat will be extremely put out at the prospect of a puddle of water in front of the fire hearth.

In addition to that, suggesting that the hard drive should be cleaned whilst wearing a pair of rubber-soled shoes ignores the fact that the person cleaning the hard drive is likely to be sat on the couch in front of the fire, negating the impact of rubber-soled shoes.

Though I do commend the time and dilligence that went into your post, I feel that when posting such a drastic step - you could at least say "why you think it will work" and reassure the person about to place the hard drive into the system that it won't be the last thing or maybe it will, if they are not as careful and experienced at cleaning as you are.



All the best.

Oh yet more ideas, but what exactly will putting the hard drive in the freezer do>
I only heard that putting a car radio in the freezer when the code is not knowon helsp that process.
handy if you steal radios I suppose!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Alos I wonder wha tmy position is legallyas the shop kept my hard drive that they took out.
I wanted to be able to conact Fujitsu myself and plead with them. but I cant do that if I havent got the drive,  Surely It is my property considring I paid for the thing in the 1st place??
Sorry this is more a legal rights question thatn a tech one but I owndered if anyone else had heard of this happening.

Learn something new every day.

shirleyowl,
Start another thread and I will give you an answer - you might not like it but it will be informative.

Regards.

Friends,
Glad to know that I could provide you with some fun.

You are right Win98User that I should be taken to task for the very cursory nature of my post.

Admittedly, I was under the impression that my friends would be knowledgeable enough NOT to keep the hard disk NOT wrapped up in the freezer.

The temperature can be the normal operating temperature of any freezer (hopefully it will not be set to near kelvin temp.).

I did mention thawing the hard drive out in room/normal temperature which does NOT necessarily mean sitting in front of the fire hearth to steam the hard drive !!!

You can say Win98User that I was mistaken in assuming that my friends are all well-informed, experience and careful techies (which I must admit I am yet to be).

As for the entire object of the exercise - substantial cooling effect induced on any computer peripheral or component increases performance to a certain degree. The physics of the exercise will be too large a subject to explain here but if you so desire I shall be most happy to present an article on this.

I have had experience in noticing that PCs tend to be very unstable and their behavioral patterns are a delight to any mathematician, when they are running with a very high temperature. In others words, lack of adequate cooling measures often lead to frequent crashing of the hard drives, frying of the CPUs and the mainboards (not to mention the chips of course - no pun intended).

It is possible that the PC of KingofSnake is not cooling itself properly. It is also possible that the PC has been subject to frequent power-sheddings and may have been running without an UPS. It is also possible that there have been numerous occasions of improper shutdown. Possibility of virus attacks cannot be ruled out.

Admittedly, my suggestion is wayward and may not sound very convincing. Indeed, even I could not explain it to myself when I managed to recover one of my hard drives in this fashion.

Best Regards,
Yours sincerely,
Udai.

udaisengupta,
My colleauges at work were looking at me rather strangely as I sat laughing to myself in my little corner of the world.

I look forward to your future postings and I will not gainsay your suggestion until I have tried it myself - which may be never.

Kind Regards,

John.

Never say never. Facts are stranger than fiction.

Best Regards,
Yours sincerely,
Udai.

Indeed, quite strange frezzing hard drives. Pretty sure that would do it some harm.

It's a Fujitsu so don't be too suprised if it falls apart unfortunately most of them do although just over a year you should be able to send it back to them direct for a repair (probably not if you've turned it into a popsicle though).

And you do have the rights to your old Hard Drive. Demand it back :)

Grenage,
See Thread602-423766 for an update on shirleyowl's hard drive problem.

Also, a kind word of advice .  I suggest that if you are going to make posts with spelling mistakes, that perhaps it should be Fujitsu that you spell wrongly.

Might help your defence if someone wants to sue you for libel - unless your are actually a Fujitsu executive with the inside track, then all you stand to lose is your job - unless you actually own Fujitsu, then all you stand to lose is your business.

Keep smiling.  It makes people worry about what you know.

Regards,

John.

In a bad mood are we Win98 ? :)

And it's hardly slander, it's been shown over and over that Fujitsu drives constantly fail. In fact come to think of it it wasn't too long ago they had to recall a rediculous number of defective drives.

Hi Grenage,
I'm never in a bad mood when I can banter with good folks like yourself.

From my own experience, Fujitsu hard drives have been the most problematic ones I have used.  Prone to failure for no good reason - I now stay clear of them.

Regards.

Win98User appears to be from the Fujitsu Co. himself ;)

Sorry old chap, in your shoes with the kind of posts that I have made, I would have been peeved too. Understandably, my suggestions were very off-handed. I apologize to you all for wasting your time.

Sorry once again.

Best Regards,
Yours sincerely,
Udai.

udaisengupta,
There is no need to apologise - humour should never be shunned and abused.

Your tongue in cheek comments were doused with some very valid points and those of us who are willing to look past what is on the surface can see their worth.

There is nothing wrong with brainstorming or trying to give flight to fanciful ideas.

After all, didn't Clive Sinclair give us the ZX80, ZX81 and the Sinclair Spectrum series (in the uk at least).  Did he not then go forward with the ill-fated C5 venture?  But lo, even that had its value as we see today with Citroen's version of the C5.

Progress brings change and old ideas are often renewed.



Regards,

John.
The views expressed by the author are not necessarily held by the author.

udaisengupta, your tip about freezing the hard drive has been discussed in this forum many times. It was a trick that used to work in the early days of hard drive technology, but not so much any more. If it's a last ditch effort, and the drive is toast anyway, try it and it might resurrect the drive long enough to retrieve the data. These new guys haven't heard of it, so they think it's funny and a joke. There was a time when it was no joke.

Jim

Please come back and let us know if your
 problem is fixed and what fixed it!!

ANFPS26,
Nice of you to call me a new guy (or were you talking about
Grenage?).

Equally nice of you to make assumptions about what I know and don't know, lol, (or were you talking about
Grenage?).

I remember the days, when a 500Mb hard drive was recieved with cries of, "What, that will last for years, you'll never fill it". - I also have memories from before then, because that was only 12 to 14 years ago.

I also acknowledged udaisengupta post as containing valid points - But, I still hold to the fact that putting "today's" hard drives into a freezer isn't something that should be talked about without covering the principles of Health and Safety, not to mention that doing so may invalidate a warranty - (that is my feeble attempt at humour).

Incidentally, I know 1 or 2 people in the "biz" (of many years standing) and I have yet to come across anyone that has ever tried it.

I know a little bit about maths and a little bit about physics - and whether you put something into a freezer and bring it up to room temperature or just stick it in front of a fan blowing cold air, the cooling effect is just the same - without the condensation problem, of course!

Anyone who claims to have revived a deceased hard drive by freezing it, didn't check it out properly before putting it into the freezer.

Regards,

John.
I like to be proved wrong, it furthers my knowledge.

My only point was that it was once on the list of "things to try". It's right up there with "brogan maintenance" (you give it a swift kick with your shoe and sometimes it revives whatever is broken.)Ha. Another method is to say a prayer and cross your fingers. I've tried all of those (and more) in the past. I wouldn't do any of these to anything under warrenty. These are all desperate acts for desperate people. Sometimes they work and it's chaulked up to "FM" and the last word is "Magic" (you can figure out the first.)

Jim

Please come back and let us know if your
 problem is fixed and what fixed it!!

I have had an IBM drive make this horrible sound.  I ran scandisk from the boot disk and it took for ever for Scandisk to get past that point, but it did eventually complete a surface scan.  When the heads approach this sector or whatever on the drive the sound is made by the hard drive trying to keep rereading the same area repeatedly.  Since then my hard drive has been running great without a hitch.  Keep in mind that most IBM hard drives have a longer warranty period.

If you do not like my post feel free to point out your opinion or my errors.

You are quite right I had not heard of freezing a Hard Drive before, still Not something I would do even if the air was completely dry ;)

I never started getting into computers until the 4.3gb Quantum Bigfoots came out, and even then "getting into" isn't quite the same as "starting to learn about".

Another thread on "freezing" the harddrive:

http://lug.kamloops.net/pipermail/lug/2000-October/000133.html
Another:
http://phenomfx.com/Tech_tips/messages/3.html
Another:
http://www.experts-exchange.com/Operating_Systems/Win98/Q_20327681.html

This has become an "old wives tale", but people still swear it works. Do a Google search on "hard drive freezer".

Jim

Please come back and let us know if your
 problem is fixed and what fixed it!!

WEll this has certainly generated a lot of posts. It is interesting to hear about the Fujitsu drive problem I must check to see what they put in as a replacement. and try to regain my old drive.
Thanks so much to everyone who has helped. The only good thing that came out of it was I got rid of all the rubbish I had meaning  to clear out. Trouble with uninstalling things is they tend to leave little bits of themselves behind. Anyone know how a NON Tecchy when it comes down to the real basics gets over this problem I want to avoid it in the future, Freeware is best, I have spent quite enough on this machine to last a couple of years now.
Thanks once again
to you all
and a Very Merry Hic!Christmas to everyone who celebrates the season.
Cheers
Shirey

Learn something new every day.

hi guys and gals im new here so go easy on me lol. I've read with great interest all your posts and hopefuly learned from each. first i flunked spelling so dont go there. ok with that said i do a limited amount of data recovery purely because people do tend to learn from costly mistakes. the theory of freezing a hard drive is not to rebuild a failed unit but to cool it to be able to buy as much time as allowable to succesfuly clone the data onto a good drive before the temp rises and the drive crashes big time. i dont think any of you would dispute the fact that heat on a hard drive is its major source of premature failure. i do not use a freezer although it can be done with proper precautions. the method that i use is wraping the drive in a towel and container and use dry ice to keep it chilled while attempting to hopefully recover the data which should have been properly backed up but wasn't. this method is used as a last resort and works quite well for data recovery but it is not a fix. thanks for reading my two cents worth have a great christmas......Jim

HI JBMPRODS
Welcome to this forum and site which is great.  
I am even less of a tecchy than you but I find it so useful and have even added my twopennence worth of advice rarely.

seasonal salutations

Everyone helps a little or a lot.
Cheers
Shirey.

Learn something new every day.

Check your boot order in the bios after you have saved as much data as you can and checked all of your connections, change the boot order alternating between the different boot devices to see if your getting the sound from one of the drives. If it is your hdd making this sound, your lucky its booting at all and probably won't next time.
Good idea to disconnect any periphial devices too.
This has probably been presented here somewhere, but Im new here, havent had time to check them out.
Ow u doin?

ADNova.