Windows 7 - DiskBoot Failure, please insert system disk.

I have a computer on my hands that has had troubles, When I first took a look at the computer I thought it was the hard drive, then I did a factory restore and everything was fine, installed drivers just fine etc etc. But after everything was said and done, when the computer started, the error "DiskBoot Failure, please insert system disk" came up. I then took the computer and opened it up and made sure the HD was pluged in correctly,replaced SATA cables, and tried again, Same thing. After tinkering around a bit and going into bios, the bios didnt recognize the HD. SO I put hirens in and then went to the boot menu... Of course it was there, Booted into hard drive everything was fine. SOO I restarted the computer again went into the boot menu and it was gone... After booting into hirens mini windows xP I went to the HDs and it was there once again, so atm im doing a chkdsk for errors and bad sectors. Could it be a bad Hard drive?

Most likely the Boot files are missing or corrupted due to the restore.

First, make yourself a Partition Wizard Bootable CD from here: Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to boot computer directly to manage partition.

Make sure your CD-ROM is set to be the first boot device in the BIOS and then boot into Partition Wizard.

Make sure the partition that Windows is installed on is set to Active. Right click the OS partition > Modify > Set as Active.

Remove the Partition Wizard CD and put in your Windows 7 installation DVD.
Restart the computer.
Run Startup Repair from Windows 7 DVD 3 times.

Hope that helps.

I'm confused? If the BIOS doesn't detect the hard drive it shouldn't matter what you boot to, it shouldn't be accessible at all. BIOS first then OS.

Tv, can I just throw the installinatikn desk

Sorry iPhone, can I just put the installation disk in and repair?

Yes Alpha, it is contradictory and confusing. But if the BIOS truly could not see the HDD (as opposed to the OP) then how could Hirens see it? So I'm going on the assumption that it is recognized in the BIOS. We will know soon enough if that is true or not.

Genesis: You should weigh in here with what you know. For best results, use clear, concise, short sentences!

You could try it, sure. But if the partition with the OS boot files is not marked as active then Startup Repair will not work.

You could also make the problem a little harder to fix if a different partition is marked as active then the one with the boot files. For instance if you have a 100MB System Reserved partition, that will be the one that must be marked as Active.

Running Partition Wizard does double duty too. You can discover if the disk is recognized, what is going on with the partition structure, and even post pictures here showing us what is going on. Remember: we are groping in the dark over here.

So try it: start at step 2 and if it does not work then you will have to go back and start over at step 1.

Exactly what I was thinking. It's detected but not listed as a boot option in the boot menu for some reason.

I'll post pictures asap, I'm running some stuff, I'll get back to you, it is contradictory I know, that's why I'm confused about it

okay, well I put in the OS disk and hit repair, as soon as I hit "repair" It popped up, There was a problem with your start up, do you want to repair this" I clicked "okay" and it hasnt done that... does that say anything to you guys?