Prankster leaves me computerless, help please.

Will any other bootable disk boot? If you unplug the HD (if a desktop) will disk boot?

Reset the BIOS to defaults: Clear CMOS - 3 Ways to Clear the CMOS - Reset BIOS

While in BIOS setup set SATA controller to AHCI, DVD drive to boot first, HD second.

If this fails using tutorial try burning new DVD, then if it fails again write to flash stick which is booted under USB, Removable or HD's.

If that fails try booting DBAN or Partition Wizard bootable CD, burned using Windows Image Burner or ImgBurn. These should boot themselves, then wipe the HD which will likewise force installer to boot itself.

If a desktop, you can also move the HD to another PC to wipe it using Diskpart Clean Command, then move it back to see if installer boots itself or you can boot it.

computermesh said:

pparks1 said:

I've been using Linux and Windows for years and I have boxes that I test OS's on, and I've never loaded Ubuntu on a single system that rendered me unable to simply boot again from a Windows DVD and reinstall Windows.

For proof, try disconnecting your hard drive and then get your system to boot off that Windows DVD. See if you can proceed into the install from that point forward. If it still bombs out, it's obviously not GRUB.

I unplug the drive and turn it on and after the boot from cd/dvd it says disk boot failure insert system disk and press enter

This means that's its not finding a bootable system on your DVD drive and the system is failing to boot from it and then moves onto booting up from the hard drive. If that drive were connected, it would be loading GRUB.

Weird. I had this happen once with a very old laptop. I couldn't get a Windows 7 DVD to isntall after it had been running ubuntu or some other linux flavor for a while. I think I installed XP fine and just lived with that.

Figured I would just tell you that you are NOT an anomaly!