Disk boot failure. Please insert system disk and press enter

[CityChicken]

I have recently ran into some serious trouble with my new Western Digital Caviar Black 750GB Hard drive. In order for anyone to help me you must be updated with everything I have tried and the circumstances surrounding it.

It all started randomly. The night before I finished playing HoN and then simply shut off my computer. Nothing out of the ordinary happened. Then Magically the next day I turn on the computer and I get this son of a b error saying "DISK BOOT FAILURE."

I am running two Operatings Systems. Vista on the WD 250GB and Windows 7 on the Caviar Black 750GB. I decided to keep Vista just in case, and it turned out to be a good idea, otherwise I would have to write this from the library.

I have tried almost every suggested solution to this problem. I really do not want to reformat my hard drive! I have valuable pictures and memories that I need.

An important note. The hard drive is recognized in the Bios, but when running windows the drive does not appear, and therefore I cannot access it. Before(the incident) I could access the 250GB from Windows 7 and I could have gotten all the files, however I cannot do this Visa Versa(access the 750GB from Windows Vista). I am not sure what this means, but hopefully it means the hard drive is not completely broken, but quite a paradox.

I have tried to swap out SATA Cables (both drives are SATA btw) I have swapped SATA slots. I have tried to run off of the CD, however when asking which OS to select none are present and therefore none of the repair programs fix anything.

I have also tried the Bootrec.exe commands and I get an "Element not found" error on 3/4 commands. the only one that works is the /FixMbr which says (command successful, or something to that effect).

I have accessed the Boot Menu and selected Hard Drive for all, but that didn't work. NOthing seems to work, and I am afraid I must reinstall and lose all Data...PLEASE HELP ME!!! I am going to burn my comp!

 

[WindowsStar]

Download this liveCD and boot your computer with it. Very carefully check to see if the partition for your Windows 7 drive is deleted or corrupt etc. You can use this software to UNDELETE and fix some known problems.

AGAIN BE CAREFUL it is very easy to DELETE a partition.

GParted -- Live CD/USB/PXE/HD

 

[CityChicken]

Thank you WindowsStar for your solution, however before I may test it out, I need to know how I can backup my hard drive if I cannot view it form Vista(as I mentioned earlier I am booting from Vista and the 750GB on which Windows 7 is located cannot be seen). It is present on the Bios page, can I do anything from there(doesn't seem like it). Thank you very much for your help kind sir.

 

[WindowsStar]

Yes that is the catch 22. Since you cannot see the drive it is going to be hard to back up. You can use the software above to VIEW things; just take a look and see what is going on. It is a bootable CD so just look around. Just don't edit something and you will be fine.

There are backup software’s that can backup a disk as RAW data but it would take a bit of time to set that up and then learn how to do it. You should be safe to look at your drive with the bootable CD as long as you stay away from EDIT, CREATE, DETELE and stuff like that. If the software sees your disk then we can go from there.

 

[Lordbob75]

It sounds like the MBR (master boot record) on your Black drive is damaged.

If you can, boot into your Windows 7 DVD, and click repair. Then let it run a startup repair (if it finds the Windows)

~Lordbob

 

[WindowsStar]

It sounds like the MBR (master boot record) on your Black drive is damaged.

If you can, boot into your Windows 7 DVD, and click repair. Then let it run a startup repair (if it finds the Windows)

~Lordbob

+1 MBR or partition problem.

 

[Nnebr]

I had a similar problem. I had Windows on a Seagate 1 TB HDD until my BIOS informed SMART Status Bad, Backup and Replace. So, I installed Windows on a another HDD and copied all my files. I bought a new HDD and replaced the broken one. After that I got the Disk Boot Failure -message. I replaced the new HDD with the broken one, and Windows booted normally. I had the 100 MB System Reserved MBR (Master Boot Record) partition on the broken HDD.
I always install Windows on its own partition and keep all my other files on other HDDs and partitions. That was once again very good thinking, because now I could instal new windows on another partition on the same HDD. Now I had System Reserved partition on the right HDD. Then I created backup of the broken HDDs MBR, and immediately after that recovered the backup on the new System Reserved partition. I took the broken HDD out, ran the Windows Startup Repair twice and my Windows once again worked perfectly.

Well my problem wasn't quite the same, but it could've been, if I hadn't noticed the SMART status early enough.