Desktop won't start up....

county

A little help from anyone appreciated - have an Iqon desktop - no problems with it till now...won't start up. Begins to but then sits for ages, spits up a bit more then stops at this message:

Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter.

Don't know what this means or what I need to do - please help - got stuff on there I need to get at!!

Thanks.

weeder

sound like either the mobo IDE controller is dead or the hard disk is dead if its under warranty nows best time to use it

awhir

well
Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter

means that windows can not be read from your hard drive and you have to put your windows disk into your pc and re boot.im 100% on this so correct me if wrong.

county

So is that the disc that originally came with it? Sorry not very savvy with this stuff!! Just put it in and go from there? It's outta warranty I think - got it about a year ago....

Ruu_Old

Make sure your hard drive is showing up ok in the BIOS setup and is correctly in the boot sequence, normally Floppy, HD and CD in that order. Will it even go into safe mode (F8 at startup). There are a couple of things to try out before having to re-install. Id be worried about the condition of your hard drive though it shouldnt be dead just yet.

county

Ruu wrote:

Make sure your hard drive is showing up ok in the BIOS setup and is correctly in the boot sequence, normally Floppy, HD and CD in that order.

Will I see this at startup or do I need to do something? It initially gives me the options of :

Press DEL to enter setup/Q-flash or F9 for xpress Recovery.

If I do nothing it then runs through something and displays:

Client Mac Addr ......
DHCP...../ ( the slash is spinning )

Then it goes to:

PXE-E53: No boot filename recieved
PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel PXE Rom
Then the disk boot failure message prompting me to insert the disk

F8 is not working

AdeleS

Unfortunately, hard drives do die, mine just did yesterday on a 6 weeks old Dell Dimension computer. Thankfully, still under warranty so it will be collected, fixed and returned. Still leaves me wondering how the heck can a brand new hard drive die so fast? It was a Maxtor drive, been reading up on it on the internet and apparently not the best. I hope Dell aren't trying to cut corners now by using cheap hardware:mad:

netwhizkid

If you have a floppy disk in the drive take it out until it starts up. I used to get this message loads of time on Win 98, The computer would not start up until you took out the floppy disk, remove it and re-insert it when you log on.

What OS are you operating on ? Win 98 / Win XP etc.

county

No floppy in there.....

OS is Win XP 2000...

Mr. Presentable

If you made no hardware changes and it suddenly stopped working, chances are the hardware is OK. I'd do a BIOS reset and test again. Next I'd try to boot to the XP CD and replace the Boot file and test again. Then I'd start looking at hardware one by one, starting with gfx card.

county

nipplenuts wrote:

If you made no hardware changes and it suddenly stopped working, chances are the hardware is OK. I'd do a BIOS reset and test again. Next I'd try to boot to the XP CD and replace the Boot file and test again. Then I'd start looking at hardware one by one, starting with gfx card.

Eh?? Total novice here....will try these things if you can explain to me how to do it....:)

Mr. Presentable

The BIOS or the Basic Input Output System of a computer is the first thing your computer look for when powered up. This is a basically a set of instructions and data which tell the computer how to start or boot. These instruction reside on a CMOS chip on the mainboard. This CMOS chip is powered by a small button-cell in the vicinity. Whatever changes you make to the BIOS (or in the CMOS setup) are saved to this chip.

You have two options to reset your BIOS:

1. You can take out the battery and then re-install it.
2. You can toggle the BIOS reset jumper.

Either way the BIOS will be reset to the factory settings.

The reset jumper varies from motherboard to motherbard so removing the battery may be simpler. You need to leave it out for a few minutes. No leads should be plugged into the PC at this time, and beware of static by touching the metal frame before tyouching the board.

county

Remove the battery??? Surely there is no battery in a desktop?

Mr. Presentable

There's a battery. It keeps the time and boot instruction even when the power is off.

To repair XP, there is a good guide here:

http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic8356.html

county

Sorry!! Thanks for that nipplenuts - will have a look at it tommorrow and see how I get on - cheers for the help - I may be back for more!

Ruu_Old

Here is a pic of the batter that may need replacing sometime or in the near future as nipplenuts said. Just used it in another post

Thats inside your computer on the motherboard.

quaidox

you can normally hear when a hard drive is about to fail.
when you power it up can you hear the hard drive start to spin?
is it making clicking noises?
you may need to remove the casing to hear this a bit better.......

county

It's not making the usual clicking noises upon starting - does one set then stops...

nobodythere

I don't think it's supposed to make clicking noises and ruu must you use every opportunity to post that picture? Not everything is the fault of the CMOS


You need to go into the BIOS and tell look for something along the lines of "Primary Master" "Primary Slave", "Secondary Master", "Secondary Slave". The names beside some of these should be your hard drive/cd-rom drive. If no hard drive names show up you might have a loose cable. If it does show you up that's a bit of a problem, because it means your hard drive is most likely fooked. Either that or the IDE controller (the thing that connects your hard drive to the motherboard of the computer) is fooked. If that's the case you can find out whether it's the hard drive or the motherboard by taking out the hard drive and putting it into another computer