Hello everyone,

I am RELATIVELY computer literate, but I have a problem. YESTERDAY I was playing a game and my computer locked up. That's nothing new it does it every once in a while when the game gets laggy. It's a custom built computer (from Cyberpower systems). I don't think the specs are important. I had to push the reset button because it was completely locked up (Ctrl-Alt-Del didn't work). When it went to reboot I got a message "Disk boot failure. Insert disk and press enter". I tried to boot in safe mode but it didn't work. I figured "great I have a virus, just what I need the week before finals". I put the disk that was sent with the machine in and hit enter (I figured that it would really suck to LOSE all my data, but at least my computer would run). It came up with a blue Windows setup screen and started doing its thing. Then it got to a point where it asked me about partitioning hard drives and to select from this list of drives all of which said something about not being detected. When I hit any button a different blue screen comes up saying something to the effect of the computer has performed a fatal error and windows is shutting it down.

Please help me if you can. I have only had this computer for about 4 months and Tech support has been less than supportive. I am hoping there is some way to save the data, but if not I would at least LIKE to get the computer back to running.

Any help/suggestions will be greatly appreciated,
AndyYou get a boot disk failure message, your system doesn't recognize your hard drive and you can't reformat or partition your boot drive?

My wild guess is you've got a bad hard drive. Also possible you have a bad or intermittent drive cable/connectors, or your controller's gone south.

Even a custom built PC like yours should still be covered by some kind of warranty, but if not, try another hard drive in your system. Or, try your current hard drive in another PC. If you're lucky, you might be able to recover some data if your old drive will work as a slave.

DellThanks for the input.

The computer is supposed to have a 3 year warranty, but the customer service has been kind of difficult. One of the service techs is supposed to call me at 4pm this afternoon, hopefully they can give me some more insight.
I would stick to the 'warranty route' until you've EXHAUSTED your options. Anything you do to fix a possible hardware failure would certainly void it.

DellIf your computer has a floppy drive, then find another XP computer and copy the hidden ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini files to a floppy which you have FULL formatted on an XP computer. (NOT a boot floppy, just a straight format.)

The boot.ini file should read the same as yours so you may have to edit it to read as follows...

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

OR...

[boot loader]
timeout=10
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /fastdetect

If you have installed the Recovery Console on your boot drive there will be an additional line...

C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows Recovery Console" /cmdcons

Put this floppy in your A: drive and start the computer. It should (I hope) get you to the main drive.