Boot Device Not Found

This evening my computer screen turned blue and a message said that something happened and windows had been closed down to protect the system. When I rebooted no boot object was found, and in the printing which appeared I noticed that the word 'ERROR' was to the right of the primary drive. The process continued past the Dell blue bar but no further in the boot sequence. The screen remained blank. This is the first time this has ever happened to me so I'd appreciate any advice. Thank you.

 

Boot with your XP CD in the drive bay and evoke the Recovery Console. Run the chkdsk /r command and allow it to "fix" any errors it may find.

If the Recovery Console does not detect any Windows installations for you to log onto, your hard drive may have failed. To check that, download and run the diagnostic software for your particular drive from HERE..

BTW, check all connections on the HD and MOBO by reseating them.

 

I inserted my Dell Installation Disk and rebooted. Unfortunately nothing different happened from before. The Dell disk is not the Microsoft XP disk so might that be the reason for the failure to boot?

 

You will likely have to change your BIOS/CMOS boot sequence to check the CD-ROM drive before the Hard Drive. You should see which key to press to enter SETUP when first booting. Otherwise, check the documentation that came with your computer.

 

If you can't find your documentation:

Try this.

Especially page 50 instructions for a diagnostics procedure.

 

Thanks. I've booted into the Recovery Console. It says:

1: K:\minint

Which Windows installation would you like to log into (to cancel press Enter)?

What exactly do I type after the question mark? There are no choices given. Besides, if I type anything only one character will show.

 

type 1 and press enter since that's the only option offered.

 

I presume that this means my hard drive has failed?

 

When I press '1' the following appears: K:\minint>

What do I do now?

 

type chkdsk /r and press enter.

 

The volume checking and additional recovery has finished. Should reboot?

 

Yes, and pray.

 

Alas, no change. I'm running Dell Diagnostics at the moment.

 

OK, it's looking pretty grim. Be sure to double check all the connections before giving up.

 

Ok, thank you for all your help. I'll look at those connections tomorrow.

 

Alas, I just got news from the repair shop - my hard drive is dead. My Dell computer had a RAID drive (2 hard drives) configuration, and when one of them (the mirror) broke the other one couldn't be accessed anymore. All my data was lost. However, I had only reinstalled everything about a week ago and still have the data on an external drive. Phew!

The computer was bought new in October '06.

Thanks for your help, surferdude!

 

Thanks for the update.

That's unusual bad luck for a HD to fail so soon.

It's good to hear that you had a current backup.

All the best,

Dude