Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!hplabs!hpl-opus!hpccc!hp-sde!hpfcdc!hpldola!hp-lsd!gtuplab!ralf From: ralf@gtuplab.UUCP (Ralf Medow) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: Disk boot failure Message-ID: <110009@gtuplab.UUCP> Date: 23 Jun 88 03:18:18 GMT References: <565@novavax.UUCP> Organization: Georgia Tech Microprocessor Lab Lines: 36 > Bit of a problem here. > > I have an XT-turbo clone with a Seagate ST225 20 meg hard > drive and a ST10 v2.4 controller. The following happened once, then > went away, now has come to stay: [Description of hard disk boot failure deleted] > Besides, fdisk thinks the drive isn't there. So it told me > when I went that far. > > Two final things: sometimes on trying to boot up, I simply get > the message, "Boot disk failure. Type key to retry." > And if I boot off the floppy, the computer doesn't recognize > the hard drive's existence. We had a similar problem here recently. A no-name clone with two hard disks refused to boot from hard disk at power on with a short message (I don't remember what exactly it was, something like "Boot disk failure" or "Boot drive not ready" or so). The next day it worked again, and another day later if failed again. When booting off the floppy the computer ignored the existance of both hard disks: it was impossible to change the current drive to C: or D: and also impossible to format C:. As we didn't have any better idea we pulled out the HD controller card and plugged it in again. Afterwards and up to now everything worked fine, and all data were still on the disk. The problem was obviously a bad contact between HD controller card and motherboard. I don't know whether your problem is of the same nature, but at least you could give it a try. Ralf Medow {gatech|hp-lsd}!gtuplab!ralf Georgia Tech Box 31446 ralf@gtuplab.UUCP Atlanta, GA 30332