Boot Failure: System Halted

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OK, well my friends computer gets this message when it goes to boot, Boot Failure: System Halted. He has a gateway and I don't know the model number because he put the gateway parts in a new case he bought. The computer has been working fine in the new case for some time. Here's what I did:

I checked the cabling and power and everything was ok inside. It still didn't boot.
I then tried switching the cable and it still didn't work.
Then I tried to use the windows XP cd to reinstall windows and it says a hard drive wasn't detected.
So I booted from Knoppix and it didn't detect the hard drive either.
I am thinking the hard-drive is bad.
I then checked the BIOS and it detected the hard-drive as the primary master IDE.
The boot order however does not allow me to select a hard-drive to boot.
I tried to clear the BIOS settings and it didn't help.
I tried the suspected bad hard-drive in other computers and it makes the other computers not boot either.
I tried a working hard-drive with windows xp on it in the problem machine, I went into the BIOS and I now could select in the boot order the hard drive, then when I try to let it run and it says there was an error starting windows and gives me the options of starting normally, safe mode, etc.. and no matter which option i choose, it restarts the computer within 2 seconds.

I think the hard-drive is bad but why won't the computer boot to the other working hard-drive. I have checked online and there are a lot of people with similiar problems but not specifically like mine. If anyone could please help I would really appreciate it. Thank you. -John
 
The reason it will not work with the good hard drive, is due to the fact that when you install windows, it detects all the hardware it needs to install. Once you move that hard drive to a computer with a new MOBO, Processor, Ram ect it wont work. Now if you took that HD that has windows on it, do a reformat while it is in THAT COMPUTER, it should work fine. As far as your BAD hard drive, 10 to 1 if it dosnt work in another station (As far as spinning up and appearing in the bios) then it wont work lol.
 
If the move to a new case included the motherboard, hard drive, video graphics, and sound, it should work fine... as WCP does not detect the case nor power supply.
You likely have what you have what you already diagnosed... a bad hard drive. You may still be able to recover data using it as a slave with a new drive jumpered as Master.
When the drive is not detected, it is usually a failed cable, loose socket, or bad drive.
 
raybay said:
If the move to a new case included the motherboard, hard drive, video graphics, and sound, it should work fine... as WCP does not detect the case nor power supply.


Well, this would be true, if he was moving everything to a new case. But he is just testing out a prefabed HD in the BAD computer. So if the hard drive has windows installed from a totally different system (Different motherboard, ram ect) then it will not boot the correct hardware drivers. Like putting a honda civic engine in an suv lol.
 
Thanks

Ok thank you guys, that makes sense. I will tell him to buy a new hard-drive and I will install windows on the new hard drive for him. Hopefully everything goes well. Thank you.
 
Good news guys, I ordered him a new hard drive from NewEgg. I physically installed it in the machine and put the Windows CD in. Windows recognized the hard drive this time. I installed Windows successfully, updated it, and put anti-virus and anti-spyware protection on it. His computer works great now! The other hard-drive will not show up when it is set as slave though, so I've determined that one is toast. It's ok though, he didn't need anything from it anyway. Thank you for your help!
 
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