Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter

[novablast]

This has been driving me crazy for the past 9 hours. It all started by me trying to put a new cd/dvd reader/writer drive. I am 99% positive that the new drive has nothing to do with this problem however. Along with installing the new drive, I replaced the flat IDE cables that came with the computer with the newer type of cables that are in stores these days, the round ones that are supposed to "conserve space" When I started up the computer I got a black screen with this message:
Disk Boot Failure, Insert System Disk and Press Enter
I realize i'm not the first person with this problem as I have been researching online for the past hour, however I have tried everything, unhooking everything from the motherboard plugging it back in, changing boot priority settings in bios, swapping hard drives, completely taking out all the drives or each drive once at a time. I created a startup disk and put it in there when the error message comes up and press enter, and then the floppy disk drive makes some noise and gives me this message: Starting... A:\> A:\>
and nothing happens after that. The only thing that is of concern to me is that I think when I first started up the comp after installing the new cd/dvd drie, the cable connecting the motherboard to the floppy disk drive was not all the way in the motherboard, i goofed. I hope something can be done, cause the computer isn't even mine, it belongs to a girl that i'm trying to talk to which makes matters worse. Paaaaalease help me, any advice suggestions expertise is greatly appreciated, hell i appreciate anyone who read this far down.

by the way, the comp is running xp home edition has 80 gb western digital hard drive, 256 mb's of ram, its a compaq presario S5100NX. No added sound or video cards. two cd/dvd drives connected. bout 3 years old, but has been very well maintained so i doubt age could play that much of a factor, problem initially began a with the computer for the first time ever a week ago when the cd drive wouldn't burn anymore and sometimes wouldn't even recognize discs at all. the other dvd drive worked perfectly though. so after looking at everything (taking out ied cables, switching from slave to master) i told the owner that it was either a bad ied cable or bad drive, so she got the new cables i mentioned above and the new cd/dvd drive.

 

[N3051M]

ok.. that sounds like (most likely that is) that the floppy drive either died or connected teh wrong way around (they have a notch on the connector saying which way tehy go up/down but with floppy ones you may need to watch out that one of the pin holes is reversed i think).. or something is in one of those drives..

take em out and check for pin damage on the mobo and device as well as on the ide cables.

clear cmos so we can get it back to defaults and eliminate mobo, there is a variety of ways to do this, each dependant on what mobo you're using so just search this forum on how to reset the cmos.. and boot up.

then if that fails try this setup first, everything else disconected
1. with old ribbon type cable
psu+cpu+mobo+hdd+ram+vid/sound.

2. again with teh new round ones

if you can get windows loaded then proceed..

3. add the floppy but using the old ribbon

4. new cable "--"

if it is the floppy, double chek with hooking up another one that knows it works, any cable..

5. old + optical drive 1 etc. etc.. you get the pattern

sorry if i repeated anything you said before, but clearing the cmos may produce some sort of fix, and step by step elimination i can work with easyer

 

[novablast]

ok, i know i seem ignorant, but what and where is cmos, you talking about the closed metal box with the warning sticker on it? lol. also, i tried removing the master pin from the wd hard drive still no luck, tried unhooking floppy completely from mother board no luck. i went into bios and changed the description of the drive from auto to what they actually were, no luck. and i'm thinkin that bios is not recognizing the hd or the cd drive because under the boot priority section, next to hard drive and cd drive it just says none and next to floppy it has the actual name of the drive even when i unhooked the ****er from the motherboard. any kind of advice or steps you could give me with this cmos thing will be appreciated, thanks so much for taking the time to reply.

 

[novablast]

 

[Ididmyc600]

If all you did was change the HD then you have it jumpered differently to the other HD , more than likely the other was set as a slave and the new as a master, this can cause XP to ask where the drive is,

Or

You originally had the HD on the secondary channel and now it's on the Master

Or the New Burner is conflicting with the HD as some HD#s dont like have another ATA drive on the same channel unless they can be jumpered accordingly.


Remove all the drives and all the cables and start again, by adding the HD on its own, watch the screen at bootup and see where it appears on the list,

IE Primary master...your drive... or
Secondary master ,,,, your drive ,,, or

Secondary master ... your drive

etc etc

Carry on until you can windoze to boot..

You can turn off the Floppy drive in BIOS, let face it who uses them.

 

[novablast]

good news, i unhooked everything from power and motherboard except for the hard drive and windows loaded up fine, i did a whole song air guitar in my living room i was so happy, so now i'm going to hook the floppy and cd/dvd drives up one by one to see where the bad apple is at, i'm happy as ever right now, the sun came up and everything when it worked, lol.

 

[Ididmyc600]

good news, i unhooked everything from power and motherboard except for the hard drive and windows loaded up fine, i did a whole song air guitar in my living room i was so happy, so now i'm going to hook the floppy and cd/dvd drives up one by one to see where the bad apple is at, i'm happy as ever right now, the sun came up and everything when it worked, lol.

Glad to hear it, now watch the master/slave settings on the jumpers of whatever you add, setting 2 masters or 2 slaves on a single channel will cause the drive to fail,

Oh and remember that a dvd drive likes its own channel if possible due to the amount of data it can shift, if you cant put it on its own channel then add it to the drive that shifts the least data and make it the master.

 

[novablast]

problem solved guys, thanks for your help, turned out it was the damn cable i was using for the master and slave cd/dvd drives, i switched back to a flat one and it worked fine, prolly cause those new cables didn't work well with the compaq, considering its 3 years old