Here is my latest computer woe (it's been awhile but that makes it hurt even worse):

I turn on my system (all BIOS settings nominal with nothing changed or going wrong in months) when all of the sudden after the mobo POST check finishes, I get a black screen with the words,

"DISK BOOT FAILURE, ENTER SYSTEM DISC AND PRESS ENTER TO CONTINUE."

Of course the Enter key does nothing. So anyway I do my standard procedure and Google my problem on another computer, and I find a good number of people with the same problem over the course of a few months.

I only found one solution that works, albeit a temporary/annoying one, and that is to simply place my Vista x64 Ultimate disc in one of my optical drives and let the boot sequence detect it (but NOT press a key to boot it), and then my standard booter takes over again suddenly and I can get back into Vista.

So yes it works and I am back in Vista again, but the question is, where did this problem come from in the first place? I've been using and booting into Vista x64 fine without a disc handicap since December 2007! I really don't want to have to keep using my Windows disc just for some random fluke to not happen. The booter doesn't even boot to or use the disc, it just seems to need it for comfort or encouragement or something!

FYI my system has three hard drives and all are SATA. My Vista is installed on a 10k 150GB WD Raptor drive (SATA port 1), my storage is a 7200RPM 1TB Seagate drive (SATA port 2), and my Ubuntu Linux is on a 7200RPM 160GB WD drive (SATA port 3). My optical drives are on SATA ports 4 and 5, and 6 is free.

The one thing I have not tried is restoring the Windows master boot record from my Vista DVD, but I really don't want to do this if possible, as this would destroy my GRUB bootloader and thus remove my accesss to my Ubuntu Linux installation (thus causing me to wipe and reinstall it). I do not think that GRUB is the cause of this anyway because I haven't even booted into Linux for like 2 weeks, and no one else who had this problem on my searches mentioned Linux on their systems. GRUB works fine and normal once the system sees the Vista disc in the drive (as I mentioned before).

I have also tried the following:

-CHKDSK /r (from an elevated command prompt... no errors found and nothing fixed).

-System restore from within Windows... nada.

-Changing the boot sequence in the BIOS to load to the HD first, removable first, etc., etc., no luck.

As far as I know Microsoft has not mentioned this issue directly. Any thoughts or experience on this issue? Much appreciated!

Gotta be the MBR.

I'm with Sanchek.

Read/Print this MS white paper:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/927392/en-us

Yeah, Master Boot Record issues.
Does Fdisk/MBR still work with Vista?

Agreed, think I'd try the /Fixmbr option from that link that Tranz provided, if that doesnt work, do the /Fixboot.

Good luck!

From Vista's install disk you can run the repair feature and it will fix the startup areas. Go to repair then go through the options it will try to fix it for you. I had to use that feature a few times going through beta with Vista.

Okay thanks for the advice thus far everyone and thanks again for the link.

Regardless of whether or not it is the MBR, I am still at a loss for why this happened so suddenly and out of nowhere. If my MBR is truly messed up in the traditional sense, why does it function after just having a bootable system disc in the drive that it doesn't even load to? I'm too lazy to mess around with my drive connectors inside the case as others on the net have done to sometimes successfully fix the problem, so this is the only option obviously.

I guess I'll just have to lose and reinstall my Linux boot. In fact since it's been about 8 months I'll probably reformat/reinstall Windows anyway (disappointed though, I had hoped that Vista would keep a nice install for me for at least a year... I do maintain it pretty well, I think).

Off topic a bit:

How does everyone feel about Vista? I am ready to have XP Pro installed on our systems that we purchased with Vista...I hate it and want to sue Microsoft for selling it.

It's been great on my machines. Vista x64 driver support is better than XP's, and I wouldn't dream of running x86 again now. So, it's an easy choice for me.

If you're just running 2gb of RAM or on older hardware, I could see it being a minor feature upgrade at too much performance cost.

I love it on my PC (no issues) and I hate it on my laptop (crashes and locks up CONSTANTLY).

I do not want to have to maintain it in our environment here at work. The end users will not like the restrictions placed upon them, the bugginess, the lack of certain driver support for our older printers, etc. I'm not certain it would work with some of our older software either, which would just increase the cost of rolling it out immensely.

It's been great on my machines. Vista x64 driver support is better than XP's, and I wouldn't dream of running x86 again now. So, it's an easy choice for me.

If you're just running 2gb of RAM or on older hardware, I could see it being a minor feature upgrade at too much performance cost.

Like Taleran said it sucks on our laptops, should we upgrade the ram to 4 gigs or more? Will that solve the insuficient memory issues we see?

Vista x64 driver support is better than XP's

I'm gonna assume you left off the implied 'x64' at the end of that phrase? It certainly is not the case for XP 32 bit.

If you're sure the problem is low memory, try upgrading it and using x64.

On the other hand, it definitely could be that your laptop's chipset doesn't have solid Vista drivers. I'd scour the manufacturer's site and/or Internet at large for updated Vista chipset drivers. Laptops are relatively finicky in that regard, and could definitely cause trouble.

I'm gonna assume you left off the implied 'x64' at the end of that phrase? It certainly is not the case for XP 32 bit.

Correct.

If you're sure the problem is low memory, try upgrading it and using x64.

On the other hand, it definitely could be that your laptop's chipset doesn't have solid Vista drivers. I'd scour the manufacturer's site and/or Internet at large for updated Vista chipset drivers. Laptops are relatively finicky in that regard, and could definitely cause trouble.


Thanks for the advice, I'd be interested in seeing if that would help the stability issues I have on my laptop. You have a good site you frequent for issues like this, or just use google?

I've heard these forums are good for tech stuff: http://www.hardforum.com/

Personally, I do just Google mostly though.

I used this alot during vista beta but the links may point you in the right direction.
http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/content/view/1765/1/

I have Vista on my laptop, and it seems to run okay. It's certainly not my favorite OS. Just from an interface standpoint, I think it's much clunkier than XP. I turned off several services because they irritate me, like those dumb pop up security questions, so I'm not even using everything that came with the OS. Microsoft also renamed several aspects, which seems to be most noticeable in networking options. If this were my first OS it wouldn't be so bad, but when I remember a service I liked in XP and then try to find it in Vista, it can be a real nightmare.

Got vista 64 on my new computer. I got it running and everything but every time I start it up it will freeze and display error 2-3 times (screen goes black for 5-7 seconds) and after that its perfectly fine.

Only happens when: I scroll down a webpage using the mousewheel OR attempt to drag a window across the screen. Otherwise it doesn't happen until i do one of those things. It's weird but an nvidia issue not a vista one.. I think. Havent been able to find any support/fix for this yet :(

Other than that I like vista so far ^_^

Being something of a relic myself, I still miss the Windows 3.1 File Management system. It seemed the least complicated, just a simple drag from one folder to another, with everything right in front of you and no need to search for an hour to find where something was located.

I finally found the solution to this problem (not really what I expected) and I wanted to follow up here and let you all know about my findings.

So I was milling and waiting around putting off my planned reformat/reinstall of Vista 64 on my box, and after a windows update I noticed that even my Windows install CD wouldn't help me boot anymore, and trying to boot to the disc would cause intermittent blue screens. So being kind of scared, I decided to use the F8 boot menu (right after BIOS post) and I would choose my primary SATA drive and it would boot right up even without the install disc as was my previous situation and fix.

Then I finally decided to reformat/reinstall and did so (only with 2GB RAM installed as 4GB causes pre-SP1 Vista install discs to crash). I thought all my problems were solved with the new Vista installation, but not so. I still got the same "DISK BOOT FAILURE..." message after restarting for the first time from my new Vista installation.

Dismayed, as a fluke I decided to flash/upgrade my BIOS and, what do you know... it fixed it! So all this time all I needed was a BIOS flash, but at least it caused me to do a fresh new Windows installation that I wanted to do anyways. I still don't know what caused the disk boot error in the first place, but oh well. So in the future, always consider upgrading your BIOS!

Install XP!

I have found through Googling that even users of XP have experienced this same problem.

I have not good sir! Btw how are you mr pally?

I have not good sir! Btw how are you mr pally?

Doing well friend! Just flowing through life as expected. If EQClassic.org gets off the ground and stays there I might try and resume at least a part of my old EQ habits.

Okay... so as posted above, I thought my ultimate solution was a BIOS update. It probably helped a little if anything, but this apparently was not the solution to my problem.

I HAVE, however, found the final solution... I think. Upon milling around some random Ubuntu forum posts and Googling, I got the idea to check my boot order and priority in the BIOS. I always had the boot order set correctly (CD, removable, HD), but I never really noticed an obscure boot priority menu. I checked it and found that my primary SATA drive was the last on the list, so I adjusted it appropriately and now, so far, GRUB boots without an issue, even after a recurrence of my original problem.

The F8 boot menu is always a good emergency tool, but now thankfully I shouldn't have to use it every time I wish to boot. I hope this information might help anyone in the future.