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After upgrading my power supply, I get the following error message when trying to boot into Windows 7.

DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

My Windows 7 installation is on a SATA hard drive.

I'm able to fix this problem if I hook up my IDE hard drive, then it boots the SATA hard drive fine.

I don't like this solution though because then that means my IDE hard drive is drawing power even though it isn't being used.

Why would a newer power supply need the IDE hard drive hooked up just to boot into the SATA hard drive? There are no boot files on the IDE hard drive; it is completely empty. My old power supply did not need it hooked up in order to boot the SATA hard drive.

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4 Answers

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Try going into the BIOS and changing the boot order of your individual hard disks vs. CD-ROM drives, etc. It's possible that the boot order reset itself while you were replacing your power supply.

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Already tried that. Boot order doesn't have any effect. – Phenom Jan 29 '10 at 6:49
It sounds a lot like a broken MBR problem. I had this same error with Windows 7 as well a while back. My computer would not boot without the Windows 7 disk in the CD-ROM drive. I made sure the hard drive was connected to the SATA 0 port, that the BIOS recognized the hard disk and it was set as the first boot device, then used the 'repair' option on the Windows 7 CD to fix the boot loader. That did it for me. In hindsight, I'm pretty sure the last step was the critical one that fixed the problem. – curious Jan 29 '10 at 6:58
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up vote 2 down vote

Try booting to the recovery console with your install CD (which is a recovery disk), without the IDE disk connected (thanks Neal), and doing:

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /FixBoot

This will restore your master boot record and boot loader.

You will, of course, want the SATA drive set in the BIOS as a (probably the primary) boot device.

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Do this without the IDE connected. Your problem is that the mbr code is installed only on the IDE drive, and not on the SATA drive. – Neal Jan 29 '10 at 8:37
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Look at your motherboard's manufacturers website for a bios-update. Normally there shouldn't be a problem, if you don't have boot from ide-drive activated in your bios-settings. Also I remember that you had to remove floppy-disks from floppy-drives when they were before the harddrive in the bios-settings....

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Update the bios may fix this problem, you'd better consult your hard disk manufacture before you do that. – John Jan 29 '10 at 6:37
I don't really think this has anything to do with the harddrive. If it is able to boot windows seven from it, then it works. – BasisBit Jan 29 '10 at 7:13
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I couldn't get Windows to boot off of the drive but when I installed Linux it was able to. Linux FTW!

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That's because it rebuilt the MBR...the first few answers were right. – Shinrai Sep 13 '10 at 14:39
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