DISK BOOT FAILURE

Question

I had Windows 7 installed on my system for a few months. But i started having some problems while connecting to internet. I got my hands on Ubuntu Ultimate, so i tried linux for last one month or so.

Now I want to go back to good old Windows XP. I have an installation CD which i had tried previously. But now when i try to install the first part of installation goes without any trouble. The one where you accept licence agreement, format partition and all file copy. Problem comes after file copy is complete. System is restarted to boot from hard disk but it never starts.

Only thing displayed is "DISK ERROR". And after i press enter it shows "DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER"

Answer 1

could there be a bad sector in your hard drive? try to do a disk check if your bios has this feature. else you should download the drive check software from your hard drive manufacturer to check.

Answer 2

It sounds like Windows has failed to install the boot code properly. I would recommend wiping the first few blocks of the hard drive.

Boot off your Ubuntu CD and use the live Ubuntu system (Try Ubuntu) - don't install Ubuntu.

You can then use a Terminal session as root to run:

# dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1024 count=10000

That will wipe the first section of the disk - all partition information, boot code, etc.

Of course, you should replace /dev/sda with the actual device node for your hard drive (/dev/sda is probably correct but just make sure before you start with dmesg or ls /dev)

You should then be able to go ahead and install Windows properly.