Boot disk

[GodPigeon]

My friends computer has a problem. When she starts it up it tells her.

Boot disk failier

Insert boot disk A

 

or somthing similar. What should she do?? ive never had this problem so i couldnt help her

[Robert]

It means the hard drive is not bootable. Either the boot sector got corrupted or the hard drive has crashed or cannot be seen by the os.

[GodPigeon]

It means the hard drive is not bootable. Either the boot sector got corrupted or the hard drive has crashed or cannot be seen by the os.

Meaning she'll have to buy a New one?

[Shibathedog]

try to reformat it first, and it might still be usable

 

Theres also some recovery utilities you down burn to a disc and boot from

 

Although if this happened in the first place the HDD is probably kind of on its last leg anyway and will probably die sometime soon, so its best to just buy a new one IMO (Unless her computer was filled with viruses and stuff that did the currupting)

[GodPigeon]

try to reformat it first, and it might still be usable

 

Theres also some recovery utilities you down burn to a disc and boot from

 

Although if this happened in the first place the HDD is probably kind of on its last leg anyway and will probably die sometime soon, so its best to just buy a new one IMO (Unless her computer was filled with viruses and stuff that did the currupting)

How would she be able to format?? It shows the Dell screen then goes straight to this screen.

[Mooney]

My grandparents had this exact same problem (I mean exactly), and me and a relative (who fixes laptops for a living) decided the hard drive had just failed.

 

Try to get into the setup screen by pressing a certain key while the Dell logo is showing (I think it's "Delete"). Then, change different settings (like the boot device order) till you can boot from a boot disk and get into Safe Mode, or at least DOS. Then you should try to find out if the computer still recognizes that the hard drive is still there (ex: try to access the main hard drive, such as C:). If you can't, the IDE channel may be screwed or the hard drive just burnt out.