Cannot boot from hard drives

My computer has been having problems booting from hard drives. With a Western Digital 80GB hard drive, after i installl windows, A message says "failure to load operating system." I have tried new RAM, 3 versions of windows, a different motherboard, and different ribbon cables/jumper settings, but still no luck. I decided to try again with a Seagate 20GB hard drive. This time it indicates a disk read error after i install windows and try to boot up again.

 

sorry didn't read closely

 

It's possible your ide port is toast, have you tried secondary port?

 

Is the HDD set as primary? Or CS (Cable select)? Where does it fail? Does it fail after the initial load of windows? Or does it fail later on. MOre info would be nice.

 

When did the problems Begin?
Are you upgrading to XP, does your system support the upgrade?
I'm guessing here.
Post all of your systems spec's
What OS are you trying to load or boot to?

If all, Cable's power & IDE or sata/Master/Slave configuration &Jumpers are set correctly.
Does bios see the HDD, is boot order set correctly?
Your windows CD is Orginal? or legal back up copy, clean & scratch free, if not borrow a friends.

After certain of the above then:

Run HDD Diagnostic Utility, it's free.
WD is Data LifeGuard Tools:
http://majorgeeks.com/download2855.html
Seagate is Seagate Seatools:
http://majorgeeks.com/download2858.html

 

ok, I can't even boot into windows. I have tried 2 mobos, so the IDE port isnt toast. When the computer restarts after the installation is finished, it says, at the boot screen (when it lists devices and stuff before windows boots up), "failure to boot from operating system." My hard drive is completely formatted, and i tried to install XP Home, XP Pro, and Windows 2000 Pro. They are ALL backups, but i have installed (on this machine, same HDD) Windows 200 Pro, and XP Pro and they have worked fine. I wanted to switch to Linux, but after a while of struggling with internet, I decided to format and install Windows

 

For the sake of the exercise, can you borrow an original M$ OS CD, any one, and try an install from that. Just to prove a point that maybe your backups are not working, not for pirating, you understand. Bazza

===

 

Get your hands on a valid boot.ini file and copy that in your winnt folder... if you manage to boot into dos that is.
And running fdisk is a good idea to, altough i prefer "dban" as it completely wipes you hard drive clean by resetting all the bits to zero including entry tables

 

Darik's Boot and Nuke

 

In case i didn't make it clear, i have installed the OS's from these backups already. I also deleted ALL partitions and started from scratch EVERY time. I have tried 2 hard drives. Only one of which had linux before. They have different problems, but still, neither one boots.

 

(1)Have you checked out the boot sequence in your BIOS? Swop it around?
(2)Can you fit either of the hard drives in another pC as a slave hard drive (check jumper settings on your HD)?
(3)Can you read your hard drive/s info from the second PC?
(4)Can you boot from either a CD bootdisk or a floppy boot disk, on your PC?

I'm grasping at straws, but these ideas may give us another idea as to your problem. Bazza
PS: Anyone else, please step in. Baz
===

 

After reading your post and everyone elses replies, I have a question. Have you tried doing a low level format of your hard drive with the hard drive manufacturers utilities? I know that you stated that you had done an FDISK and deleted the partition, but I have encountered this problem on two computers that I have worked on, and don't have an explanation as to why it happened. I agree with you in that an FDISK should have deleted the partition, and all that should be left to do is format and install an OS. But the two computers that I mentioned were the exeception and not the rule. They both exhibited the same problems that you described. A low level format and formatting and installation of the OS solved my problems. Hope this helps!

 

how safe is a low level format though? I suppose if he can't get it working it doesn't matter, but I thought you have a high potential of totally ruining your hdd with a low level format.

Okay, I know you've tried 2 hdds. It is possible, while unlikely that they're both broken-- even more so if they were in the same machine to begin with. There isn't much other explaination at this point. Try a third. I actually had this happen to me less than 4 months ago. Ended up buying a new hdd. Worked just fine. OR, you could try borrowing a completely different computer and installing an OS on those two hdds. Using completely separate hardware will eliminate the possibility of it being any other components on your machine.

Hope this helps.

 

moyupae,
The low level format that I was referring to isn't the same as the hard drives of years ago. Now it just consists of writing 0's to all sectors on the hard drive. This will not in any way harm it, and restores it to an out of the box, factory fresh condition, minus the wear and tear already done.

 

wouldn't that be a high level format?