Boot up problem

I had an issue with the power supply on my desktop a week or two ago. I purchased a new one and found out that the RAM chip had an issue. Purchased another one of those as well except with more memory. Computer was back up and running, sort of trouble free (USB ports were acting up for some reason...?) Anyway, we could use the computer, access all data on the hard drive, etc. Everything seemed to be working OK. This past Saturday morning I went to start up the computer. I got the typical black DOS screen showing BIOS version, RAM, cache, etc, etc., then the screen went blank with the cursor flashing in the upper left corner for 2-3 seconds and then the following message appears;

"Kein System oder Laufwerksfehler.
Wechseln und Taste drücken"

I have no idea what this means, but I'm figuring it can't be good. The machine has (had?) Windows XP w/SP2 on it but it doesn't even get as far as trying to start Windows. Is this indicating an issue with my hard drive? I'm trying to figure out how to troubleshoot this baby. Appreciate whatever assistance you can provide. Thanks in advance

 

It translates to
"No operating system. Replace > system disk and press any key".

Could be a bad hd or improper boot sequence or just a faulty MBR.
Do you have your recovery disc?


justafewthoughts

 

Thanks Petaluma.

Question, and I'm probably revealing the level of my computer literacy here, by "faulty MBR", are you referring to the motherboard? Please confirm. Someone told me that the small issue I am/was having with the USB ports could also be a motherboard issue.

Unfortunately don't have recovery disks. I have the Windows disks that came with the machine but there is no recovery option only "reinstall" which I don't want to do at this point.

I appreciate your assistance.

 

sorry about that I meant master boot record (repairable with a recovery disc) not your motherboard.
I end up speaking in abbreviations so much even my freinds don't always understand me. lol

 

TimW and Petaluma;

Well folks, an unbelievable thing just happened. I was trying what TimW had written about the boot disk. Got to a spot where it asked a 2nd time if I was absolutely positively sure I wanted to restore Windows as all info on the hard drive will be lost. Well I got cold feet and hit No, and it punted me into DOS with an a: prompt. I thought I'd like to check and see if I could see the hard drive so typed in b:. Lo and behold I got into b:. I did a dir /p/w and found a few Word documents, one being jfk.doc. Thinking wtf? (my turn for abbreviations...) I typed in chkdsk. It showed 1.445 MB blah blah blah. Another wtf?... Then I checked in the 3.5" floppy disk drive. My daughter had left a diskette in there after she had finished working on a project!! Who uses 3.5" floppies anymore...besides my kid?? I've left may a 3.5" floppy in a computer and then tried to start it up but this is the first time I've ever seen the German stuff. Removed the diskette and restarted the computer just fine...

I sincerely appreciate your interest in trying to help me. If nothing else, I hope this provided a bit of comic relief. Thanks and I hope you both have a great day.