SYS.Boot Failure

My brotherinlaw called from another state so this is all doing over a phone . He said he had power supply problems so he changed PS.When it booted up it said SYS.boot FAILURE insert sys. disk (witch he does'nt have). He can get into sys.setup but nothing else. His PS is a HP about 4 years old..AnyIdeas Thanks in advance Chuck

 

We need to know a few things before we can help:
a) What operating system is being used
b) What motherboard or PC manufacturer he is using
c) What drives are being used and preferabley what order they are set to boot in in the BIOS.

What'd be handy to know is what the problem was before, and how it came about.

As a gut feeling I think there might have been a hard drive failure or corruption, but I can only speculate until we know more.

Thanks

 

Thanks for your reply,He is running xp home. And it's a HP about 4 years old .I had him make sure the power was ok to the HD,make sure no floppy in,made sure cables didn't come loose when they changed the power supply. I had him watch the LED for the HD and it comes on for a sec. then stops. I'm sure it's the harddrive also. The problem in the beginning was that it was sutting down, then they found the fan's quit working.so I figure it was sutting down from heat.they changed one fan and it stilled did't work so they changed the power supply. They did all the PS and fan change befor they called me . I told them they could take the HD to my son's and I could tell them how to put it my son's PC as a slave to see for sure if it's the HD. I'll post back when I hear from them.(At this time this is all info I have as I'm not physically by the PC). Thanks again, Chuck