Member Avatar for Darkstar69

hiya im pretty new to the whole scene of building computers and iv spent an awful lot of money on my system and im a bit stuck what i should do next..it may be a simple answer it may not but thanks for reading it anyway :)

My motherboard and CPU is an AMD Dual Core 5000 Athlon 64 motherboard bundle.
i have an optical drive (DVD and CD)
HDD (Hitachi deskstar) 400GB. 'Sata'
2GB of RAM

i have the priorities set up correctly i think, the Optical as the master & the HDD as the slave.

The computer recognises all the hardware but when i boot up i get as far as the screen saying

'disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter'

i feel i need to buy Vista OS but is it as that stage i should begin installing it?

Thankyou Darkstar69

  • 3 Contributors
  • 2 Replies
  • 92 Views
  • 4 Days Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by compdoc

Dani AI

Generated

Quick summary and next step: as suggested, the machine needs an operating system installed before it will boot normally. Before you start the installer, confirm the motherboard Setup (BIOS) actually lists the hard disk and that the optical drive is set as the first boot device. If the disk does not appear in Setup, check the drive power connector and data cable, try a different SATA port or cable, or test the drive on another system to rule out a dead drive or loose connection.

What to do during a Vista install: boot the Vista DVD (or a prepared USB installer), choose the Custom/Advanced install option, delete/create partitions and format the target partition as NTFS. A common layout is one partition for the OS (60–100 GB is comfortable for Vista + programs) and one or more partitions for data. After the first boot, install the motherboard chipset, storage, LAN and graphics drivers from the board maker, then run Windows Update and create recovery media immediately.

If the installer cannot see the disk: download the motherboard SATA/RAID drivers to a USB stick and use the installer’s Load Driver option. Also check the SATA controller mode in BIOS (IDE/AHCI/RAID) — the wrong mode or an outdated BIOS can prevent detection. If Windows fails to boot after installation, use the Vista Recovery Environment and Startup Repair; from the command prompt the usual fixes are bootrec /fixmbr, bootrec /fixboot and bootrec /rebuildbcd.

Final tips: back up any files before formatting, burn the Vista media at a slow speed if using DVD, keep your motherboard model and BIOS version handy when asking for more help, and follow ’s point about correct cabling so helpers can give targeted guidance.

Recommended Answers

All 2 Replies

Member Avatar for The New Normal

If your hard drive does not have an OS installed, then install one you must.

Installing an OS requires formatting the drive, so make sure there's nothing on there you want before hand. With a 400GB drive, I'd think about making 2 or 3 partitions, with windoze on one, and storge on the other(s). You do this at the start of the install process.

A google search may help explain some of these things.

Member Avatar for compdoc

hiya im pretty new to the whole scene of building computers and iv spent an awful lot of money on my system and im a bit stuck what i should do next..it may be a simple answer it may not but thanks for reading it anyway :)

My motherboard and CPU is an AMD Dual Core 5000 Athlon 64 motherboard bundle.
i have an optical drive (DVD and CD)
HDD (Hitachi deskstar) 400GB. 'Sata'
2GB of RAM

i have the priorities set up correctly i think, the Optical as the master & the HDD as the slave.

The computer recognises all the hardware but when i boot up i get as far as the screen saying

'disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter'

i feel i need to buy Vista OS but is it as that stage i should begin installing it?

Thankyou Darkstar69

'disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter' usually means that there is no operating system on the HDD it's time to install one.

one other thing if the HDD is a SATA drive then there is no master or slave the cable for a SATA drive will only connect one drive at a time.

if the cd/dvd drive and the hdd is connected to the same cable then that is an EIDE drive, In that case I would check the motherboard to see how many EIDE interfaces there are either 1 or 2, if you have 2 seperate the hdd and the cd/dvd between the 2, if you have 1 then I would make the hdd the master and the cd/dvd the slave.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.