Okay, I've had my system up and running for a long time now, and no hiccups until last night. In the effort to try and help a friend flash his BIOS, I downloaded the required info. for his motherboard (Jetway K8M8MS) onto my pc. As I was proceeding to put that specific info. onto a floppy, I accidentally double clicked AwdFlash.exe, which is their auto-update BIOS software. It opened a DOS window, which I promptly closed. I proceeded to do my daily routine of playing games, but couldn't get rid of the Awdflash.exe on my pc, due to it was saying that something was using it. I figured a restart was in order, and doing so caused a HARD DISK ERROR, INSERT SYSTEM DISK TO CONTINUE. Now, I can't get my pc to boot properly, and this is very concerning to me. The Intel RAID utility does not load at all. I have 2 RAID setups, (2x74gig Raptors in RAID 0 as OS drive) and (2x200gig Caviars in RAID 0 as storage). I CAN'T LOSE THE INFO. I HAVE ON THESE DRIVES! I cannot stress that enough. Please help!!! My system specs: MSI 925xe Neo Platinum Mobo Patriot DDR2-710 (2x512 sticks) 2x74gig raptors in RAID 0 2x200gig caviars in RAID 0 6800GT PCI-Ex (Evga) 2xBenQ 16xDual Layer DVD burners Generic Floppy drive 600w Modular PSU by MAD DOG
Yeah I would flash the BIOS of your motherboard... Not sure if this repairs the RAID array's (if they would be lost...)
Well IIRC you can move arrays to a different motherboard as long as the raid controller is the same so you should be ok to flash the BIOS then re create the arrays. Wait for someone who knows more about raid to reply first though
You have mis-read the error message. The error is not with your hard drive - the problem is you left the floppy in drive A: and its trying to boot to that. It will never say: INSERT SYSTEM DISK TO CONTINUE with a HD drive error. It ONLY says that with a floppy error. How are you going to insert a HD disk?
You sure it will never say that? because I once had a crashed HD, and it gave me the same error... The system disk is to boot the pc, so I guess...
It will say that when there is a hard drive error, it needs some sort of disk and if it can't find any, it automatically looks for a boot floppy. When there is none there (or if its not detecting the drive itself) it just gives you that message, because the only thing you could do after that is to insert a BOOT floppy or to reboot.
First off, your hard drive(s) is/are working perfectly fine, the BIOS can't detect them though since it is corrupt. My reccomendation is (as other people have said previously) to reflash the BIOS. Chances are though, the floppy drive wont be detected either and you can't reflash the BIOS on your own. Usually if the board is still under warantee you can send it in to the manufacturer to get it reflashed free of charge (except for the shipping of course). Check online with the manufacturer. If it is not under warantee you may have to pay a small fee to get it reflashed. This would keep all of your data and all of your windows/linux etc. installations. once it was reflashed it would just boot like nothing ever happened in the first place. I know about this from experience with trying to reflash my own motherboard. Well, Let me know if this was of help to you.
I don't know how to thank everyone here. You've all been so helpful, so... THANK YOU!!!!! !!!!!! I'm going to re-flash BIOS, and go with that!
There wasn't a floppy in the drive. Also, I tried using a DOS v.6.0 bootdisk that will function on other pc's, but it's still giving me a DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER. I double checked to make sure that the floppy was the first thing on the bootorder, but it didn't change anything. Would it be wise to try making a boot cd with DOS on it? Considering I do see two Boot from Disc's pop up before the error.
When you get this working - learn that RAID arrays, especially RAID 0 should never ever be used for backups.
I wasn't finished with the projects I had on either array, not that it's any of your business. I always back up my finished projects on DVD.
Guess some people can't read... Man, I got exactly the same error... it was due to my hard drive failing, but I DIDN'T have a floppy in the drive... The BIOS just searched for a system disk to continue it's boot
Fair enough, no need to be nasty about it. But if they were that important you'd at least go RAID 1 so you can single disk them if need be.
Ok, I tried making a Boot CD for DOS, but it didn't recognize it. I'm lost as of how to fix this problem on my own. I really do not want to have to send my motherboard out to get it fixed. Is there any way I can do a BIOS Swap at home? Or am I pretty much screwed?
As I have explained, you will NEVER get a message to INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER when booting to a hard drive. NEVER. Maybe you THOUGHT you were booting to a hard drive, but if you see this message you were NOT booting to a hard drive. This message is used by the removable media boot handler, NOT the fixed disk boot handler. Now if the BIOS can not find any of your HD's the BIOS may drop through the boot order until it gets to a floppy or the CD ROM and THEN fail to boot (and give this message). But the message itself is saying SPECIFICALLY: Hey I am booting to a REMOVABLE media device and the media is bad or not present. So it sounds like the BIOS is not recognizing your HD's as bootable devices because the RAID driver is turned off or corrupt. I would make sure the RAID support is turned on in the BIOS. Whatever you did probably reset the defaults to turn off RAID support. Then (if that don't work) google the ULTIMATEBOOTCD or google XP boot images. Try both the floppy and the CDROM with different disks and images. Only when you get your RAID driver loaded and working again will you be able to recover the data on your RAID HD's. If you are as lazy as me, you would just go buy a 3rd HD, install the OS on it, use it as your boot device, then from there load the RAID driver to recover your array.
