You have seen the message “Boot disk failure” while starting your PC. The problem behind this is that the hard drive is detected but the operating system doesn’t load. You will need to reinstall the operating system or you will need to rebuild your master boot record to fix the boot problem. Below are few troubleshooting options to get rid of:

If you are using the dual boot system then it may possible that the boot loader getting corrupted. For example, you have a system running Windows XP and Linux using Lilo as boot loader. If Lilo gets corrupted, you can not boot in either operating system. In such situation, you have to boot into the system using some other media such as floppy or Windows CD. After booting go to the command prompt, type fdisk /mbr and hit enter key. If you are using Windows 2000 or Windows XP then boot into the recovery console and shoot out the command fixmbr to clear the MBR (Master Boot Record). After restarting your system, it will boot to Windows directly without any booting option. Now, you can reinstall the Lilo from your Linux CD or you can install the boot loaders such as XOSL from Windows.

If you are not using the dual boot system then boot into the system through floppy or Windows CD. If you have Windows 2000 or Windows XP, you should boot into the recovery console. Go to the command prompt and give the command fdisk /mbr and then give the command sys C:. It will clear the MBR (Master Boot Record) and makes the bootable partition C:. Windows 2000 and Windows XP users should give the command fixmbr and fixboot C: to do the same. Then restart your system.

If you are still receiving the error then you might have a virus on your PC’s boot sector. In such case, connect your hard drive to another system and scan with an anti virus software.

Kailash Aghera

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