Desktop Refuses to Boot
Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2011 3:39 pm
Hi, I'm having a bizarre problem involving an unruly PC and the UBCD. Earlier today my desktop stopped booting, and I have no idea why. I'm running Windows 7 on a machine I built myself, MSI motherboard, SATA hard drive and CD drive, everything has worked perfectly until now. Then I get the dreaded "Reboot and select proper boot device". I open it up and everything looks fine, the BIOS is detecting the hard drive and the disk drive, but for some reason it won't boot from either of them. I tried the Windows 7 Recovery disk, thinking that maybe the boot sector on my hard drive had been corrupted somehow, but it didn't boot from that either. I double and triple checked the boot order to make sure it was reading from the CD drive, and in fact I could hear the disk spinning as it tried to read the disk, but there was literally no change, as if I had never put the disk in at all. And until very recently the disk drive was working, it's only three months old, and as far as I know nothing has happened that could cause it to become damaged or stop functioning. I know that the recovery disk wasn't at fault, because I was able to successfully boot my laptop (also running Windows 7) from the very same disk.
So, I decided to try the UBCD. It was the same as the Recovery Disk, there was no indication the disk was being read at all. "Reboot and select proper boot device, or Insert Boot Media in selected boot device and press a key." Again, I tested it on my laptop, and it booted, so I know that the disk burned successfully. But on the desktop, nothing. I don't think the problem is my hard drive, because isn't the UBCD supposed to work even if the hard drive is wrecked/nonexistent? The only thing I can think of is that the CD drive has become ruined somehow, although there are no signs of damage to it whatsoever, or some obscure problem with the BIOS is keeping it from recognizing boot disks, which is weird, because I used a boot disk to install Windows 7 in the first place not three months ago. I would test the CD drive if I could, but I don't have another computer available, and the one I have won't boot, so I'm not sure how I would check to see if it's broken.
Thanks for reading this long-winded request, I would really appreciate some help. I have a 15 page paper due on Tuesday and everything I have done so far is on that hard drive.
So, I decided to try the UBCD. It was the same as the Recovery Disk, there was no indication the disk was being read at all. "Reboot and select proper boot device, or Insert Boot Media in selected boot device and press a key." Again, I tested it on my laptop, and it booted, so I know that the disk burned successfully. But on the desktop, nothing. I don't think the problem is my hard drive, because isn't the UBCD supposed to work even if the hard drive is wrecked/nonexistent? The only thing I can think of is that the CD drive has become ruined somehow, although there are no signs of damage to it whatsoever, or some obscure problem with the BIOS is keeping it from recognizing boot disks, which is weird, because I used a boot disk to install Windows 7 in the first place not three months ago. I would test the CD drive if I could, but I don't have another computer available, and the one I have won't boot, so I'm not sure how I would check to see if it's broken.
Thanks for reading this long-winded request, I would really appreciate some help. I have a 15 page paper due on Tuesday and everything I have done so far is on that hard drive.