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Author Topic: Help - No boot sector on internal hard drive  (Read 9795 times)

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Yadira

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Help - No boot sector on internal hard drive
« on: December 22, 2007, 08:42:06 AM »
Hey! I have a DELL with Windows XP. My computer has been very slow lately until yesterday when she "died". I'm not computer literate so please be patient!! It started with the regular DELL screen and immediately I get this message: "No boot sector on internal drive - No bootable devices strike F1 to retry, F2 to setup utility". I tried F1and it gave me the same message again. I tried F2 and I get the System screen and I have no idea what to do once I get to the System screen. Thanks!!
« Last Edit: December 22, 2007, 09:25:12 AM by Yadira »

PreparationH

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Re: Help - No boot sector on internal hard drive
« Reply #1 on: December 22, 2007, 09:36:00 AM »
If your computer was running slow before this happened...it could be malware related.

If you're getting an error message that there is no boot sector on the internal drive, then being able to boot into Windows may be a problem...since there is no boot sector.

Have you tried booting into Safe Mode?  Reboot your computer and before it gets to the Windows boot screen...continually press the F8 key on your keyboard to boot into Safe Mode menu.  Once there, select Safe Mode and press the Enter key on your keyboard.  Let us know if you were able to do this, successfully.

If not, then there's a pretty good chance the Windows installation is corrupt and needs to be repaired...and/or the hard drive needs to be re-partitioned, formatted and the operating system needs to be re-installed.

Please note:  Before you do the above...you need to be aware that re-partitioning and reformatting your hard drive will result in the loss of all data on that drive.  You will NOT be able to recover any data once you do this.

Also, do you have the system recovery CDs that came with this Dell computer?

Please keep us posted.

Yadira

  • Guest
Re: Help - No boot sector on internal hard drive
« Reply #2 on: December 22, 2007, 10:25:58 AM »
I tried the F8 and gave me the same message, BUT I tried the power with the FN at the same time and I got a Diagnostic boot selected message and it started to run the Pre-Boot System Assessment Buil 3017. It passed many tests like the color, video card connection, etc but when it got to the DST Short Status Test I got the following message:" No diagnostic Utility Partition Found. To run diagnostics, insert your DELL "Drivers and Utilities" CD, then select ok to restart the system and boot off the CD". Well I dont have the CD so I went to Dell and downloaded the "Diagnostic Utility", and I got the original message again.

patio

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Re: Help - No boot sector on internal hard drive
« Reply #3 on: December 22, 2007, 10:59:36 AM »
WARNING:

If you use either of the Dell CD's to correct this situation you will lose ALL your data and the machine will be back to Day One status when you first bought it...

If this is not what you want yet you will need to remove the drive from your machine and hook it up as a slave drive in another desktop machine preferably with a burner so you can copy/burn your important data to CD/DVD...

Anyone with any PC building experience will be able to do this for you.

I'd suggest also before trying to rebuild the Dell that you DLoad and run the diagnostics (FREE ) from the HDD manuf site to make sure the drive has not failed completely...
" Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist should have his head examined. "