It gives the error disk boot failure. What to do with the error DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

Do you get the "Disk boot failure" error when you turn on your computer? Many users encounter it. And what’s most offensive: it always appears unexpectedly, without any reason. Although, of course, there is always a reason. It just needs to be defined.

The literal translation into Russian is “The boot disk is damaged, connect another system disk and click Enter.” That is, they tell you that there are problems with the hard drive, but the reasons are much more trivial. And this is good, because they are easier to fix.

There are many ways to fix it yourself. And, before taking the computer to a service center, it is recommended to try them - you may be able to fix the error on your own.

How to fix Disk boot failure error?

I should immediately note that the “Disk boot failure” error appears on any PC. The OS version can also be different - Windows 10, 8, 7 or XP. Therefore, if the computer writes “Disk boot failure”, you can try any methods. After all, they are universal.

There are several methods. Let's start with the simple ones:

1. Check to see if there is a disc in the drive. You may have recently copied files from it. Or installed the game. If the disk is in the drive, remove it and restart the PC. After this, the error may disappear.
2. Disconnect flash drives and external hard drives. Same case as above. Disconnect the flash drive and restart your computer or laptop. Sometimes it helps.
3. Disconnect the floppy disk drive (you're unlikely to use it today). This problem applies to old PCs, but it is no longer installed on new ones. To disable it, go to the BIOS and opposite the Drive A line, select “None”.

Also, first of all, you need to check the functionality of the HDD drive. First, look at the loading screen to see whether it is detected or not. If not, this is the first alarm bell.

Here it is recommended to check the hard drive with friends or acquaintances. If their computer also says “Disk boot failure” when turned on, then the hard drive is faulty (you need to buy a new one). If everything is fine with your friends, then the problem is on your side. We are looking further.

Very often this error appears due to incorrect settings in the BIOS. Moreover, they could go astray due to a dead CMOS battery. This usually happens due to the PC not being shut down properly.

Also, the settings are reset when the PC is abruptly turned off from the outlet. In this case, you need to replace the battery with a new one.

If you changed the BIOS settings yourself, then reset them manually. To do this, remove the CMOS battery, wait a few minutes and connect it again.

Sometimes an error when turning on the computer appears due to problems with the cable (the cable connecting the hard drive to the motherboard). Wiggle it or unplug it and plug it back in. If the cable is damaged, then replace it with a new one.

Perhaps your hard drive and DVD drive are connected via an IDE interface. This is another reason why it says “Disk boot failure” when starting the computer. The solution here is simple: disconnect the DVD drive and turn on the PC. If the error no longer exists, then you need to experiment with the SLAVE and MASTER master keys (they are located near the IDE socket of the HDD drive and the drive).

Checking and changing device boot priority

Another common reason why the Disk boot failure message appears when booting a PC is an incorrectly set priority for turning on devices. Here you need to go into the BIOS and set the settings so that the HDD drive boots first.

In Award this is done like this:

In AMI, this procedure is performed as follows:

If you have 2 hard drives, then you need to put the one on which Windows is installed in first place. If you don’t know, try both options one by one. In Award, the boot priority of two hard drives is configured in the “Hard Disk Boot Priority” item, and in AMI – “Hard Disk Drives”.

What to do if the "Disk boot failure" error still appears? Here are some tips taken from the comments of the users themselves:

1. Check the power supply. Although nothing clearly indicates this, this may be the problem. If possible, borrow a unit from friends or acquaintances and connect it to your computer.
2. Restore Windows. If the HDD drive is detected, works on another PC, everything is fine with the BIOS parameters, but the error still appears - perhaps the reason is that the system drive has been damaged. Try it (for the time when everything worked fine). Provided that it exists, of course.
3. Contact the service center or call a technician. If you have tried everything, but still cannot fix the Disk boot failure error, contact a professional for help. You have already done everything you could - let them look for the reason.

Hello, I have a problem, when loading I get a message "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press Enter", I have two hard drives, an old one and a new one, that is, one is an IDE interface, the other is SATA-II.

I decided to disconnect the old one completely, since it was time to retire, so I disconnected it, then turned on the computer and this error appeared. I went into the BIOS (I have Award), and there was a surprise. The new hard drive is not visible SATA-II, although I didn’t touch it, I decided to connect the old one IDE-shny disk back and as you guessed it was of little use, now my BIOS does not see both hard drives.

Apparently the moment I disconnected the old hard drive, the BIOS settings were lost. I don’t consider myself inexperienced, I want to figure it out myself, I read everything that is written about this error on the Internet and consistently applied it, namely:

• The first boot device in the BIOS is set to the hard drive; in the First Boot Device parameter, the HDD is responsible for the first boot device. I completely disabled the Floppy drive. I changed the CMOS battery on the motherboard, because they say that due to this dead battery, the previously set settings in the BIOS are lost. I reset the BIOS settings to default, but for some reason it didn’t help either. I changed the cables connecting the hard drive to new ones, also disconnected the drive just in case, disconnected and connected both hard drives one by one, and set the jumper on the old hard drive in three different ways: MASTER And SLAVE, and Cable Select, everything is useless. They also say that in the BIOS there is an option Hard Disk Drives, but for some reason I didn’t find it, in it you can set the primacy of hard drives (when there are several of them in the computer), if in this option the first one is a hard drive that does not have an operating system, then there is an error disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter or similar ones are also provided.

Both hard drives are working, I connected them to a friend’s computer, they can be detected perfectly, but his BIOS is different and, it seems to me, more understandable - AMI. As a result, I came to the conclusion that somewhere in this interesting and confusing BIOS -Award, there is some setting that I don’t know about and can’t find information on the Internet. On one forum they gave a link to your site, they said it was just the thing for beginners, detailed articles and good screenshots, but unfortunately I couldn’t find what was right for me, in short, I give up. I’ve read several of your articles: and also, and it seems to me that you probably know the answer. Sergey.

Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press Enter

Friends, many users, as I noticed, are afraid of BIOS Award and in vain. Nowadays you can figure out everything, you just need desire and perseverance, don’t back down, arm yourself with books, and there are a lot of good articles on the Internet, you just need to find them and choose what you need. The error disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter comes across to me quite often and I, in turn, will try to tell you all the known ways to solve the problem and of course I will explain what exactly helped our reader Sergei in the end.

Old IDE hard drives deserve a separate discussion; very often old 40- and 80-wire cables fail or are not connected correctly, breaking the contacts, you can read our article about this. There is also a separate conversation about jumpers on old IDE hard drives and how to set them correctly, we have two detailed articles about them: BIOS does not see the hard drive or Jumpers on the hard drive (links to them at the beginning of the article, you can read) stop at Let's not do this.

Now let's move on to the BIOS settings, this is where the cause of the error disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter most often lies, what we can do wrong here, let's look at both existing BIOS options, of which there are two types, namely Award And AMI. I suggest starting with our favorite Award; later in the article we will look at the AMI BIOS settings. Let’s choose the option with one SATA-II hard drive in our system unit, but we’ll set the settings so that if we had two hard drives, for example another IDE, both of them will be perfectly detected and will work. Let's start with the simple and end with the more complex.
Award BIOS - main window. First of all let's go to the option Advanced BIOS Features:

Here we need a parameter First Boot Device, it is he who assigns the device from which the computer needs to boot; if we do NOT want to boot from the CDROM drive, then in most cases it needs to be set to (HDD-0), which means booting from the hard drive.

Sometimes instead of (HDD-0) there may be a parameter Hard Disk,

In the boot device selection menu, we can also select a flash drive.
And in AMI - BIOS the option is responsible for this Boot Device Priority, the hard drive should also be set as the first device.

If you have several hard drives in the system unit, then in Award BIOS we need the option Advanced BIOS Features, and in it the parameter Hard Disk Boot Priority.

In AMI-BIOS, if there are several hard drives, the parameter appears Hard Disk Drives,

These options are called differently in different BIOSes, but they serve the same function; they are responsible for the primacy of hard drives in the system, and as our reader correctly noted, if a hard drive without an operating system is installed first, then Windows may boot with an error. But even more precisely, the first hard drive should be the hard drive on which the master boot record (MBR) is located - the first sector on the hard drive, on it there is a partition table and a bootloader utility that reads data in this table - from which partition of the hard drive to produce loading Windows, then the information is transferred to the partition with the installed operating system for loading it. As we see, in Award BIOS, in the parameter Hard Disk Boot Priority, the first to be displayed is the WDC hard drive, that is, the Western Digital hard drive, that is, according to the rules, the operating system must be installed on it.

It is not difficult to find this Hard Disk Drives option in AMI-BIOS; it is located in the BOOT tab. We look in the BOOT tab and see the item Boot Device Priority (we have three hard drives in the system and the MAXTOR hard drive is the first), it is on it that Windows is located, by the way, I also have operating systems installed on the other hard drives, but specifically on the MAXTOR STM3

the one I installed last is installed - Windows 7 and the master boot record is located on MAXTOR ( MBR). If now instead of MAXTOR you set WDC, that is, a Western Digital hard drive, booting the computer will end with the error disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter or another No hard disk is detected.

Now it’s more complicated, namely, let’s look at where our reader, and many users, make a mistake? Go to the option Integrated Peripherals,

Select an option On-Chip Serial ATA.

Possible values: Disabled,Auto, Combined Mode Enhanced Mode, SATA Only.

This option controls the IDE/SATA controller of the chipset. That is, it decides in what mode the hard drives in your computer should operate; if you choose the wrong operating mode for the hard drives, then the BIOS simply will not see them. Here, friends, lies the answer to our question. Why doesn’t our BIOS Award see the hard drive and gives the error: disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter. Now about all the modes in detail.

• Enhanced Mode- sets the controller to an extended mode, allowing the use of all available SATA and IDE channels, respectively, you and I can use hard drives of the SATA, SATA-II and IDE types, all of them will be detected in the BIOS and will be visible to the operating system.
• Combined Mode-this mode shares SATA and IDE drives, but only two SATA channels and one IDE (a total of four devices).
• SATA Only-mode uses only SATA hard drives.
• Auto-automatically sets the required mode based on the type of interface and the number of connected drives. For some reason, this option did not work for our reader Sergei; after we switched to Combined Mode, his BIOS saw two hard drives, one SATA-II, the other IDE, and a floppy drive in addition.
• Disabled-disables the IDE/SATA controller of the chipset.

So, if you and I have two hard drives of different types installed in the system unit, or a hard drive and a disk drive of different SATA-II and IDE interfaces, then it is better to set the On-Chip Serial ATA option to Enhanced Mode or Combined Mode or Auto(the last option, unfortunately, let us down).
If you have only SATA and SATA-II interface devices installed in your system unit, then you can use the SATA Only mode.

We exit the BIOS and save the changes we made.

What other reasons could there be for this error? If your hard drive is perfectly detected in the BIOS and all settings are set correctly, then try reading the article. When an IDE hard drive is installed in the system unit, we check whether the IDE controller itself is enabled in the BIOS; for more details, see the article No hard disk is detected.

How the story ended in the end.

Have you decided to work with your computer, turned it on, made yourself comfortable, but instead of a greeting you saw “DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK” on the screen? This message means that the PC cannot load data from the system disk. If this error is not related to a broken hard drive, it can be fixed. But sometimes it occurs due to a hardware fault. In this case, it is better to entrust computer repair to professionals.

“DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK” translates as “There is no boot disk, insert the system disk.” That is, the PC does not recognize the drive on which the OS is located. First you need to understand why this error occurred. And then figure out what to do with it. The problem may appear if:

• The loading order is broken. The PC is trying to “find” the operating system where it is not there.
• BIOS does not recognize the hard drive.
• The OS boot partition is damaged.
• The hard drive is not connected correctly.
• The hard drive is faulty.
• The motherboard is faulty.

How to fix?

Before you do anything, remove all disks, CDs, DVDs, floppy disks, flash drives and external HDDs. Leave only the drive on which the OS is installed. And try restarting your computer. If that doesn't work, unplug your CD and floppy drives. To do this, carefully disconnect their cables from the motherboard. And try starting your PC again. If after this the “DISK BOOT FAILURE” error disappears, it means that the BIOS settings are incorrect. The computer “looks” for OS files in the wrong place.

BIOS setup

BIOS or Basic Input Output System is activated when you turn on your PC. It controls the loading process. It indicates from which media the OS will be launched. And if you select a drive that does not have system files, an error will appear. Here's what you need to do to configure the BIOS:

1. Immediately after turning on the computer, press Delete, F1, F2, F11 or Esc. The key depends on the motherboard model. When you start the PC, a message will appear at the bottom of the display indicating which button is needed. The message will look something like “Press [key] to enter setup.”
2. The BIOS menu will be displayed. You can “navigate” through it using the arrows on the keyboard, open sections with the Enter button, and return to the previous menu with the Esc button. The bottom of the monitor should indicate the keys needed to interact with the GUI in the menu.
3. Go to the "Boot" tab and enter "Boot Device Priority". This is "boot priority".
4. The hard drive should come first. It is usually designated as HDD, SDD or Hard Drive. If the operating system is on another medium, make that one first.
5. Return to the main menu, go to "Exit" and select "Exit Saving Changes". Or press F10.
6. Try restarting your computer.

If you made any changes to the system or overclocked your PC, this could affect the BIOS. To return the settings to their defaults, in the Exit section, select Load Setup Defaults. The settings will be reset.

Hardware setup

If the BIOS does not detect the hard drive and even after setting it gives the “DISK BOOT FAILURE” error, what should you do in this case? Most likely, the problem is with the hard drive itself or with its connection. Or the motherboard has failed. The power supply may also be faulty.

In this situation, you will have to remove the cover from the system unit and fix the problem yourself. If you do not understand the internal structure of a computer and do not know where to connect a particular device, it is better to contact a service center. Although on the motherboard all the slots are different sizes. It is impossible to attach an unsuitable part to them.

Before you do anything, turn off your PC. Don't just finish the job, but remove the plug from the socket.

It makes sense to find out what condition the hard drive is in. Connect it to another computer (if possible), check whether the BIOS “sees” it and whether the OS boots from it. If it works, then the drive is working. Save your personal information just in case.

To resolve the "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK" error, try the following:

• Disconnect the hard drive cable from the motherboard and connect it again.
• Connect it to another SATA connector.
• Pull out the CMOS memory power supply (looks like a coin cell battery), wait about 30 minutes and put it back in place.
• Move the Clear_CMOS jumper (located on the motherboard, may have another name - CLRTC, Clear_RTC, CCMOS) from pins 1–2 to pins 2–3. Wait 20 seconds and return everything as it was.

After each step, check whether the hard drive is visible in the BIOS. To do this, the computer must be turned on. But for any manipulations inside the system unit, the PC must be de-energized.

If the malfunction occurs due to the power supply, it must be replaced. When it discharges, it negatively affects the operation of the computer - other errors may occur.

System Restore

Another cause of the problem is damage to the boot sector of the hard drive. This means that the part of the hard drive on which information important for the OS is located is inaccessible. In such a case, you need to restore system data. They will be written to good sectors.

You need an installation CD or other drive with the OS (an example with Windows will be considered). If you don't have it, you won't be able to reinstall the files. Since there will be nowhere to take them from.

1. In the BIOS, set the priority so that the system starts from the boot disk.
2. Insert the OS drive into the desired drive.
3. Once enabled, you can select the “System Restore” option.
4. Click "Startup Repair" and confirm the action. The OS itself will find problems and automatically solve them.
5. If that doesn't help, run the boot disk again. Just now select “Command Prompt”.
6. A window will open with a black background and white text. Type “Bootrec.exe /FixMbr” without quotes and press Enter. The customizer reanimates the master boot records.
7. You can also enter the command “Bootrec.exe /RebuildBcd”. All hard drives will be scanned for the presence of the OS.

If none of the above methods helped, it means that the hard drive is broken, or the motherboard or power supply has become unusable. The problem may also be a poor-quality cable or connection slot. It is quite difficult to repair them on your own. This requires professional knowledge and skills. It is better to entrust the repair to specialists. Or buy new parts.

This problem often appears if the boot order is changed or the BIOS is not configured correctly. In this case, you can fix the problem yourself. If the problem arose due to a hardware problem, it will not be so easy to solve.

Tell us if you encountered this error and if one of the methods listed helped you.

In this article we will look at the main reasons for the error. "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press Enter" when you turn on the computer, as well as the main methods for solving this problem.

First, let's remember how the computer boots. When you turn on your computer, the BIOS (or UEFI) starts first, and only then the operating system starts loading. If the BIOS cannot find a boot disk with a boot record, you will definitely see a “Disk Boot Failure” error message on the screen. This interrupts the download process.

Thus, this inscription means that the BIOS cannot start the boot procedure from devices available to it (HDD / SSD, CD / DVD or USB drives). This error does not always mean that your hard drive is faulty. Before taking your computer and drive in for repair, try diagnosing and fixing the problem yourself. Fortunately, it is not difficult and does not require engineering training.

Let's look at several main reasons why the computer may not see the boot disk.

First of all, try to remember if you installed new devices into your computer and if you changed the BIOS settings before this error appeared. If you made changes to the system configuration, try to return the computer to its original state.

Forgotten USB drive or CD/DVD drive

If your computer is quite old and has a floppy drive, check to see if there is a floppy disk inserted into it. The same applies to CD/DVD drives and external USB drives or flash drives. If there are no boot entries on them and you select USB as the first boot device in the BIOS / UEFI, then when you turn on the computer you will receive a Disk Boot Failure error.

Try physically disconnecting all external storage devices from your computer or laptop and rebooting the computer.

Device boot order in BIOS

If the CMOS battery on your computer runs out, then after turning off the computer, the BIOS settings are not saved and are reset to default values. Open the BIOS settings and check the order in which boot devices are selected at startup. Make sure your hard drive is selected as the first boot device. If the boot device order is incorrect, the BIOS cannot transfer control to the bootloader to begin loading the operating system.

The screenshot below shows that Removable Devices (i.e. USB flash drives, disks, SD cards) are used as the first boot device; if they are missing, boot from the hard drive is performed. Try moving Hard Drive higher in the list. As a rule, the names of the keys for changing the boot order are present on the BIOS panels. In PhoenixBIOS these are the “+” and “-” keys.

If you recently connected a new drive, make sure that the old drive (on which the operating system is installed) is higher in the list of boot devices (you can temporarily disconnect the new drive and check if the computer boots without it).

Check if the hard drive is detected in the BIOS

Check if your hard drive is recognized in the BIOS / UEFI (when booting the computer, press the Del, F1, F2 or other button that causes you to go to the BIOS settings). If you don't see your hard drive in the hardware list, try resetting the BIOS settings to default (Reset to Default Settings) and see if the hard drive is detected after a reboot.

In some computers whose chipset controller supports IDE/SATA devices, you can set the operating mode of hard drives in the BIOS settings. If you select the wrong disk operating mode, the BIOS will not see it.

In BIOS Award, the option that determines the disk operating mode is called On-Chip Serial ATA. Switch it to mode Enhanced Mode, Combined Mode or Auto.

If these steps do not fix the problem, turn off the computer's power and open the cover of your system unit. It is advisable to check the reliability of the connection, as well as the absence of damage to the cable that connects your hard drive to the motherboard, as well as the power cable (for IDE drives). Try connecting the drive through a different cable. On older IDE drives, it makes sense to check the status of the Master and Slave jumpers.

Turn on your computer. If the disk is not detected even after this, it is most likely faulty. Test it on another computer; if it doesn’t work there either, take it to a service center. It will be difficult to fix the disk problem yourself.

Hello! A few days ago they brought me a system unit. They said it won't start. I thought I would just transfer Windows there, but that was not the case, it turned out to be much more serious, but it’s too early to talk about that :). Today I want to tell you about the error DISC BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER, which can appear at any time and it is not clear why. This is exactly the error I encountered on that computer. I even took a photo of her, she looks like this:

I'll tell you in order. So I connected this system unit, launched it and am waiting for a miracle :) well, when some error pops up, because something is bound to happen anyway.

A message appeared stating that loading is not possible because there is no Floppy drive, etc. The battery that stores the CMOS memory and boot order simply ran out before complete happiness. Floppy was enabled in the BIOS, but physically disabled. But it is not important. I pressed F1, it seemed like a check and then the error DISC BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

Yeah, I've never encountered such an error before. But in principle, it is already clear that it says that there is no boot disk.

I rebooted the computer, disconnected that drive (Drive a), set the boot order with HDD in first place and tried to turn on the computer again. But I got this error again.

And then, after about the tenth reboot, one thing caught my eye: when the computer is being tested (POST), the hard drive is not visible in the test results. Like this? And like this:

You see, only one CD/DVD drive was detected, which was connected via IDE, and the hard drive that was connected via SATA was not detected by the computer. This means the cause of the error (in my case) has been determined; it is a problem with the hard drive.

I went into the BIOS and it wasn't there either.

Everything is clear, you need to check the hard one. Well, for starters, I just unplugged it and plugged it into another SATA connector. But the hard one was not detected by the computer, and I again saw the error. Then I decided not to play around and checked it on another computer. I connected it on another computer, via a different SATA cable, but the hard drive was not detected there either. That's it.

It means it’s just not working, I don’t know what happened to it, but it clearly needs to be replaced. That's what I told the owner of this computer.

This was the reason for this error in my case. But this does not mean that you also have serious problems with the HDD.

Other causes of the “DISC BOOT FAILURE, INSERT...” error

Let's look at a few more popular reasons why this error may appear, and of course, ways to get rid of it.

1. Check to see if there are any flash drives connected to the computer, and if there is a disc in the CD/DVD drive. By the way, I had an interesting case a long time ago. They brought the computer, too, and it won’t start. I started watching it, some error appears (I don’t remember exactly which one). I look, and there’s some kind of disk in the drive. I pulled it out and the computer started up normally. That's how we repair it :).

2. If the battery that stores the CMOS memory runs out, this means that after turning off the computer from the outlet, the BIOS settings will be reset. And of course the computer boot order will be reset. Be sure to replace the battery. Read more in the article.

3. Disconnect the floppy drive. This can be done in the BIOS (read about how to enter BIOS ) .

4. Go into the BIOS and check the system boot order. Install the hard drive in first place. I wrote more about this in the article. Also check if your hard drive is recognized by the computer (I had this problem, if you missed it, read the article first).

5. Check all cables connecting the hard drive and CD/DVD drive. Perhaps something just moved away.

7. If your HDD and drive are connected via IDE, then look at the information on the MASTER and SLAVE jumpers - there may be a problem with them.

That's all, if you have other ways to solve this error, then you can share them in the comments - I will be grateful! Best wishes!