Good afternoon. One of our workstations is having this stop error occur when booting up. Windows starts it's progress bar on startup and then the bluse screen appears with "Inaccessible Boot Device" and some directions after it. I did a search here and everyone was talking about either new installs, new hardware, and HDD controllers. This is an old install, on an old Hard Drive. Nothing has been changed on the system. I tried a different drive in the machine with the same problem. Anyone have experience with this problem? Thanks for any help

The only thing I know about this problem is the following: The win2000 and XP writes down something to the MBR of your disk and I think to your BIOS too, that is needed to boot propertly the OS... If you try to install the OS on a new machine, and the BIOS ANTI-VIRUS feature is enabled, the ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE will prompt you of a virus alert. It is because of this some people tell you it may be new hardware or some other thing. I actually don't know how to fix this problem, but I think that repairing the installation with the Windows 2000 CD or using the startup floppies you can solve this problem some way. In an old computer I think something may be wrote to your BIOS or MBR and overwritted the mycrosoft modification. I had this problem when I changed the motherboard of my brother's computer and used the old win2000 installation in their hdd to boot the system. May in your case, someone have done a bios update or something else to get installed a new service pack? I have no more ideas. Hope it helps you...

Old installation on an old drive... A different drive producing the same problem...? With a different drive in this workstation and attemtping to install a new version of the OS will require you to disable the anti-virus util at bios level - otherwise you can/will get that error message. Likewise transfering a drive, with W2K installed on it via another system, to the workstation will produce the same error state. To transfer a working W2K installation from one MoBo etc. to another does require "a few (minor) tweaks etc. to that installation to get it to work in its new home... However you had this problem on a drive that was originally booting OK in that workstation...? This being so I'm more inclined to suggest you have a look at RAM... It may well be failing on one or more sticks. If two or more installed try reducing to one (min of 128Meg) and see if it still produces the error. Also perhaps swap in some known to be good RAM and again see what happens. It "might" be a failure of the HDD controller on the MoBo; it "might" be a bios issue; it "might" be a virus issue - has the original drive in question been scanned for virus problems - perhaps in a clean system (drive attached as Slave) as it cannot be accessed locally at present? I doubt it's the drive itself... Although if a replacement drive and a fresh W2K installation made to it (with virus util disabled in bios during setup) then works OK, it "might" be the old drive has failed somewhat (if critcal files are not damaged/corrupted somehow on the original installation)... Also - and this might a first or second option to consider - possibly a repair routine for W2K may restore this drive to normal operation? Boot with a W2K CD (or the 4 floppies + CD) and run thru the full repair routine, checking all system/boot files (including the fixboot/fixmbr routine). If there is valuable info/data on this drive that needs to be recovered I suggest you slave to another working system; scan the drive fully for virus issues; then transfer off all required data etc. Afterwhich perhaps see if you can recover this instalation in its own PC, or even start afresh with it (a new W2K installation on the drive, or on an replacement drive)? Equally if there are serious doubts about this drive - as drives are not that expensive these days - I'd be transferred all data etc. off it; and maybe managed to get a (fresh) drive working OK in the workstation. (A fresh drive would help to confirm the suspect drive is perhaps going down... if it became clear that a fresh W2K installation to the suspect drive still failed?) As initially mooted, RAM would be one of my first suspects; failing RAM could mean that critical (hardware/hardware) drivers are not successfully loaded and thus you get the errors? This type of error message can be a pain to resolve, and it can often be quite simple... All a matter of circumstances?

Thanks for all the info guys. That made more sense than the other stuff I have read. Yeah, I found out that if you swap a HDD with Windows already installed, that it won't work unless the Hardware specs are the same on the other PC. I'm going to slave this drive to another machine and see if I can salvage the files, then mess with the RAM and Windows repair. Thanks again for the help guys. On a side note, Is there a program that will fully remove any previous Windows 2000 MBRs from the HDD? I noticed that just Fdisk and format don't do it, cause I have some HDDs that show multiple boot records. Thanks, Rex

The command "fdisk /mbr" will format the MBR.