Hi All, I recently started experiencing BSOD's on my PC and in the process of trying to fix this I have decided to flash my BIOS. I flashed it but now when I start my PC I get the message "disk boot failure, insert system disk..." I suspect the problem is coming from the fact that I have a dual boot system that let me choose Vista or XP, and that for some reason, the new BIOS does not recognize it. I have NO CLUE on how I could solve this. XP was installed first on C drive, then Vista on a separate physical drive. Please help!

My Windows XP is on the C drive (first physical drive) Vista is on the second physical hard drive. I have just booted into my XP CD, and wanted to fix the mbr in the recovery console. I do not care about loosing my dual boot, I'm not using vista anyway. In the recovery console, I had the choice to fix the mbr on: 1: Windows on D drive 2: Windows on C drive I have chosen the number 2 because it was C (was I right? Or was it the number 1??). Then I got a message that scared me away of doing it (I have important data that I don't want to loose): "this computer appears to have a non-standard or invalid boot record. FIXMBR could damage your partition tables if you proceed, etc..." So I did not do it. What do you think? is that the solution? Help pleeeease... Thanks

It's non-standard because of the dual-boot setup. If you proceed, you won't be able to boot into Vista. Please let us know if you found someone's advice to be helpful.

Ok I have actually proceeded because I do not use Vista anyway. Now here is my new problem: I can boot into XP ONLY if I have umplugged the physical drive on which Vista is installed. I have 2 partitions on this "vista drive", and one of them is important to me, how can I access it?

Problem here was never the mbr on the drive. It was not setting the drive parameters in the bios back to what they were before the bios update. Different bios drive setting result in the bios lookin at the drives geometry differently. This in turn results in not going to the correct location to start the bootstrap loader. deazo make sure the 2nd drive is set as slave and the 1st drive set as master. Reconnect the 2nd drive and go into the bios to confirm its detected. Also make sure the 1st disk is selected as first boot device in the bios. It appears that it may be selected as second since you have to physically disable the 2nd drive to get it to boot. Imagine the power if you knew how to internet search

Thank you for your answer wanderer. The BIOS is actually detecting the two drives perfectly. However there is no master/slave settings as I am using SATA drives. Also, there is no "priority sequence" in the BIOS boot settings, you only set it as "Hard drive". So I am still wondering where the problem lies. Right now it is very strange, as it is only random: Sometimes XP boots when the second drive is plugged, sometimes the boot just fails. After a successfull boot in XP, I am now erasing all information (using partition magic) on the VISTA partition. Still, I have doubts that the problem might still be on the XP side, could you give me a method that would ensure that I have now deleted any "Dual-boot info" from the XP drive? How can I make sure I have a clean boot sector on the XP drive? Many thanks for the help. D.

deazo There should be a priority setting for which harddrive. However that setting is located elsewhere in the BIOS screens so you must hunt for it.