Hello guys!
A friend of mine has problems with his machine, so he brought it to my place and now I am trying to fix it.
The problem: the system does not start at the first time. Actually it doesn't strat the first couple of boot tries. It stops at the beginning of the boot process and shows this message:
Veryfying DMI Pool Data...............
Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : Failure
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER
I know what you're about to say: it's the BIOS boot settings. No, it's not. The CD-ROM is not in the list of boot devices at all !!! And still, the system is trying to boot from it.
Funny thing is that the computer would start after several attempts OR if you leave it at the place where it stopped for 10-15 minutes and then restart it.
Maybe some of its components needs to get heated a little to work properly???

I deleted all partitions on the HDD and created a new one, formatted it in FAT32 and installed a fresh copy of Windows XP Pro. Before that I re-set the BIOS by removing its battery and putting it back in place.
By the way I noticed that just before the appearance of the error screen, the system reports primary master as something like: WT724453E$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$7.72$
Primary master is HDD and it's label in the properties (under Windows XP) is ST320413A. Isn't this the label that should appear at boot as well?
WT724453E$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$7.72$ definitely looks wrong to me.

Thanks!

The line:Boot from ATAPI CD-ROM : Failure
indicates that the CDROM is listed in the boot schedule and that there is no bootable CD in the drive. That is normal and expected. How could you have done a format and instal of XP unless the CD was listed in the boot sequence? For that matter how could you complete an instal if the harddrive would not boot? Installation requires several restarts.
If you did the format/instal with the harddrive in a different system then it will not boot when you put it back in it's original box. Too many hardware differences.
The next line "DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER" is the big clue to your problem BIOS is failing to read the bootsector of the harddrive. Suggest you download a HDD diagnostic from the manufacturer and use it to test the drive. You may be able to restore it to factory spec , or determine just what's going wrong

I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

I don't understand the CD showing up, if it's not in the boot sequence, But I don't think that has anything to do with the problem.

The garbage showing when checking the drive indicates a communication problem. It could be a bad cable (or connection), a problem with the drive or the controller.

The CD-ROM, of course, used to be boot device N1 during instalation.
At this moment, it is NOT listed in the boot schedule. I know ths for sure since after the WindowsXP installation I manually set the schedule and now it goes like Floppy --> HDD0 --> HDD1
That's why I am quite confused - there is no CD-ROM listed in the boot schedule but the PC system still tries to boot from it.
And what about boot attempts? After 15 minutes of working idle stuck on the black error screen, the system boots just fine and does not try to boot from CD-ROM anymore.

I will try to find a HDD diagnostics utility. Actually I alredy tried several free ones. They reported no errors on the HDD.
Is there a good utility that can check the boot sectors of the HDD and eventually fix MBRs and so on?
Thanks!

I got same message, after i installed my xp. so what will be solution for this ? is there a simple fix tool or ? cause i dont really want to reinstallin windows.. ty

I properly formatted my hard drive and installed xp and like an idiot, I went in to change the boot sequence and selected the cdrom first. I did this because I thought that if I had any problems in the future, I wanted it to be able to start up with the CD first. Now, when I start up I get the following message:

DISK BOOT FAILURE , My question is, how do I get back in to change the boot sequence. I tried to go in safe mode but couldn't get past the message. Help Help someone. The computer is a friends and I screwed up.