Invalid Boot Diskette Please Insert...in A:

[geege]

Hi Guys, my problem is this. My dad was transferring files from one of his external hard drives to a new computer he bought and it seemed to fail somehow during the process. He asked me to try his failed hard drive in my own PC (big bad mistake) and when I booted up the system it said 'Invalid Boot Diskette, Please Insert Valid Boot Diskette in A:' so I figured, minor problem, shouldn't be too hard to fix. I took out his hard drive from my computer and replaced it with my own (that was fully working and fine until I tried his out) and it still says the same. I've since then been on countless forums reading other peoples posts on this very same problem, following instructions, changing jumpers, changing battery, downloading hard disk repair programs, making boot disks etc etc and still it says the same thing. I've also tried out just about everything with the BIOS but still same thing. My hard drive, when inserted into an external casing and added to my dads lap top can't seem to be found on the machine, yet we tried the same casing with other hard drives that he has and it reads them fine. Surely my HD can't be broken?? I hear it spinning when im booting it up and have read that if u can hear it spinning then its a minor problem. I am using win xp pro, my system is (don't laugh) a Gateway E-1400, and the HD is a Samsung 120 GB with all my demo songs that I really can't afford to lose lol. Any help would be greatly appreciated in resolving this issue. Thank you.

[TurcoLoco]

Hello Geege,

thank you for coming to IANAG after the sh.t hit the fan! Haha...just kidding, there is nothing to laugh about your system (at least it is not an eMachine!).

Ok enough goofing around, now, for any one of us to have a shot at helping you, the description of the problem has to be clear and imo, it was not so far.

So, i am going to ask you a few questions, please provide detailed, clear answers, ok?

~ Gateway E-1400 seems to be a desktop, the 120GB Samsung HD you mentioned, was that the HD that was in your system which was working fine?

~ If so, what was the HD you connected to your system? And how was it connected to your system?

~ Have you disconnected your original HD when the other HD was connected to your system?

~ What type of changes have you done to the HD jumpers? to BIOS settings? What is the current jumper settings on the HD?

~ How is/was your original HD connected to the mobo? For example: The HD is connected to the mobo via IDE ribbon cable using the middle connector and the HD's jumper is in the Master-only position, etc.

~ Have you, at any point, tried resetting your BIOS settings?

Back to basics, When the HD is connected and you turn on the system, does the BIOS acknowledge the drive? Does its info look accurate? Is the related BIOS setting set to 'Auto Detect', if not what is it set to?

This should provide us quite a bit of info. Again, please try to provide answers to all to your best knowledge.