INTERMITANT FAULT- 12MTH OLD MACHINE OK TILL NOW. WILL NOT START UP AT TIMES, MESSAGE:- DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM STARTUP DISK AND PRESS ENTER. IF I LEAVE THE MACHINE FOR 12HOURS OR SO IT SEEMS TO START UP OK.

Hello AC,

Welcome to PC Guide Forums!

12 seems to be some sort of magical number! How about 12 month WARRANTY!
If you purchased the machine assembled, I would certainly suggest getting the manufacturer involved before it potentially turns into a pumpkin (at 12)! http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif

In all seriousness...if you do have a warranty you would certainly want to pursue that route first. Get 'em to fix it...that's what the warranty is for!

Also, if it is under warranty you would not want to go "messin" under the hood and possibly void said warranty.

Would you post back and let us know if it is a warranty situation...and we'll go from there?

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May all your dealings in life be win/win!

Whyzman

HI WHYZMAN, THANKS FOR YOUR REPLY.. IN ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION THERE IS A 3 YEAR WARRANTY ON THIS MACHINE WHICH ARRIVED READY BUILT. I HAVE ALREADY CONTACTED THERE TECHNICAL HELP LINE AN RECIEVED TWO DIFFERENT SUGGETIONS..1)PRESS DELETE WHILE THE MACHINE TRIES TO START UP, I THINK THIS OPENS THE BIOS MENU, THEN PRESS F5 (SET DEFAULT) THEN F10 (SAVE AND EXIT). TRIED THIS DIDNT MAKE ANY DIFFERANCE. 2)INSTRUCTIONS RECIEVED ON HOW TO PARTITION DISK AND REINSTALL WINDOWS ETC..HAVENT TRIED THIS OPTION AS YOU MIGHT HAVE QUESSED BY NOW I'M NO EXPERT WITH THESE BOXES OF MAGIC. THE ONLY EXPLANATION I RECIEVED IS I MAY HAVE ERASED SOME FILES....I HAVENT !

Ok, first it not necessary to use all caps when posting, makes it a little hard to read that way http://www.PCGuide.com/ubb/eek.gif ...

Second, do you have a startup disk? and what operating system are you using (Win98, ME, etc)?

Third, what make and model is your machine, include things like memory, size of the hard drive, processor speed, etc?

Don't try the reinstall route yet, it sounds like ther may be a hard drive problem and if you reinstall on a faulty hard drive what good will that do.....

If you have the startup disk try booting to it and then running scandisk...if it doesn't have scandisk on it then copy it from a mchine that has it (try for the ME version).

When the startup disk is finished loading type scandisk_/all_/surface. at the prompt with spaces instead of the underscores....and then report back with the results.

Also do you have an "emergency disk" for your virus scanner? Give that a shot, to see if you have a virus (the emergency disk will not catch as many as the full version will)

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.

Run scandisk, shut machine down, restarted it waited while some files were reconfigured.....now everything seems to be running ok,(fingers crossed). Thanks for the advice.

Cool, looks like some disk errors have crept into things, if scandisk doesn't run automatically after a bad shut down, make sure to run it manually about once every couple of weeks to (can be run from inside of Windows now that you are up and running again) and run defrag also......

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mjc
Links list:Computer Links (http://www.dreamwater.org/tech/mjc/index.htm)

Celts are the men that heaven made mad, For all their battles are merry and their songs are all sad.