i was booting my Laptop running WinME when i changed the swappable bay before boot completed. got initial error reading disk, then I/O error, replace disk then press any key.

well, i replaced both the swappable bay drive AND the Fujitsu harddrive- to no avail. I/O error

please advise

Does the Fujitsu boot OK if the swappable drive is detached?

Sounds like you have corrupted the file system on the swappable drive in which case you are probably into data recovery or reformatting it.

the swappable was merely the CDROM. i'll try booting with it detached. still, i think i will get the same response.

we'll see.

no change


Disk I/O error
Please insert disk then press any key

with a blinking flat cursor.

so, i slide out the HDD and replace it, when i hit any key the drive LED lights up and nothing else. turning off the unit is the only option.


hmmmmmmm hasn't ANYbody had this same prob?

I think there are four possible causes.
a) The mbr is corrupt. From a boot floppy enter fdisk /mbr to correct.
b) The partiton boot sector is corrupt. From a boot floppy enter sys C: to correct.
c) The FAT File System is corrupt. From a boot floppy you could try entering scandisk but you are more likely to require the use of recovery software on another computer to recover data or to lose any data by directly reformatting and reinstalling the OS.
d) The HDD has gone bad or become inaccessible. If a boot floppy cannot see the C: prompt then this would seem to be likely.

Maybe check your bios and see if somehow your boot order got screwed up, or any other changes to the bios that might affect drive access.

well, on 2 seperate forums.

one guy says: "Try removing the BIOS battery for a minute, or, if you can find a CMOS reset jumper, do a reset. THe BIOS may then find the drives upon the next bootup."

two guys say: "boot to the A:/ prom'nt and try
fdisk /mbr"

one guy: "Maybe check your bios and see if somehow your boot order got screwed up, or any other changes to the bios that might affect drive access."

i have a WinME rescue disk i made when i received my laptop. i know not where any batteries are inside the unit. i also know not how to check BIOS. i suppose i can try booting to A: with that diskette in.

thanx for all your responses.

i inserted the WinME StartUp floppy and booted from A:.
i entered (under minimal boot) "fdisk/mbr". something happened but nothing more, same end result: "Disk I/O error please insert disk then press any key."

was this floppy the correct one to apply the fdisk/mbr technique?

Every motherboard has a built-in bios chip, which is like a tiny little software program completely separate from windows or whatever that manages the basic components of your system. To access the bios, you need to look at your screen immediately upon starting you computer. Usually, you have to tap the delete key, or the F2 key, or whatever, but look at your screen when you first start it up. You may be too late to do it the first time, so just reboot and tap whatever key you were prompted to tap.

The bios (basic input-output system) tells you what components are connected to your mobo, the hdd, floppy drive, optical drive, how much memory you have, all that stuff. It allows you to control features of your system such as what drive to boot from, the boot order, plus a variety of other settings, such as keyboard speed, communication ports, etc. All of these controls and settings are completely separate from your operating system. If something is awry with your bios settings, your system won't boot or it can be compromised. Also, if there is something wrong with one of your components, you can find this out by looking at your bios. For example, just two nights ago, I was trying to make a backup copy of a hard drive. But the program I was using to make the backup indicated that my destination drive was not there. I went into my bios, and sure enough, it was not detecting that drive. As it turned out, the cable I was using to connect the drive to the mobo was defective. As soon as I replaced it, my bios detected the drive, and then I was able to proceed with the copying operation.

I'm wondering if doing what you did somehow affected your bios settings. Usually, if a system tries to boot from only one drive, say a specific hard drive, and that drive lacks an operating system, you get a message stating "No operating system" or something like that. The message you are getting could indicate something similar. If you have more questions about the bios, google it, but whenever I have problems like you are experiencing, I always check the bios to see that all my hardware is being recognized.

No harm to check the BIOS and in particular what the selected boot device is. I think this unlikely to be the root cause since the problem started with an i/o disruption with an attached external device.

If fdisk /mbr ran and returned you to an A: prompt (without displaying any errors) then the mbr of the HDD must have been accessed. Just running fdisk and choosing the display options would also tell you whether the drive was accessible - as would just entering C: and getting to a C: prompt. I suspect the drive is accessible as such but a corrupt file system or sectors lies at the bottom of the problem.