My computer suddenly decided it would no longer boot. At first I was getting the "windows had a problem" with options for safe, etc. and it would allow me to enter the BIOS, but now it just halts part way through startup unless I put a floppy in the A drive. I no longer see the enter BIOS options. The floppy is an emergency boot disk which I made in 2003 so it's a W2000 disk and I'm now running XP. Anyway, it does not boot from the floppy, it just boots normally from the HD as long as the floppy is there. It will not work with a blank floppy though. Only thing I've done so far is to make sure the HD cable connections are ok. Once up the computer runs normally. So its either the HD or the mobo. Any ideas on how I can figure out which? Forgot, I also did a system restore which had no effect and I've made no hardware or changes to this system.
This problem was resolved by booting from the Windows installation CD, selectiing repair and at the c prompt running the fix MBR utility. So the problem was evidently my master boot record was corrupted. No idea how, but I've order a new HDD.
