hi, am having an intermittent boot problem with my pc. it occasionally fails to boot, with an error message saying something to the effect of "bootable media not present, please insert bootable media into drive and press any key" when i reboot it does the same thing for a while, then randomly decides to start working again. any ideas what this could be? corrupted software or is it hardware-related? if so, i want to find out which piece so i know what i'm gonna have to replace! thanks in advance.
It's your computer trying to find a device to boot off. For example if you put a windows CD into the machine, it would see it and proceed to boot off it, which is how you install windows on to a hard drive. If you already have your windows (or whatever) installed on to the hard drive then the thing to do is enter your BIOS and change the boot order (someone else will know what the right wording is). When your PC starts press a key which will take you to your BIOS and change the boot device so that your hard drive is first. The key to press on startup will be displayed when the pc starts, i.e "press F2 to enter setup". When this is done press the corresponding button to save changes and restart (it will say in the BIOS what keys to press). Your computer should then start up and load straight off the hard drive. It's nothing wrong with anything, it's just the way the PC is set up. If it still doesn't boot up after this then perhaps it is having trouble reading off the hard drive but i'll let some one else help you with that bit.
Sounds like it is trying to boot from CD, go into the bios' and change the boot sequence to boot from hard drive first.. Also, it could mean that your cd is going bad...
yeah, i have the boot priorities set so it boots off the hard drive first (thats where ive got windows installed) but sometimes it just doesnt pick it up. am thinking that the hard drive is slowly dying, though it isnt that old, so would be a little surprised/pissed if it was. alternatively, could it be a problem with the windows installation or perhaps the motherboard? thanks for the replies guys.
