So, i have a new computer, on which i installed windows, multiple times now, because every time it gives me an error, quite often only after having it boot into win xp succesfully twice.
The error goes a little something like this:
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.

Funny to see the shouty bastard could let go of shift long enough to type to commas.

Anyway, here are my specs:
AMD 3500+
Maxtor 300G (x2)
Geforce 7600
Asus a8N SLI SE

It's very frustrating to have your system running smoothly, only to press the button the next day and get that encouraging message.

One possibility presented to me was that my harddisk was fucked up, but i had linux on there before, which worked fine, so that would be very odd.

Also Pior, stop laughing! So you paid for the store to install everything, you clever bastid, but i'm stubborn!
LIKE A MULE!

dont you have a floppy disk inserted ?

Could be any number of things.. one thing you need to do is get to the HDD manufacturers web site and download their drive checking tools to do a proper 'factory check' on the drive to make sure it's physically ok before going further.

Your probly already checked...but make sure your boot sequence has your hard drive somewhere in the lineup....alot of times people forget to switch it back to the HD after having to boot from the cd to install windows

try updating your mb and/or sata controller bios also. especially in what looks like a raid setup you have going there

I've gotten that error when the hard drive isn't working. Usually if I open up the case and make sure all the power plugs and IDE ribbons are secure that usually solves it. Nothin like the ol "jiggle the cable" fix!

[ QUOTE ]
dont you have a floppy disk inserted ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Floppy? those things dont exist anymore, do they? :P

Check boot sequence / loose cables

Last resort: use only IDE drives to boot from on the
primary IDE channel. Use SATA drives as storage / RAID drives.

Once you got your drive working again you might want to consider using HDD Health to monitor the s.m.a.r.t values and have it give an estimated "death date". It'll take about 6 months of it running to get a closer precision to 99% however.

Well... I had this the other day, and I had to do an entire system restore back about 5 days. which sucked, because now itunes won't work until I go through and dig out all the quicktime files, and reinstall those... but yeah... could be a number of things.

Also, is it a SATA HDD? because i've had several issues that sound similar to that with windows saying it installed fine, then having issues ever installing correctly again after a small crash.

-No floppy disk inserted, or even a drive for one to be inserted... in.
-I'll try the HD checking tools, but i take it these only run under windows? See my dilemma.
-My bootsequence is set up properly, and even if i still had cdromdrive set before HD, it'd ignore it if it was empty.
-I don't have a RAID setup, and i have no clue how to upgrade my bios', and i'm scared that'll just fuck things up further. I think i'll take it into the shop before i try anything like that.
-Fun fact: If i open my case, my warranty's void. I am not shitting you, this is pure, ridiculous FACT.
-indeed, no floppy, and i only have sata drives. My roommate told me to get a IDE one, because sata gives problems with installing windows, but the guy in the store looked at me funny at told me i was stupid for thinking so.
I quickly gave him a manly laugh, hit the counter and said "just kidding, i'll have all SATA, like a real man would"

And it sounds somewhat similar, PfhorRunner, only there was no crash, and i've never gotten it to work for extended periods of time. It was always just the first boot into XP after install, maybe one consecutive boot (reboot on installing drivers), and then nothing but lovely boot-error.
I just realised i'd installed linux on another drive (also sata, identical specs HD), so i'll try installing it on there, where it's garanteed the drive works, as i ran linux on it for a few weeks without issue, and get back to you after that.

After a faulty external HD, windowsinstaller not recognising my HD due to size (old cd), and windowsinstaller getting stuck in a loop, claiming windows was allready installed, would i like to format? after which: windows was allready isntalled, would i like to format? (sp2 xp cd)
and now this, i am getting all sorts of REALLY PISSED OFF.

Thank you.

how about getting a cheap 60GB IDE drive or something to use for windows, thus following my advice after all...

/runs

SATA drives only give you crap if your motherboard doesn't have native SATA. That means that you would need to install drivers for windows to recognize it. Almost all newer computers have native sata, so I wouldn't worry about it.

Download a copy of Ultimate Boot CD(http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/) and burn it. Then start your computer with the CD in the drive (boot from the CD), and run the hard drive tool that corresponds with your drive, or you can use the generic IBM HDD scanner. Do an extended test (which will scan every sector on your hard drive) and see if it comes up with anything. A lot of the time a sector around the MBR or in a boot file goes bad and needs to be repaired. If it finds a bad sector, it will ask you if you want the program to repair it. Say yes, reboot, and hopefully it'll work. Now, if it doesn't find any bad sectors but still says your drive is fucked, it's probably a bad arm or coil, which means you'll need a new HDD. If everything turns up peachy and there's no errors, find a copy of WindowsXP laying around, and boot from the CD. At that first blue screen that says "Hit enter to install, hit R to go to repair console, etc", hit R to go to the repair console. When you get in there do a chkdsk /r /f. The first command, chkdsk /r /f, will scan the HDD fix any errors it may see. Now try to reboot. If it's still fucked up, go back into the repair console and type FIXMBR. The second command, FIXMBR, will overwrite your master boot record if it was damaged.

I know it's a pain in the ass, but Ive fixed a shiatload of computers, and often times this fixes that error.

Comp Engineer here.

Either windows boot files corrupted, the MBR corrupted, bad drive sectors, partition info corrupted, or total physical failure.

If you have SMART on the bios enabled, it would read you back an error if it were physical. Most commin is smart error: 05.

Either way, your best option is to load that sucker up as a seconday drive and get all of the data off it as you possibly can.

After the CHKDSK mentioned above, if it was not a physical/sector problem:

IF you have an XP CD handy and have already backed up everything try this step by step: http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

In most cases that will cover corrupted OS installs, if there is no physical disk damage, or lost partition info.

Backing up is hardly the issue, since it's a new pc, but i'll give all of the stuff you two've listed a go. cheers!