My PC takes forever to boot, "cannot find disk"?

Dave, I have a problem in that my computer takes for ever to start up. I get a message "Cannot find Disk 0" and "Cannot find disk 1". After a while it starts up and I am able to use it. Any hints on what I should do?

Dave's Answer:

I'm not positive about this, and would have liked a bit more information about what kind of Windows PC you have, whether you have SCSI or ATAPI drives, etc, but here's my best guess:

It sounds like you might have either:

An incorrectly terminated disk connection (this could especially be the case if you have SCSI drives and don't' have a SCSI terminator on the wire), or
You have one -- or both -- hard disk jumpers (tiny little 'u' shaped connectors, almost like tiny staples on the physical drive itself) set incorrectly.

In the latter case, which is more likely, the BIOS is looking for a 'master' drive and both of your disks are set to 'slave' mode. To find out, you'll need to pull your PC apart and pull out the drives, unfortunately.

Once you've pulled the drives out, there's almost always a little printed guide to jumper settings: your "drive 0" should be your "master" drive, and your "drive 1" should be your "slave" drive.

If they're both set properly, I'm afraid I can't offer you any further suggestions other than to ask your question to my colleague and friend at Ask Leo.

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Categorized: Windows PC Help (Article 3800, Written by Dave Taylor)
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Reader Comments To Date: 9

Ed said, on December 9, 2004 7:37 PM:

I installed a hp officejet v40 then I had a crash.
Tried to re-install the officejet but the installer says that it is already installed. I have tried to find out where the installed looks so that I can remove the info and try to re-install the hp stuff, Any ideas??? TNX ED

Ron Davis said, on December 9, 2004 11:59 PM:

If I type the command "msconfig" and click the BOOT.INI tab, I see a couple of references to

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

which I recognize as a low-level way to refer to my WINDOWS directory. Perhaps that would be worth checking on the troubled computer.

Dave Taylor said, on December 10, 2004 3:52 AM:

Ed, I'd suggest that you pop into Start -> Settings -> Control Panels -> Add or Remove Programs and see if the HP printer driver left a trail. If so, you can quite easily "Remove" the program, then reboot and see if everything's working well. If so, I'd go to the HP Web site and search to see if there are newer drivers available. Good luck!

John Migliaro said, on May 20, 2005 3:08 PM:

Hi Dave,
I purchased a IBM Aptiva computer back in 1997
which come with windows 95. I installed
windows 98,Second Edition Upgrade.Can I delete
Windows 95 from my computer?
Thank you for your help.

John Migliaro
migs@snet.net

gale mccallum said, on May 3, 2007 4:30 PM:

i keep getting an error message each time i try to open internet explorer but i can view windows messenger what could be wrong?

joshua said, on September 6, 2007 7:08 PM:

g'day maye how ya doin,mngood any ways my computer needs to be rebooted and i dont have the disk its a windows 2000 and i dont no that much about computer do u think u can help me to get my comp started it askes for a reboot disk and scsi and i dont no what an scsi is so yeh can ya help plz

thanx mate,
josh

ABDUL said, on November 18, 2007 9:07 AM:

HI DAVE,

I HAVE TWO Q :
1- HOW TO RE ACTIVATE MY SYSTEM RESTOR.
2-WHEN I START TYPING, THE FIRST LETTETR I TYPE LIKE S OR C THE SEARCH DOC OR COMPUTER PAGE OPENS

carol said, on January 3, 2008 12:52 AM:

my friend has an aptive computer. she tried to install aol web service. she can only open e-mail and im. the computer says no disc . anyone knoe what to do?

dav said, on December 10, 2008 5:09 AM:

i have these problem on my laptop

intel(r)boot agent version 4.1.03
copyright(c)1997-2002,intel corporation
pxe-e61:media text faiure,check cable
pxe-mof;exiting intelboot agent
insert system disk in drive..
press any key when ready

I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

My PC takes forever to boot, "cannot find disk"?

Reader Comments To Date: 9

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!

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