Problem booting... Insert disc to continue

[clkanski]

My brother called me last night with this problem. When booting the computer, it doesn't seem to find the OS. After the bios screen, it says something to the effect: IO error... Please insert disc to continue or Press any key to Continue. I hope I'm not being too vague.

He's (not) running XP Home. I was going to tell him to insert the install disc and try and repair the install. Is this the best way to proceed?

or

Can we try and repair the MBR? I've had a little success doing that when I screwed up a dual boot a while back. (This is not the case this time, though... But it fixed a booting problem)

[mark2]

The "Please insert disc to continue or Press any key to Continue." suggests either that the HDD may be on it's way out, possibly dead, or (hopefully) he's somehow changed the boot order in the bios and is trying to boot from cd, floppy or even Lan.

1st check boot order in BIOS,

Check all cables from mobo/PSU to HDD are firmly in place.

Worst case, get something like Knoppix, boot from that to recover, if possible, any important files and information needed.

Just been dealing with an external HDD myself with I/O error, definitely dead :(

[clkanski]

Ouch. It didn't cross my mind that the drive might be dead. I assumed his little girl messed it up somehow.

I will lift what I can with Knoppix before I attempt to do anything. I will post what I find out.

[clkanski]

Well, I told him to jiggle all the cords and that actually worked. They must've acccidentally kicked the case a bit. Thanks for the simple suggestion! Heck of a lot easier.