Fixed Disk Failure If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system has detected a failure with one or more of the IDE/ATA hard disk drives in the system. The problem report itself may highlight a specific device …

No Boot Sector On Fixed Disk If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: After the BIOS POST process, the system found a hard disk from which to start an operating, however it couldn’t load the operating system because …

Floppy Disk (Drive) Failure If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The BIOS POST feature has determined that one or more of the floppy disk drives in the system is failing or missing during the boot sequence. The …

Shutdown Failure If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system is detecting a failure on the motherboard related to the shutdown or reset logic. Note: This discussion does not involve shutdown problems you may be having with …

Invalid Partition Table If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: During the boot process, the system examined the master partition table in order to determine what partition or volume to use to boot the operating system, and found …

Updating ESCD… If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: ESCD stands for “extended system configuration data”, and it is referring to the storage of resource information in a system that uses Plug and Play. This message is displayed …

DMA Bus Timeout If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: A device in the system has attempted to keep control of the DMA bus for an excessive period of time. Some systems will generate an error condition under …

Floppy Disk Controller Failure If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system has attempted to access and verify the existence of the floppy disk. In doing so, it attempts to access the floppy disk controller on the …

Interrupt Controller Failure If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system has detected an error associated with the interrupt controller or controllers on the system motherboard. Some background Device interrupts are fed to the processor using a …

Invalid Media Type If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system tried to use a disk or other media that is of the incorrect type. Diagnosis: Unfortunately this happens to be one of those difficult to decipher …