General

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 …

BIOS ROM Checksum Errors If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The read-only memory (ROM) containing the BIOS program is protected by a checksum value as a double-check that the ROM code is correct. This checksum is compared …

Timer Errors If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: There is an error being reported with one of the system timers on the motherboard. Diagnosis: This is usually a motherboard or on-board system device problem. For the most …

Hard Disk Initializing; Please wait a moment… If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: Early computer systems inherently took a long time to boot. Computers have gotten much faster and people naturally want them to boot in less …

Memory Test Message If you have arrived here through a search engine, and there’s no menu to the left click here! Explanation: The system is testing the system memory. Diagnosis: The system is behaving normally, as long as it continues to boot and doesn’t halt when this message is displayed. …