There are several common file system or drives errors. They might happen during system boot up, log in or when you try to access a drive. You would normally receive the following error messages:

• Missing Operating System
• No ROM Basic – System Halted
• Boot Error Press F1 to Retry
• Invalid Drive Specification
• Invalid Media Type
• Hark Disk Controller Failure

Missing Operating System

This error indicates problems in the master boot record or partition table entries. You receive this error as the partition table entries are pointing to a sector that is not the actual beginning of a partition. This can also be attributed to invalid BIOS settings, in some cases resulting from a dead or dying battery. You will get this error when MBR is damaged by virus. The trouble occurs for the reason that there is no active partition found in the partition table.

You can solve this problem by correcting the invalid BIOS settings. The BIOS settings for drive parameters and LBA translation must be set to the same values as when the drive was partitioned and formatted to read the drive correctly. If the MBR on a FAT drive is damaged or virus infected, you can try FDISK/MBR to repair it. Use FIXMBR with a NTFS drive. More sophisticated disk problem require disk recovering tool or repartitioning and reformatting the drive.

No ROM Basic – System Halted

This error is generated by the AMI BIOS when the boot sector or master boot record of the boot drive is damaged or missing. This error also can occur if the boot device has been improperly configured or is not configured at all in the BIOS. In this case, although bootable partition does not exist the data in the partition may still be valid and undamaged.

IBM systems in this situation used to drop into a built-in BIOS version of BASIC, but most non-IBM BIOS manufacturers did not license this code from Microsoft. so, they would display this cryptic massage instead of dropping into BASIC. The typical solution to this problem is to run FDISK and set the primary partition as active because the most common cause of this type of error is a failure to set at least one partition as active (bootable). If this is not the problem, the solution is to repair the damaged MBR or correct the improper BIOS settings.

Boot Error Press F1 to Retry

when the hard disk is missing a master boot record or boot sector or when there is a problem accessing the boot drive, you may get this error, which is generated by the Phoenix BIOS. This has the same meaning as NO ROM Basic does on an AMI BIOS. The most common cause of this message is having no partitions defined as active (bootable).

Invalid Drive Specification

This error occurs when you attempt to log in to a drive that has not been partitioned or for which the partition table entry has been damaged or is incorrect. Use FDISK to partition the drive or to check out the existing partitions. You should probably make use of a data recovery tool such as REMO to correct the problem if the partitions are damaged.

REMO is a Mac Recover Software that could also be used for Mac file Recovery. It could recover data on a failed hard drive and recover formatted memory card. It could also be used on Windows.

Another solution is to repartition the drive from scratch, but this causes any existing data on the drive to be overwritten.

Invalid Media Type

This indicates the partition table is valid, but the volume boot sector, directory, or file allocation tables are corrupt, damaged, or not yet initialized. For example, you would receive this error if you tried to access a drive that had been partitioned but not yet formatted. The format command is what creates the volume boot record (VBR), file allocation tables, and directories on the disk.

A data recover utility is required to solve this problem. Another solution could be redoing the high-level format on the drive. High-level formatting does not actually destroy the data. You can recover the data by first doing the high-level format (OS Format) the volume and then immediately unformatting it using the unformat utility.

Hard disk controller Failure

This message indicates the hard disk controller has failed, the hard disk controller is not set up properly in the BIOS, or the controller can not communicate with the attached drives (such as cable problems).

The solution is to look into the drive installation and make sure that the cables to the drive are properly installed, the drive is receiving power, it is spinning, and the BIOS setup definitions are correct. If all these are correct, the drive, cable, or controller could be physically damaged. Substitute them with know-good spares one at a time until the issue is resolved.