Disk Boot Failure. Please insert system disc and press Enter. What is causing this?

For a good while, my computer started giving me a DISK BOOT FAILURE error message after verifying the DMI Pool Data. If I hit Enter, it crashes the entire machine. If I CNTRL, ALT, DELETE it, it still gives the message. I have to go into my BIOS setup and change the order in which the machine checks the drives for an operating system. It will only work when I do that. What is wrong with my machine? What's giving me this error message?

 

I have the same problem!! http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/471632

But your lucky, you can still boot up your computer, mine just gives me that error and my hard drive starts ticking

 

This happened to me a few times before and each time I ended up reformatting my computer and installing a new Windows.

 

The only thing that comes to mind is too change your boot sequence so that you can boot from your operating system CD and then go through the install again, but this time choose to do a repair install. Once you do the repair install it should fix the issue if it doesnt you may need to do a clean format and wipe everything.

 

Well, guess what, I don't even know what I did, but, IT'S FIXED! All I know is that I did something in MSCONFIG, whatever it was.

 

Thats kewl im glad everything worked out what ever it was.

 

Well it was just a fluke. It started again. Is my computer's motherboard dying or something, or is my hard drive loose?

 

Sounds like it might be the bios battery. Try changing it out with a fresh one.

 

Like whompus said, it could the the CMOS battery, or your hard disk is dying.
Try the battery first, if that doesn't do it, download hiren's bootCD and see if you can get to the hard disk through one of the partition managers it has.