There are various common file system or drives errors. They might happen during system boot up, log in or when you try to access a drive. You will normally get 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 get this error because the partition table entries are pointing to a sector which is not the actual beginning of a partition. This may also be caused by 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 problem occurs because there is no active partition found in the partition table.
The normal solution is to correct the invalid BIOS settings. The LBA translation and the BIOS settings for drive parameters must be set to the same values as when the drive was partitioned and formatted to read the drive correctly. You can try FDISK/MBR to repair a broken MBR on a FAT drive or FIXMBR with a NTFS drive. More sophisticated disk problem require disk recovering tool or repartitioning and reformatting the drive.
No ROM Basic – System Halted
For an AMI BIOS, when the boot sector or master boot record of the boot drive is damaged or missing, you will get this error. 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, data in the partition might be valid and undamaged but no bootable partition exists.
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, instead of dropping into BASIC, they displayed this cryptic massage. Because the most common cause of this type of error is a failure to set at least one partition as active (bootable), the typical solution is to run FDISK and set the primary partition as active. 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
This error is generated by the Phoenix BIOS when the hard disk is missing a master boot record or boot sector or when there is a problem accessing the boot drive. It is a problem similar to 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. If they are damaged, you probably should use a data recovery tool including REMO to rectify the problem.
REMO is a Mac Recover Software that could also be used for Mac file Recovery. It will recover data on a failed hard drive and recover formatted memory card. It can also be used on Windows.
You can solve the problem by repartition the drive from scratch. However this could overwrite existing data on the drive.
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 volume boot record (VBR), file allocation tables, and directories on the disk are created by the format command.
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
You would get this error message when the hard drive controller has failed, the hard drive controller is not set up properly in the BIOS, or the controller can not communicate with the attached drives due to cable problems.
You can check the drive installation and make sure that the cables to the drive are properly installed, the drive is receiving power and spinning, and the BIOS settings for the drive are correct. If all these are correct, the drive, cable, or controller may be physically damaged. Replace them with know-good spares one by one until the issue is solved.





