When you're asked to insert the Windows Media in order to boot

[britechguy]

It has been years since I have even heard of this happening, and I can't for the life of me recall what it indicates or how to fix it.

I'm presuming that someone here will recognize that sign and what the cure is, so I thought I'd ask here first before launching heavy-duty research.

 

[carmen617]

Hard drive failure. Or boot partition corruption. Run diagnostics on the system to rule out bad drive before looking into boot partition. If A, replace drive, clean install, see if you can recover data. If B, lots of different approaches depending on error message.

 

[britechguy]

@carmen617

Thanks. This is not one of my clients, but someone I'm acquainted with on one of the blind technology forums, so I have no access to the machine. Because everything is hunky dory if you allow the computer to boot from Windows Media then remove it, I am suspecting an MBR issue rather than a failing drive, but it does only make sense to check out the state of the drive.

I'll report back on what is found as far as the drive state.

 

[GTP]

I am suspecting an MBR issue rather than a failing drive,

More likely the MBR/boot partition has been overwritten.
Someone fiddling?

 

[britechguy]

@GTP,

If this were someone sighted, I'd say "fiddling" is a highly likely option. That being said, most of my blind clients and friends are about as "anti-fiddling" on their daily drivers a one could ever hope for. Since it's so much harder to engage in diagnosis when something goes south, stability is everyting.

One of my late friends, who also happened to become a client afterward and who was blind, would allow me, and only me, to do any support on her computer, because she knew I understood screen readers and how to avoid doing anything to make her screen reader cease to function or act irregularly.