I've checked a few other threads around various places, and while other people have talked about the Disk Boot Failure error I seem to have a slightly different problem.
Since the computer is a couple of years old I don't have the specification right to hand now, but I can hunt it out if it would help.
I believe I have an asus a7v motherboard, and a maxtor diamondmax plus 9 120GB drive.
I've never had any real problems, this morning after switching on I got a Disk Boot Failure message. The Bios could not detect the Hard Drive either and looking at other messages people seemed to be saying that if the Bios can't see it, then its probably a physical error. Maxtor even replied to an email (a post in this forum a few months ago) saying that if the Bios could not detect the drive, and you were hearing 3 differently pitched beeps repeating (which I can) that the drive has had a serious error and should be replaced.
I decided to continue looking for a solution anyway, not wanting to give up the drive or its data. I booted through a windows installation CD and it was able to see the drive and give me its size. Entering the Windows Recovery section I was even taken to the C:/Windows prompt, perfectly able to view all the data on the drive. Now to me this does not sound like a serious physical error if I can still see all the data.
Right now I'm running a CHQDSK /R (or somesuch command) which is taking ages to check and 'recover' the disk, so I thought I would ask for some additional help here. I've checked the Maxtor and Asus sites and they don't seem to mention this triple beep noise, I'm not actually sure where its coming from, are Hard Drives able to beep?
So, if the Hard Drive is still physically there and can be recognised by the windows CD but not by the Bios, what step should I take next to try and get it booting normally again? Oh, I also tried the Maxtor Powermax utility, but it was unable to detect the Hard Drive which seems kind of wierd.
Thanks for any help you can provide.