BleepingComputer.com: Boot Failure: System Halted

I don't have the computer at my home, it's for someone else. I can't remember what it's set on in the bios. It was a factory custom built computer in 1999 with upgrades since it has an 80 GB hard drive (WD) and Intel P3 D815EEA2 motherboard. I had tried to reset default settings but it wouldn't stay that way. How should the the boot devices be set? It has 2 optical drives, floppy, zip and hard drive installed. Thanks, Joe.

This post has been edited by j54ams: 11 June 2010 - 11:55 AM

I don't think a P3 intel board will have any sata ports on it.
if the optical drives, floppy or zip drive is in the boot order before the hard drive and if you have something in one of those drives, like a cd, a floppy disk or a zip disk in the drive, the pc may be trying to boot to that device instead of the hard drive, and you will see a boot error. Make the hard drive the first boot device. The hard drive needs to recognized by the bios first before you can do anything else.
If you have anything in the drives, remove them. Some of the older bios might error when they look for the floppy drive and it is missing, so that's another consideration too.

Here is a guide for your board, from there you can check the bios settings, disable quite boot to see if it shows any errors when it posts on boot
ftp://download.intel.co.jp/support/mother...a2/a4639902.pdf

As soon as I get a chance to go there again, I'll check it out and post back. You are saying to disable the quite boot to see if the message appears, correct?
Your help is much appreciated!

it's something you can try, it (the post) should show the order of your drives and the hard drive should be listed in there, you should probably make it your first device in the boot order

I tried the disabling of quiet boot and it didn't work. Instead of starting up showing the Intel Motherboard screen as it had been, it showed a black screen with System info at the top and press F2 to enter setup & F12 to start with network. After a time it went again to the Boot failure: System halted screen. I also tried to set the boot order to hard drive, cd drive, then removable drive and the order kept changing back to removable drive, hard drive and cd drive. I am going to try a clean install of windows next. And, if that fails, replace the hard drive. Unless, anyone can give me other options?

I did a fresh install of windows and still have the problem. I don't want to go to the expense of replacing the hard drive since it's such an old computer. So, since it WILL go into windows by pressing the alt, ctrl, del, I'll just leave it alone now. Unless, someone can suggest something other than has been done? Thanks to all for their suggestions.

Found a cheap refurbished hard drive and tried it, worked great, no more message!