Boot problem

[3dward5]

My brothers' pc has worked fine for a year or so,but just recently he has had boot problems, so while i look into it i thought i'd post on here to see what you guys think in case i get stuck.If i find the problem in the mean time i'll let you know also.

On booting, it detects the ram ok, then hangs on auto-detecting.
This is how it goes:

Auto-Detecting Pri Master.....Press <esc> to abort
After about 30secs
Auto-Detecting Pri Slave.......Press <esc> to abort
After about another 30secs it searches for a boot record from floppy, then just says boot failure,
Insert BOOT diskette in A:
press any key when ready

All i've done so far is open up the case and take out the cards and make them all free of dust and check all the connections.
If anyone has any idea what is wrong i'd be pleased to know what you think, thx, Mark

[3dward5]

The power-up beep has changed as well to 1Long, 2short beeps.

[Flesh]

I take it you never made a boot disk ? thats gonna be a tough fix. That happend to me one time but I got lucky and fixed it and saved all my stuff..if your not worried about the lose of things you have on it.I would put the cd in and put a fresh copy of what ever window's you where running..or use the CD and try to repair the boot sector

[JemB]

boot from xp install disk and select the repair feature. once you get the prompt type fixmbr enter, then once done type fixboot enter. this should repair the boot sector see if it boots. then also go into the bios and use the hard drive auto detect feature and reset the bios according to your preferences. if yr not sure bout the rest of the bios just enter optimised settings