IO.sys is dead :(

[Spiffae]

Hi,

I'll make it quick, but i'm worried. This morning I booted up my homebuild PC (after 4 months of flawless use) and i got no POST. a shiver ran down my spine, and i turned it off and on, and i got this message, right after verifying DMPI pool:

IO.SYS missing or bad. please insert system disk

I didn't have a system disk, so first, i reset BIOS settings to failsafe, and rebooted. nothing.

then, I reset the CMOS via the jumper, and now i'm in windows.

What i want to know is what would cause IO.SYS to go bad, what i should be worried about, and what i can do to prevent it in the future.

thanks

 

[RoyalEF]

IO.sys is a boot file on your hard drive. Reseting a jumper on your motherboard CAN'T alter or repair io.sys.

Since you reset the CMOS, your IDE hard drive was probably rediscovered by the motherboard and setup correctly. I would take that as a sign that your CMOS became corrupt/mismatched to your harddrive.

So either your hard drive is failing or your motherboard is failing in some respect. I would make a backup of critical files immediately to be certain you don't lose anything you care about.

Years ago, when boot/partition viruses were more comon I would suspected a virus may have damged the boot sector or partition table. But most Antiviruses eliminate that concern

 

[Sgt.Igneri]

Sounds like the harddrive is booting up after everything else was.