Computer help forum: Boot disk failure after installing new RAM?

I believe I was grounded; I was touching the metal frame casing while inserting the RAM.

For a while now, every time when I started the computer, it always did a drive consistency test. So I suppose something was possibly wrong. This is the only type of warning, if it even really is one.

I have 3 options when I start the PC.
ESC: boot menu, allowing me to choose my HD or CD-ROM group, which doesn't help me because the HD one gives me"boot disk failure, insert system disk and press enter" and I don't have a disk.
F1: setup, leading me into the bios. F10: system recovery, which doesn't work.
The smart test was done by going through the bios. I selected the "first channel device" which was my hard drive and had the option "SMART support". Both the short and extended smart give me: 7 (completed with the read element of test failed)

Since you were getting drive consistency tests on each boot prior to the boot disk failure, it is most likely that your drive has died.

My experience with consistency tests is that they are due to information not being properly recorded on the drive. Most of the time I get these because the computer did not shut down properly, or because of a program didn't write the correct data to the drive. These are usually a one-time event.

However, I had one drive that kept giving me write failure notices just before it totally crashed. Windows frequently ran consistency tests on that drive, so I had warning that it was going bad. In your case, the SMART test shows there is a problem reading from the drive. You could test the drive by trying to reformatting it. Of course, you would have to reload the OS and all your programs, but you would have to do that if the drive is bad.

Since BIOS shows the drive is there, and attempted to run a SMART check, chances are very good that the connections are OK. However, it would be a good idea to reset both ends of all connections, just to make sure.