PXI wont boot past BIOS, strange characters displayed (possible HDD failure)

[OKors]

I've just acquired a PXI-1042 with a much older 8186 Controller which does not boot past the BIOS.
Once powered up the sytem recognizes the HDD and available ram and even does a ram check but then it displays some strange characters; what appear to be "AC" and two dos smiley faces.

CMOS battery has been changed and system time has been updated as well. HDD is recognized in bios and is selected as the boot priority.

This could be a bad HDD since I know nothing of functionality of this PXI, other than its "hardly been used".

Just figure I'd ask around before going through the trouble of purchasing a new drive through IT.

See attachment for screenshot.

[Josh_KNH]

It's possible the drive is fine, but just does not have an operating system installed.  If this PXI-8186 controller originally shipped with Windows, it may have an OS recovery partition.  This KnowledgeBase article is a good reference:  Hard Drive Recovery and OS Installation.

If you want to check the integrity of the drive itself, here is another relevant KnowledgeBase article: Hard Disk Drive Diagnostic Tool for PXI and PXIe Embedded Controllers.