invalid system disk

[Skip101]

hey, i have an annoying problem:

When i start my computer, it gets past the bios and says that there is an invalid system disk and to press enter when i've replaced the disk.

The only way i can get the computer to start up is to enter the bios and do an auto detect of the hard drives. This reveals a harddisk on the secondary channel. Now when i restart, the same message comes up but when i press enter, the computer starts up normally.

What can i do to make the computer start normally each and everytime i turn it on without having to go through this routine ?

Thanks


Skip

 

[NeoNemesis]

What OS are you running on? if you are running 98 and below (I think maybe 2000) you have to make sure there isn't a floppy in the floppy drive when you turn your computer on.

 

[Skip101]

its running winXP pro, 512MB RAM, 80GB HD

 

[NeoNemesis]

alright then you can go into the bios and to the boot menu and set the hardrive as the primary boot device, it should work then.

 

[Skip101]

i just looked at the bios again and tried a whole range of combinations of first boot device all of which work the same. It seems that i have to enter the bios in order for the bios to detect the harddrive.

Oh and sorry, the error message was actually:

"disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter"

 

[killians45]

how old is this computer? maybe the cmos is dying. try to rpl the battery since it is having a problem, it seems, saving its settings. u could try to clear NVRAM, but I DOUBT that will help.

 

[Senseis]

First of all why is your HD on the secondary when it should be your first primary? And when you are able to dectect the HD are you able to get into Windows..?

 

[killians45]

thats how it looks. he has to go into bios, reset the settings, and then continue the boot... meaning that CMOS is not holding the settings and so when it compares whats detected with what is in CMOS, it finds a problem and wont continue to pass the boot strap to the o/s. So could be the CMOS battery is dying, so he's having to go in and save changes over and over when ever power is lost. The battery stores boot info in CMOS when no power is supplied, bios runs a check (or POST), gathers info checks it against what is stored in CMOS and if it checks out then passes the handle to the first sec on the HDD to continue the boot process. If the battery is dead the what the bios sees at boot is compared to an empty CMOS setting, so you have to go back in again and save is to CMOS settnigs every times you power down.

 

[Senseis]

also some bios has a force reset feature, it's something to look into...?