Error Message

[Jerry Chism]

My pc is trying to start-up and I get the message:invalid
system disk replace disk and then press any key
Does this mean to actually replace the hard drive? Any
help would be greatly appreciated.

[Tim Slattery]

"Jerry Chism" <jpc...@bellsouth.net> wrote:

Not necessarily. It means that it's found a disk that does not have an
operating system on it, and it doesn't know what to do. Usually this
happens because you've got a floppy disk in the drive, and the BIOS is
set to search the floppy for an OS before looking at the hard drive.
In this case the solution is simply to eject the floppy and boot
again.

In this day and age, the BIOS is often set to search a CD or DVD
before looking at the hard drive. So make sure there's nothing in
there either.

If there are no floppies, CDs or DVDs in the readers, then you've got
a problem. First, go into the BIOS setup and check the order in which
disks are being checked for an OS at bootup. Make *sure* the hard
drive is there (although I've never seen one where it could be
entirely removed from the order), and that there are no disks in the
other places that are being searched first.

If you are certain that it's looking at the hard drive and not finding
an OS to load, then try booting from a floppy. You'll get an A:>
prompt. At that point type "sys c:" (without the quotes, of course).
That should copy OS files onto the root directory of C:. Now you
should be able to boot at least to DOS from the hard drive.

--
Tim Slattery
MS MVP(DTS)
Slatt...@bls.gov

[dude]

>.
>no you have an error in the registry you need to update it

[Tom Montefusco (MSFT)]

Make sure there are no floppy disks in the floppy drive. If the floppy
drive is empty and you still receive this error, can you boot off a Windows
95 Startup disk? If so, at the A:\ Prompt, type sys c: -once the system
files are transferred, remove the disk, restart normally, if you still
receive the error, you may need to let a technician look at your system