"INVALID SYSTEM DISK" - HELP!

[brigden]

Occasionally, when I turn my PC on the HD makes a funny sound, and I'm presented with the message, "Invalid system disk, please replace and press any key." I simply restart the machine and it almost always boots up fine. Now I seem to be getting this message once out of every ten times I turn on my machine.

The HD is a 20MB Maxtor.

 

[RustyNale]

Welcome to AnandTech, brigden.

Sounds like you need to replace that hd NOW! You don't want to wait till it goes "click-click-click-click..." and doesn't do anything.

 

[speed01]

I second that....^

 

[BigDog1]

You didn't mention what kind of noise your drive is making -- so it's hard to say if it's failing, or just trying to seek the boot sector. You also didn't say if it's a relatively new drive or an oldie.

Are you overclocking at all? I've had that exact problem occasionally, and after backing off on a couple of aggressive memory and other settings, things worked OK again.

 

[brigden]

It's a two and a half year old Maxtor 20GB. It sounds as if the HDD suddenly stops. I am not overclocking whatsoever. I haven't had the problem lately...

 

[rectifire]

I'm with the others here. It sounds like a sure sign that you hard drive is starting to fail. Back up your important data whatever way you can (floppies, CD-RW media, or over your home network if you have one).

Then replace that drive, as the drive will probably have the bootup problem more and more in time. One day it won't boot up at all......forever.

Oh, and since it's a two and a half year old drive, you might want to check with maxtor to see if it's still under warranty. I believe the warranty is for three years.