Recently I started getting a black screeen with "Invalid system disk...Replace the disk, and then press any key" error at startup.
What could that mean? And when I just press a key, it starts up normally. Everytime my laptop boots, that error comes up, and I press a random key, and everything runs normally again.?
We have the Microsoft corporate program where you get the products to use through the enterprise. I have been trying to setup a test machine with the 64 bit version of Vista so burned the ISO we created for safge keeping off of one of our network drives. Disc seemingly gets created without issue however when I place it in the DVD drive and choose boot from CD/DVD I get the invalid system disk error just after it says this.
View 5 Replies View RelatedBefore installing Vista, I tought of making a backup on a second internal hard disk which a bought and installed on the original XP professional machine, I found myself to be very smart doing this. Unfortunatly now that Vista is installed on this machine the disk is not accessible. disk manager says "dynamic disk status invalid"? What can/should I do to gain control over this disk again? I can convert it to a standard disk (only option available in disk manager) beause then I will loos the information it contains.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI used to have 3 USB disks (dynamic GPT) running fine under Vista Ultimate. Then I made a fresh Windows 7 Home Premium install. Noticing that it didn't recognise my disks (and other problems as well), I decided to go back to Vista Ultimate (using Windows.old).
But now the original Vista Ultimate installation didn't recognise them either! They have status Invalid in Disk Management Console. DISKPART sees the disks, and also the partitions, but it doesn't appear to find any volumes. Any command I try to do returns the error message that it is not allowed on invalid disk packs.
I have a Maxtor 6 B300R0 USB Device, an old ide drive that turns up as an invalid dynamic disk and doesn't show up on my computer. How can I reactivate it w/o losing data?
View 8 Replies View Relatednew to this website and a complete noob with computers. Every time I turn on my pc I get the error message invalid system disk, Disk boot failure, Insert system disk and press enter I found this website support.microsoft.com/kb/128730 which gives out some solution but didnt understand a thing. tried looking manual book (M2N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard) that didnt help either because am not sure what I should be looking for. I tried to put the windows vista setup disk, the vista loading bar pop up showed that it was loading. the it seemed to have froze. I also noticed that when I go into the bios setup menu, in the main section this is how it looks like
Primary IDE Master [none]
Primary IDE Slave [none]
Sata 1 [none]
Sata 2 [none]
Sata 3 [none]
Sata 4 [TSSTCorp CDDVDw]
Sata 5 [none]
Sata 6 [none]
I thought that it should have the name of my hdd in one of the square brakets.
When my Notebook first starts up, a note in the bar at the bottom of the opening 'Acer' screen graphic shows; <F12> Change Boot Order in Vista I don't have the confidence yet, just to hit the <F12> to discover where this leads to, and what it is all about. I fear that I may do something that will de-stabilise my perfectly operating system, or worse, get into a predicament that I have no knowledge off, nor the technical ability to escape from it. I have searched through the Forum threads, but have been unable to find anything that discusses the <F12> boot order. I would like to know the following:
1. In what situations is the <F12> boot key used, or when should it be used?
2. What system boot order does it change, and can this be beneficial to the performance of the Notebook? [my system in specs below....saves a lot of re-typing!].
3. Are the instructions clear and understandable to a 'non-geek'?
4. Is it easy to exit or escape from <F12> window, and can that be done without making any field or boot order changes?
5. Is there an ability to revert to, or restore to, former boot system settings, if incorrect or invalid changes are made, which later de-stabilise the system start-up?
I have an HP DV7 notebook that I recently added a second SATA 500 GB hard drive in the expansion bay. The purpose of the drive is to serve as a data drive. I also intend to store an image of my system disk on this internal expansion drive so that I can restore my system and apps when I am in the field. For most purposes the drive seems to be functioning normally. However, I recently noticed that, without my instructions, HP Updates were installing suipport files on my expansion disk rather than on my system disk and I have become concerned that Windows Updates may also end up on the expansion drive (so far they appear not to have done this). On further inspection in Computer Management - Disk Managment I discovered that when I put the expansion drive into the 2nd bay, my original system disk was automatically bumped from the Disk 0 position to the Disk 1 position and my expansion disk became the new Disk 0.
In Computer Managment - Disk Management the system currently looks like
Disk 0 - F: Expansion Drive - Healthy, Primary Partition
Disk 1 - C: - Healthy, System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump,Primary Partition.
If I physically pull out the F: drive from the machine the C: drive returns to the Disk 0 position. I am concerned that my system and application updates are going to get splattered across two drives when I want them to remain on the original C: drive. I can find no way in BIOS or Computer Management - Disk Management to assign the Disk and physically swapping the drives makes the system disk unbootable. Am I at risk of splattering my Window updates across two drives? Should I instruct Vista to regard my system disk C: as Disk 0 and how to I do this?
I've persuaded my boss that I need 16 gig of RAM. The purpose being, of course, to make Vista fly. Is a RAM disk the best way to do this? Can I 'cache' the system disk in a RAM disk? Or is there a better way to make use of my new endownment.
View 6 Replies View RelatedI changed the Boot sequence to CD first, then HDD. Everything ran fine and vista seemingly loaded perfectly. After moving some files from my backup drive back onto my main one and installing some drivers, I was asked to restart my computer (for the drivers) so I did. Remembering that the boot sequence was still set on CD first, and since my driver CD was still in the drive, I decided to set the boot sequence back to the way I had it with XP: HDD and then CD. After doing this I quit BIOS and tried to boot, but I kept getting a message saying: DISK BOOT FAILURE. INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER.
So I restarted the computer again, this time with my Vista CD in the drive, and again, the computer wouldn't boot and told me to enter a boot disk. Not knowing what to do, I went back into BIOS and changed the boot sequence back to CD first, then HD. After doing this, and restarting with the Vista CD in the drive, my computer booted up with no problems whatsoever. I tried reinstalling Vista (twice), reformatting the target hard drive, changing the boot sequence around, pretty much everything I could think of......
I wanted a fast drive, so I bought a solid state drive. But I'm a poor college student and so got the 64GB one, which only has 58GB of space (because Lenovo put something on a separate partition which they say I cannot get rid of). The only thing installed is WinVist and MS Office 2007 (and McAfee and other progrms that came with the PC which weren't taking up much space).
Those two programs took up 30GB of space. Yesterday, some Windows backup thing started to run and said "There isn't enough room on this drive to do the backup, do you want to do it anyway? (I'm paraphrasing)". Since I like having things backed up, I said Yes anyway (and to see what happened). Now I have 1 GB free on my drive. Lenovo won't help me with Windows because that's "a configuration issue" and they don't do that. How do I get rid of this backup and get at least 20GB back? Then, how can I configure Windows and Office to take up less disk space?
It seems like Lenovo sold me a PC with a disk drive that doesn't have enough space to operate correctly. And they won't help me resolve the problem. Also, it seems that it is not as easy to separate your data in WinVista as magazine articles would have you believe. I tried configuring it so my "Documents" was on another external drive, but that proved too difficult.
I have a slight problem with my CD/DVD drive. Every so often when I load a disk a get no response from autoplay. When I open My Computer, I find that the drive letter has changed from E to F for no apparent reason. I've gone into the Computer Management file and changed the letter back to E, but the system still won't read the disk. I get the application back in service by running a system restore, but I'm just wondering if anybody knows why this problem pops up. Is it just one of those ghost glitches that float around in Vista? It's not a big deal, but it's annoying.
View 4 Replies View RelatedI am using Windows Vista (32-bit) on my computer. Lately, I have noticed that the reported "used space" on my hard drive (via right-click/properties) keeps rising dramatically while I add very little to my computer. I then made sure that I had turned on options to show system files and hidden OS files so that I could add up the used space. What I found is that all of the files on my computer added together total 44.2 GB, while the usual right-click on the C-drive (selecting Properties) reports that I have used 65.2 GB. I re-checked the math and the folders and still come up with a 21 GB difference - almost 1.5 times the size of what the files/folders add up to.
View 9 Replies View RelatedWhat are the basic differences between XP & Vista? All we do is surf the web, email and download an occasional game. Norton AntiVirus is always on and always up-to-date. My XP machine is dying big time & I can't figure out how to save it. It won't recognize the System Recovery disk that came with the machine, but it will recognize other CDs. That CD must be bent or whatever. The SPs are up to date. I'm running Office XP and it is taking Word and Excel 7 or 8 seconds to load; it used to open in a snap. I installed the latest edition of Firefox and loading web pages with it is taking too long. Most pages should just snap open. I guessed we've been "phished" or whatever because some of the ads I run into know that I live in Seattle. Our network connection is DSL and we haven't made any changes of any consequence that I know of to this machine in ages. I put SpyBot on it a week ago and twice when WinXP started, the Spybot folder opened. Not the program but the folder.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI have misplaced my Vista operating system disk, am I able to download a copy of it from Micosoft website. I have the product key, as it is printed on the rear of the CPU.
View 9 Replies View RelatedI just installed a new Hitachi HDD and restored my disc image to it. My original disk had three partitions, the pqservice partition, the active OS partition (C drive) and a data partition (D drive). But I only chose to restore the OS and the data partitions. Now when I view the new disk via disk management, the labeling of the active partition is unusual; there is no volume name listed nor file system, and the free space is shown as 100%. Also, the status shows an EISA configuration. However, under explorer properties for the drive, things look a bit different, with the label and system type correct. What is causing the discrepancy and how to remedy it?I just now also noticed that I no longer have 4gb of ram... I haven't removed anything, but only 2gb are showing in system properties and in the BIOS???
View 7 Replies View RelatedI was wondering why my new Vista system would only hold eight restore points. I recently used up that space very quickly when I instaled a bunch of my old programs that I used in XP. Turns out that my Vista restore points are about TWO GIGS EACH, compared to 200MB beach in my old XP system. By default, Vista appears to allocate a maximum size of 15% of the drive's total space for restore points. Or it might be a fixed number, I'm not sure. On my system disk, it's currently a tad over 16 gigs. That much space would've stored 80 restore points in XP! To change that space allocation requires some command line hoop jumping, rather than just moving a slider in the GUI.
View 9 Replies View RelatedWhen I run the windows disk defraggmentor or an independant third party version, my windows vista home premium computer keeps freezing. How can this be fixed?
View 7 Replies View RelatedI have Windows Vista, and I like to make my external usb hard disk stay at D: drive even after I reboot the system.
View 5 Replies View RelatedI run vista 32 bit. I'm pretty sure it's Vista personal (PC didn't actually come with a Vista disk). I only use it for music and games,basic stuff. It's a Compaq....It shat itself recently, it wouldn't boot, so i borrowed the Vista Business disk from my dad to repair it/disk boot, and it worked fine, that was a couple days ago. Today it happened again, except it won't repair the same way. I start it up, it goes to the Compaq startup screen with 4 options; [Esc] Boot menu, [F9] Diagnostics, [F10] Setup, [F11] System recovery. Except I can never go to the diagnostics or system recovery menus, i press the keys and nothing happens. Then when i don't press anything it goes to a black screen with "Disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter", so i do. Then it says "Windows is loading files" with a white bar below, once that's done it goes to the Microsoft Coporation green load bar that scrolls across over and over. Then it suddenly stops for a few minutes and a blue screen appears saying
"A problem has been detected and Windows has shut down to prevent damage to your computer DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL If this is the first time you've seen this stop error screen, restart your computer. If this screen appears again follow these steps: Check to see if any new hardware or software is properly installed. If this is a new installation ask your hardware or software manufacturer for any windows updates you might need. If problems continue disable or remove any newly installed hardware or software. Disable BIOS memory options such as caching or shadowing. If you need to use safe mode to disable or remove coponents, restart your computer, press F8 to select advanced startup options, then select safe mode. (pressing F8 does nothing for me) TECHNICAL INFORMATION *** STOP: 0x000000D1 (0x00000000, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x87995395) *** nvstor.sys - Adress 87995395 base at 87991000, Datestamp 46671a61".....
I just got a brand new Vista x64 desktop PC today, and I've been spending all day getting everything installed and properly set up. I just can't decide what to do with the system restore feature though. In the Windows scheduler I've blocked it from running after system startup, settling for a supposed once a day restore point creation.
Unfortunately that's not really how things work in the real world - I feel like I can't do a damn thing without Vista deciding it had better spend yet another ten minutes creating a new restore point. Obviously a lot of that is due to all the day one application installs I've been doing, but even on my previous Vista PC (a laptop), I would usually see several restore point creations every day through what constitutes normal PC use for me...........
I am trying to use a system restore disk for my friend's computer that I downloaded. The computer have Vista, now I have a 32 bit and 64 bit disc. How can I find out which version of Vista I have? I cannot boot into window or safe mode ( I could figure it out from there). I also tried to check the Bios and saw nothing. The laptop only has 2 gigs of RAM I think, so I would assume 32 Bit, but I want to be sure. Also, if I used the wrong one, would it mess up the computer? or could I just redo it with the other CD?
View 5 Replies View RelatedI need to create a system startup disk to upgrade my system bios. How do I do this?
View 6 Replies View RelatedI'm running Vista Ultimate 64 on a 500 Gig hard drive with 3 partitions.The problem is I marked one of the partitions,not Drive C, as "active" by mistake.I done a Command Prompt to make it "inactive", but when I started the system up again it wouldn't boot.I used the Vista disk for the recovery process, but I got a message "Operating system unknown on (unknown) local disk" i tried fixing the problem with a command prompt "bootrec/fix boot" ,but nothing happened.When I look at the info in Command Prompt it doesn't show the disk partitions, just Disk 0.Also I can't repair because no Disks are listed to be repaired. If I look at the drive in "My Computer" it is full with a file system marked as "Raw" and it wants me to format the drive.I used "Recover My Files" software and it shows some of the documents that are on the drive, but doesn't show any recovery.I looked at some internet post about the message I got and partition and boot problems like I have, but at this point I don't to try any else to make it worse.I would do a reinstall ,but on one of the drives I have some stuff that wasn't backed up.I never thought about backing it up because it wasn't on the C drive.
View 6 Replies View RelatedWhen I run Windows Vista's Disk Cleanup program, I get this list of "Files to delete" window listing showing Downloaded Program Files, Temporary Internet Files, Recycle Bin...and one that is really BIG. It reads "Per user queued Windows Error Repo..." I can't expand the window to read it all. The size is 104GB! (as in Gigabytes). There is also a couple of other files with similar names : per user archived Windows Error Repo...System archived Windows Error Repo..., System queued Windows Error Repo..., My question is can I delete these files safely so I can reclaim some disk space without messing up anything?
View 8 Replies View RelatedIn previous years I used Ghost to create the image of my harddrive. It was simple, easy procedure and very fast. I booted up computer to the command prompt and restored harddrive in few minutes!!! But it was FAT32 system. Now, with Vista I do not have a choice but to use NTSF file system. Which program offers the most features for disk image creation? I know it will be impossible for me to restore image from command boot option, but what the options I have? Can I for example take the harddrive to another computer and restore the image in there? Or create bootable CD (DVD?) and restore the image that way? Or I have to first install Windows and then restore?
View 9 Replies View RelatedMy sister just bought a new computer that came with Windows Vista Ultimate 32BIT. She bought her computer from Dell and about a year ago I had bought a computer from dell that came with Windows XP Pro. I would really like to have Vista on this computer and I was wondering if it was possible to use the "Operating System Reinstall Disk" to install Windows Vista Ultimate onto my computer. Neither of us bought cheap systems and with the amount of money we both paid it almost seems like it shouldn't matter that I would be able to do this.
But obviously thats probably not the case. But anyway, I was wondering if their was a limit to how many times I could use this disk and CD key. I was told it was two times, but I'm not sure and I don't want to try to install it and then not be able to use my computer because I'd have to buy another CD key or product license whatever. If anyone could answer my question: Will I be able to install this with no problems and not having to buy another Vista Ultimate and at the same time still have the CD work if one of us should need to reinstall Vista in case something goes wrong?
My sister just bought a new computer that came with Windows Vista Ultimate 32BIT. She bought her computer from Dell and about a year ago I had bought a computer from dell that came with Windows XP Pro. I would really like to have Vista on this computer and I was wondering if it was possible to use the "Operating System Reinstall Disk" to install Windows Vista Ultimate onto my computer. Neither of us bought cheap systems and with the amount of money we both paid it almost seems like it shouldn't matter that I would be able to do this. But obviously thats probably not the case. But anyway, I was wondering if their was a limit to how many times I could use this disk and CD key. I was told it was two times, but I'm not sure and I don't want to try to install it and then not be able to use my computer because I'd have to buy another CD key or product license whatever. If anyone could answer my question: Will I be able to install this with no problems and not having to buy another Vista Ultimate and at the same time still have the CD work if one of us should need to reinstall Vista in case something goes wrong?
View 8 Replies View RelatedI am trying to enter a product key to use microsoft word but it keeps saying that it is invalid!
View 5 Replies View RelatedVista has taken upon itself to invalidate my admin password on startup or when changing users. Fortunately my wifes account is also admin so i can login with hers and remove my password to gain access to my account. I have even created a new admin account for myself which worked OK for a day or two before it succumbed to the same problem. My wifes account is so far unaffected. Is there an easy fix or should I be very worried? This all seems to have started since I lost the internet (changing provider).
View 5 Replies View RelatedI thought I knew enough on my own, but obviously that's not so. Here's the scoop: For the last two years I have been trying to remove my original Dell system 9200 boot disk. It has only 65MB of storage, and I have long ago added other internal disks, including a newer larger boot disk. Last week I added a new additional 2TB internal disk and I wanted (for the umpteenth time) get rid of that pesky old 65MB item =97 again. I am running out of SATA connections on the MB.
The system will not boot at all if I remove the irksome 65MB disk,even if I disable it in the system bios. "NO BOOTABLE DISK" is the message I get, although I have a very healthy C: drive that boots up nicely into VISTA as long as I keep that little 65MB devil active in the system. I am familiar with disk management in VISTA, where I have successfully changed various drive letter assignments, but even there I cannot find a way to get rid of the 65MB thing. All my internal SATA cables are the usual red color, except the one going to the 65MB which is blue. Using another (red) cable instead, and using a different SATA MB connector to fool the system did not help, either. Nor was I able to boot into C: by connecting it to the MB connector (presumably SATA 0) used by the 65MB pest.