my hard disk drive seemed to malfunction... a friend lend me a hard disk not knowing that it runs under windows 98,while my previous harddisk runs under WinXP.. still i tried to run d hard disk lended to me but it never worked, it seemed to install something but never worked.. so i bought a new one. i set everything ryt in BIOS setup. i am to format that new harddisk so i set d 1st boot device to CD-ROM. but when i reboot d computer it never shows the usual "press any key to boot from cd", instead it shows "invalid system disk". i tried to replace the harddisk with a new one knowing that the hard disk i purchased was defective and made sure that it has d same specs with my previous hard disk or atleast d same. Still, when i used d new hard disk it shows "invalid system disk etc. etc.". i am no computer pro so i dont understand whats going on, kindly help me with this matter coz i dont really know whats wrong and what to do.

can you please post how you have connected the Hard Disk.and CDROM i.e. whether as primary master and slave or as primary master and secondary master. also are there any other hard disk drives and/or optical drives connected. also are the jumpers set up correctly. does the BIOS identify all the devices correctly? The "press any key to boot from CD" prompt appears only if you have the windows xp cd in your cd drive. i've switched to Linux!

the jumpers of both hard drive and cd-rom are set to master. 1st master device is the hard disk and cd-rom as secondary master. BIOS detected them both which means i connected them right. there are no other devices attached. could it be that it affected my computer when i tried to use the hard disk running under windows 98 OS coz it seems to do some changes and installed something that i dont really understand..

could you please explain the background to your problem i.e. what made you change hard disks, or what went wrong in the first place i've switched to Linux!

The new hard drive should of come with a cd to set it up. Yes? It looks like it is still trying to boot from c: Try f12 to get a boot menu and be sure the cd is already in. Hope this helps

If the hard drive you installed was new then the message you were getting is correct. Until you install an operating system on the new drive you will get that message. What you need to do is change the boot order in the BIOS (setup) screens to have the CD drive before the hard drive in the boot order. Then insert your WinXP CD and boot to it. WinXP should find the drive. Then you need to partition and format the new drive. WinXP can do all that. If the new drive is a SATA type interface you may need to take an additional step. Without ANY specs on your computer I can't give you any more precise help.

thank you guys for your help... all you said was right.. thanks for the help, my computer is running smoothly now after following your directions. thanks again, i appreciate it.. till next time...