Invalid Disk in Drive A

[slr22]

I have a machine that whenever the user starts up the computer it gives the message "Invalid Disk in Drive A", however there is no disk in drive A. I took the floopy disk out of the boot sequence and it still does it. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Sandy

 

[mattjurado]

Have you selected the hard drive as your primary boot device?

Have you removed all zip, floppy, and cd media that might be in any drives?

Does the BIOS see the hard drive at all?

Can you boot off of a floppy?

Please try to answer all if you can...

Matt J.

 

[slr22]

The sequence is CD-Rom then hard drive.

There is not a cd or floppy in the cd/floopy drive (there are no other drives).

The BIOS does see the hard drive.

You can boot off a floppy.

You can restart the computer several times and then all of a sudden it will just work and not say the error about the floppy. If you put in a floppy disk so that there is an invalid disk in drive A and then you take it out, it boots up fine.

Thanks,
Sandy

 

[mattjurado]

Likely, you're looking at one of two things...

1. Hard drive is starting to have problems, you might ghost the drive to a new one, and let it run a few days. If its fine, problem solved. I think the computer might be trying to read the drive, it doesn't happen, and then it goes on to boot off the floppy.

2. BIOS is not working properly, or mainboard has issues. I hate to do this, but a BIOS upgrade might perhaps fix this.

I'd try the hard drive test first.

Matt J.