laptop HDD says"Invalid system disk"

[johnnyevil]

I have a used HDD that came with my gateway 2000 solo 2300.
Upon reboot I get "Invalid System Disk" Is that a bad boot sector only or is it trash????

 

[wolluf]

It means it can't boot from the disk (may be because its no good, or just hasn't got an operating system installed). If you've a floppy drive on laptop, try booting from a win98 boot floppy and use fdisk to see what partitions are on the drive (if its accessible). Could also get diagnostic tool for drive from manufacturer's website.