need bootable cd/dvd to load windows?

mrnuke · 22 Aug 2009

After installing windows 7, I have had a heck of a time trying to figure out what is wrong or if I got a bad ISO or what. Whenever I restart without a bootable cd or dvd in the drive, it gives me "invalid system disk, replace the disk, and then press any key" Now i pop in the windows 7 disk, control alt delete, and when it restarts it loads windows up just fine. Tried switching the primary boot as the hard disk and not the dvd player and still get this error. Had my mobo drivers disk in and its bootable and it booted windows 7 right up. Is something messed with the boot manager or is it just a bad ISO? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!

sup3rsprt · 23 Aug 2009

a bad ISO? I don't think so. You are supposed to be able to boot your computer without any CD/DVD, floppy disk, USB key inserted, etc. If the computer can't boot without any of that removable media inserted, it has nothing to do with the media. There is a problem or setting preventing the computer from booting off of the hard disk. If you can boot from the Windows 7 DVD, try to run startup repair option. Maybe it will find and repair the problem. If not, post back and we have many people that know how to fix it using more advanced methods.

mrnuke · 23 Aug 2009

took out the usb thumb drive, changed some bios settings and now getting "disk boot failure, insert system disk and press enter" error message. When I went into try and repair with the windows disk, it said it wasn't the right version of windows so it couldn't repair anything.

sup3rsprt · 23 Aug 2009

I think that is a generic error message that happens when you have selected the wrong hard disk as boot device, or the boot code on the active hard disk is corrupt or missing. It seems like you have the wrong version of the Windows 7 install media. Where is the disc you used to install Windows 7? If you can't find it, use the following guide to create a repair disc. System Repair Disc - Create

Night Hawk · 23 Aug 2009

Welcome to the Se7enforums! mrnuke

When changing the bios settings did you leave the cd/dvd option set as the first in the boot order? It sounds like you did there.

The first thing to do now is set the hard drive first in the order and disable the optical drive option there. That will force the bios to look to the hard drive itself for the boot information.

If you find a floppy search is enabled while not even having a floppy drive that can also interfere with the normal startup by looking for bootable media there as well. You want the bios to look at the main drive only. This happens with other versions as well as 7 when the boot order isn't set correctly once Windows is installed.

mrnuke · 23 Aug 2009

alright, I figured it out. Saw on the forum that it could be that win 7 was writing the boot sector to the first "active" drive. Took out the usb stick & other hard drives and reformatted and bingo, its all fine and dandy now. Thanks for the help.

Night Hawk · 23 Aug 2009

Hopefully you can now replug those back in and not run into any further problems.

That suggests the intended OS host drive was seen as second or third with the boot information/mbr entries going to the wrong hard drive. I know that one well here running 5 sata HDs plus generally having one or two flash drives plugged in.