Windows Vista – Non-system disk or disk error
Today I received a lot of goodies in the mail. A brand new MSI motherboard, AMD Dual Core 3800+ Processor, 250GB SATA Hard Drive, 2GB DDR ram, 256 nVidia 7600 GT graphics card, and a bunch of other stuff. It was time to build a good performing system to replace my old system I built in 2001.
Tonight I did a fresh install of the Windows Vista Business Operating System on the primary 250GB Maxtor Hard Drive. Everything was running smoothly until I encountered another problem with Windows Vista. After shutting down the computer to install my old 160GB PATA Hard Drive (transfer files), Windows Vista would no longer boot. Instead I am left with a nice “Non-system disk or disk error” message. Now you may be asking if I had set the jumper settings correctly, or the boot sequence in BIOS…well of course!
I then figured it would be best to return to the original way I had everything set up, so I removed the old Hard Drive…no luck. So what to do next? I threw in the Windows Vista install CD and selected the “repair” feature after booting off of the CD. The repair feature instantly recognized that the master boot record was damaged, and it fixed the problem accordingly. After a fresh restart, Windows Vista booted fine.
Now I still needed to get my old Application Data files off of the old hard drive, so I reconnected the hard drive to the motherboard and yet again, “Non-system disk or disk error” JUST GREAT! Yet again, I had to throw in the Vista install CD to repair the master boot record, and now my computer boots fine with both hard drives connected.
I have never experienced a problem like this when i was running Windows XP, or the earlier versions of Windows, as I have moved hard drives around in the past. So in conclusion, if you ever need to throw in another hard drive while you are running Windows Vista, you might experience a problem similar to this. Just giving you a heads up.
March 24th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
I am waiting a while longer, like first patch release at least.
March 31st, 2007 at 5:06 am
I have the same problem, with Vista cd in the cd player it wil boot, without it wil say non system disk and i have tried Vista Boot pro 3.1 and fix the boot but stil it wil not boot without the cd..
I dont know what to do?
Need a program that wil fix the bootsector.
John Stokhof
mail john.stokhof@tiscali.nl
Netherlands
April 15th, 2007 at 6:18 pm
Hey i know dat u had da same problem but how can i fix it I REALLY NEED HELP? My laptop is old so is it worth it?
April 16th, 2007 at 12:29 am
I’m actually going to give Microsoft a call this week. I thought this problem was resolved, but it has not been resolved. What Stokhof listed above is the exact same problem I am experiencing..
April 22nd, 2007 at 10:56 am
thankss
April 27th, 2007 at 11:30 am
I have the same problem with an MSI motherboard but with win XP. XP installs great, but won’t boot from the HD unless the install CD disk is in the CD drive.
I think its the MSI boot sequence thats broken not vista or XP as it only does this on the MSI Mobo that I have.
April 27th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
OK I’ve fixed my problem, maybe you all have the same problem?
I’m using a PATA drive as the main boot drive and two SATA drives to hold data. The PATA drive had its jumper set to master. If you change it to CS cable select then the PC boots just fine.
Check your PATA/IDE drives jumper. Set it to CS not Master.
April 27th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Will do.
Thank you for coming back with a solution. That was very kind on your part.
I guess this problem has been broken down to a problem by MSI, and not Windows. All other motherboard I have had in the past would boot up find if a hard drive is set to Master. I guess CS (cable select) is the only option to boot an O/S normally when using an MSI motherboard.
June 19th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
I had a similar problem. In order for me to even get through the install process I had to have an IDE HD drive attached otherwise it wouldn’t let me past the 2nd install dialog complaining that I needed device drivers for my CD/DVD Drive. Once I put an IDE HD in, i didn’t even need drivers and it allowed me to proceed past the 2nd install dialog. I was able to install Vista 64-bit to my SATA drive (It took about 3 tries and i didn’t need any additional drivers).
However, when i booted into Vista it designated the IDE drive as the System Volume / Partition. This is weird because I had to boot from the IDE drive (which had no real files on it) while the windows partition (c:\windows) existed on a different hard disk / volume (SATA disk). I then followed the tip above and removed the IDE drive then I used the install cd to “repair an installation”. If you look at the details of the repair, it shows that it found the real windows partition and it remade the bootmgr and attributed the real windows partition with type system.(I had to do a repair twice}
It all works now, Thanks!
System specs:
2×512 MB Crucial RAM
1 SATA Maxtor 250GB
1 IDE Seagate 200MB
Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe (BIOS 1015)
Silicon Image SiI3114r Raid Controller
AMD Socket 939 4200+
August 14th, 2007 at 3:37 pm
i also had a problem with this. but this was with windows xp. there was no floppy in the drive, yet it still wont start up, showing the exact same message. what do i do? please email me if you happen to know, KJM2245@yahoo.com. thank you.
August 28th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
This issue has reared it’s ugly head to me in less than a week. Every boot time now and irritating. At least, it lets me press a key and still boot up.
This and that delightful broken Control Panel issue… I had thought Vista to be quite nifty, but I thought wrong.
I just had to vent, I thought I’ve done something to start breaking things, but it appears that these things happen to other Vista users. Ridiculous, I must say.
September 17th, 2007 at 5:10 pm
Iv got the same problem on to computers now, but both with diffrent ASUS mobo’s.. both installtions is on SATA disks, dosen’t seem to start without CD in the reader.. but I will be sure to check if my jumpers are set to master on the only IDE disk still running in my computer.
October 4th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Same problem here!!!
i just got new asus m2a-vm motherboard bought a new sata 300 gig hard drive.
made a 20 gig partition for vista and left the rest unallocated for now.
booted up vista (lots of stability problems with ddr2 800 which i fixed by bumping the memory vcore from 1.8 to 1.9-2.0)
Then I am installing drivers from the cdrom that came with my board, and it reboots too make changes. When it boots up it actually boots to my asus cd (i forget to take out) and when i reboot again it says non-system disk error.
I put the vista business dvd in and it boots fine (as long as i dont press a key too boot to dvd). I take it out and its non -system disk error.
i have 3 sata drives and 2 IDE and a cd rom, I installed vista to sata1 drive clean install.
wtf
Scott.
May 18th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Hi,Fantastic article dude! i am just Fed up with using RSS feeds and do you use twitter?so i can follow you there:D.
PS:Have you thought to be putting video to the blog to keep the visitors more entertained?I think it works.Best regards, Alex Bandura