Invalid System Disk

[typhoonmike]

Setting up my dad's computer for work. Had Windows installed and had installed the Via4in1 drivers along with the ATA100 drivers. Motherboard is an ASUS A7V133. Everything was working fine. Installed the video card and rebooted. Nothing was causing a problem. Went downstairs to eat and left it running. Came back upstairs and it had gone into sleep mode or something. Moved the mouse and it started back up. Right clicked on the desktop and went to properties because I was going to change the display settings. Got some Rundll32 error or something like that. No biggy. I'll just reboot and see if that fixes it. Now it won't reboot. Everytime it boots up I get an
Invalid System Disk. Replace the disk, and then press any key.

There is no disk in the floppy. I have it set to boot from the harddrive first. There's no reason for it to be doing this. About to reformat and install if I need to. Any help would be appreciated.

[typhoonmike]

Well decided I was just gonna go ahead and reformat. Went into fdisk to check the partions though and I noticed that the volume label I had entered had changed though. It was now orsA. I have no clue what that is and I didn't change it to that. I've checked all the files I was using to install the stuff and there are no viruses present. No clue what happened.

[typhoonmike]

Well crap I can't even repartion it. The volume label has changed and I don't know what it changed to. Something nasty has happened here.

[Bmxpunk86pl]

Are your master/slave settings correct?

[typhoonmike]

Well they weren't really set on anything. Computer was built I think by the supposed "Computer Guy" at the main office but I'm finding more and more that he didn't have a clue what he was doing. It wasn't set on master or slave or cable select or anything. But I didn't think that really mattered if it was the only hard drive. But I went ahead and changed it. Seems funny that just a jumper would suddenly cause a hard drive to quit working after lots of stuff had been installed. Or have it change a volume label. But I gave it a shot anyway. Doubtful it will boot back up and I'll probably still have to reformat but I thank you for pointing me towards that.

[typhoonmike]

Okay that didn't work. It actually made things worse. Looking at the Hard drive it looks like I have it set for Master but it fails to detect it. I just switched it to what looked like cable select and it is back to the invalid system disk thing. Grrr.

[typhoonmike]

Well I did managed to eventually get it partitioned and I started wondering. When I first got my hands on this computer there was a hidden partition that I couldn't touch with Fdisk. I had to download a program from www.bootdisk.com that said it would remove all partitions. I used it and it found and removed a hidden linux partition. I then used fdisk to repartition and format. Seems wierd that a problem occured much later after Windows was up and running but I'm wondering if perhaps using 2 different programs had somehow screwed it up. I'm giving it another shot now. I'd use the other program to partition but I can't quite figure it out.

[Bmxpunk86pl]

glad you got most of it working