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Solutions to Fix Invalid System Disk Error on Windows 10/8/8.1/7/XP

If you have a Windows laptop, and downgrade to Windows 8.1 after temporary upgrade to Windows 10, you may get the error message said Invalid system disk, replace disk them press any key.

Fix Invalid System Disk Error

How to fix this problem and access your PC?

Many Windows users encounter this problem when they turn on their PCs. And some of them worry about the hard disks are damaged.

In this tutorial, we are going to share some methods to fix this problem for invalid system disk. You can try them by your own and safe your money in your pocket.

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2. File recovery in various situations, including the invalid system disk error.

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Part 1: Causes of invalid system disk

The common causes of invalid system disk error include:

1. Your computer is set to boot from DVD or bootable USB, but nothing in your optical drive or USB port.

2. Or you put a disc or USB drive in your computer before boot your Windows, but the disc or USB is not bootable medium.

3. Your boot partition not working properly due to mistake operation, file system corruption or virus attack.

4. Windows tries to boot from improper point.

Part 2: How to Fix Computer Invalid System Disk Error Issues

In this part, you can learn how to fix invalid system disk error by yourself.

Method 1: Remove all portable devices and optical disc

If you get the error message said invalid system disk error, the first thing you should do is to check things below:

1. Eject your optical drive and take out the disc if there is one.

2. Disconnect portable devices, such as removal keyboard, USB flash drive and more.

Then reboot your computer to check if the error alert disappears.

Computer Peripherals

Method 2: Check boot priority in BIOS

As mentioned, if your computer tries to boot from an improper place, invalid system disk error will pop up. It is easy to fix it by correcting boot priority.

Step 1: Keep pressing "F2" while your PC boots to open the BIOS menu, and then head to the "BOOT" tab.

Step 2: Make sure that your boot drive is the first boot device in "Boot Device Priority" area. If not, correct it.

Step 3: Then confirm it and exit the BIOS menu. If prompted, click "Yes" to reboot your PC in normal mode.

Bios Boot

Method 3: Repair boot drive with chkdsk

To repair corrupted boot drive that causes invalid system disk, you can follow the steps below.

Step 1: Power on your PC and click "F8" key before Windows logo appears, and then select "Troubleshooting" > "Advanced Options" > "Command Prompt".

Step 2: Type in "chkdsk [boot drive letter] /f" after the command prompt window pops up and click the "Enter" button.

Step 3: Wait for your boot drive repair to complete and restart your PC to check if the error does not happen again.

This soulution also helps when you disk boot is failed.

Repair Drive

Method 4: Fix file system with bootable medium

Another way to fix your file system and get rid of invalid system disk is Windows Startup repair.

Step 1: Create a Windows 10 DVD or bootable USB on an accessible PC. Then insert it into your computer.

Step 2: Reboot Windows and follow the onscreen instructions until you reach Windows Installation screen, click "Repair your computer" > "Troubleshoot" > "Startup Repair" and select "Windows 10".

Step 3: Then all you need to do is to wait the repair process to finish and then restart your PC.

Startup

Method 5: Reinstall Windows

If you have try the methods above and invalid system disk error persists, you should consider reinstall your Windows.

Step 1: Put the bootable medium into your PC, you can choose proper language and more.

Step 2: Click on the "Install now" button on the Setup window and complete rest steps to reinstall Windows 10.

Reinstall Windows

Part 3: How to recover the lost files caused by invalid system disk

Step 1: Look for lost data on entire memory

Lose some files due to invalid system disk? Download and install Data Recovery on your computer.

Launch the program, go to the Data Type area and select what data types you want to recover, then move to the Location part and choose where the files saved originally.

Click on the Scan button to let Data Recovery work once you are ready.

Scan Data

Step 2: Preview before data recovery

After standard scanning, the result window will pop up with all readable files. Click on a data type, such as Image, and then you can open each folder to look at all pictures on right detail panel.

After standard scanning, the result window will pop up with all readable files. Click on a data type, such as Image, and then you can open each folder to look at all pictures on right detail panel.

Preview

Step 3: Recover data in one click after invalid system disk error occurs

Make sure to select all files that you’d like to recover and click on the "Recover" button. On the popup dialog, choose a proper destination, which should be different with the original location. When everything is done, you can edit your files normally.

Recover

Conclusion

Now, you should understand how to fix the invalid system disk error without data loss. This problem usually happens after you used a bootable medium on your PC.

You can follow our guides to get rid of this error easily. More importantly, Apeaksoft Data Recovery is able to recover the lost data due to invalid system disk error easily. We hope that our guides and suggestions are useful to you.

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