10 Ways to Fix Non System Disk or Disk Error on Laptops/PC

If the "Non system disk or disk error" error message is showing up because your Hard Disk Drive's boot files have become damaged or corrupt, removing all the non-bootable storage devices, checking on your HDD's IDE or SATA cable, or setting the right boot priority in BIOS/UEFI should fix the issue.

Learn more items...

Don't worry if you are having a "Non-System Disk or Disk" error on HP, Dell, Compaq, Acer, Lenovo, etc. laptops and computers. In the following, you will find 10 fixes for general troubleshooting and advanced troubleshooting of this issue. Pick up the best solution to remove this error and make your computer work again.

About non-system disk or disk error

"What does it mean when your computer says non-system disk or disk error? It's an HP Compaq 6000 that runs trouble when I start it, a message comes up displaying as Non-system disk error or disks error, replace and strike any key when ready."

For your information, the non-system disk or disk error message might appear when the computer BIOS cannot find a bootable operating system on any of the storage devices included in its boot path, or it fails to locate the boot disk. Similar error messages include boot device not found, operating system not found or missing operating system...

General troubleshooting for non-system disk or disk error

According to HP's help page, a very detailed guide is offered for HP notebook PCs to work out the "Non-system disk error" as well as "disk error" that appears on a black screen in Windows 10, 7 and Vista. In fact, the given suggestions are also applicable to other desktops and laptops, such as Dell, Compaq, Acer, Lenovo, etc.

In conclusion, you can try at first the four basic approaches, which usually helps fix the setup and stop error during Windows installation or startup.

Fix 1. Remove all the non-bootable storage devices

What storage drives are currently connected to your computer? Check and try to remove all the non-bootable storage devices, namely non-system drives, that make the computer have trouble to boot from, including a floppy disk or CD/DVD disc. After the safe ejection, try to turn off and on the computer and see if the error persists on.

Fix 2. Check on your HDD's IDE or SATA cable

Check on your HDD's IDE or SATA cable and make sure that the cable connecting the HDD to the motherboard is fastened securely and restart your computer.

Fix 3. Set the right boot priority in BIOS/UEFI

Access to your computer's BIOS/UEFI environment and make sure that the hard disk drive you're trying to boot from is in the right boot order settings, which should be at the very top of the boot order list. To change the boot order, you can do it like this:

• Press the key required to enter the BIOS or UEFI setup screen (Usually Esc, F2, F8, F10) while computer restarting.
• In BIOS, use the arrow keys on the keyboard to select the Boot tab and give the system drive the boot priority, which should be placed on the top.
• In UEFI, you can use the mouse pointer to specify the boot sequence.
• Save and exit the BIOS/UEFI setup utility. The computer will restart with the changed settings.

Fix 4. Remove and reinstall the hard drive

A bad connection between the hard drive and the computer would also expose such unbootable issues, and most of the time it's because the hard drive was once dropped or jarred. To fix the connection problem, you must do it in a safe way by following the standard process offered here.

• Cut off the power
• Take out the battery (For laptops only)
• Remove the system disk (HDD or SSD)
• Reinstall the system disk
• Reinstall the battery (For laptops only)
• Power on the computer

Fix 5. Use Windows repair services

The above solutions are not easy for ordinary users. If you want to solve the problem in a safe way, you can use manual Windows repair services. Qiling professional technical team can help you solve any system startup errors, including system failure, system blue screen, system black screen, and so on.

Advanced troubleshooting for non-system disk or disk error

Excluding the outside factors that caused the non-system disk or disk error, you have to accept the facts that something went wrong with the hard disk drive's boot files, which might become damaged or corrupted, and usually repairing the HDD's boot sector, master boot record (MBR) and boot configuration data (BCD) should take effect.

What's more, to protect data on a non-bootable computer, you're strongly suggested to take the right steps to fix the issue wisely.

First of all, download Qiling bootable media data recovery software to access and recover hard drive data without OS.

• Free Download
• Windows 11/10/8/7, 100% Secure

Later, download Qiling bootable partition manager to rebuild MBR.

Fix 6. Access hard drive and recover data from the hard disk without OS

Step 1. Create a bootable disk

Prepare an empty USB. If you have important data on it, copy the data to another device. When you create a bootable disk, the data on the USB will be erased. Deep Data Recovery WinPE Edition will help you create a bootable disk.

Connect the USB drive to PC, launch Deep Data Recovery WinPE Edition. Select the USB drive and click "Create" to create a bootable disk.

Step 2. Boot from the bootable USB

Connect the bootable disk to PC that won't boot and change your computer boot sequence in BIOS. For most users, it works well when they restart their computer and press F2 at the same time to enter BIOS.

Set to boot the PC from "Removable Devices" (bootable USB disk) or "CD-ROM Drive" (bootable CD/DVD) beyond Hard Drive. Press "F10" to save and exit.

Step 3. Recover data from a hard drive that won't boot

When you boot from the USB, you can run Deep Data Recovery from the WinPE bootable disk. Select the drive you want to scan to find all your lost files. 

Click "Scan" to start the scanning process.

Recover data from the computer or laptop. After the scan completed, you can preview all recoverable files, select the targeted files, and click the "Recover" button to restore your files. You'd better save all of the recovered data to another place to avoid data overwriting.

Fix 7. Fix non-system disk or disk error by rebuilding MBR

Download and install Qiling Partition Master Professional on a normal computer.

Step 1. Create a WinPE bootable disk

• Launch Qiling Partition Master, click "Create bootable media" on the tools page. Select to create the bootable disk on a USB drive. If your computer has a CD/DVD drive, you can also create the bootable disk to CD/DVD.
• Click "Proceed" to finish the process.

Step 2. Boot Qiling Partition Master Bootable USB

• Connect the bootable USB or CD/DVD to your PC. 
• Press F2 or Del when you restart the computer to enter the BIOS screen. Set and boot your computer from "Removable Devices" or "CD-ROM Drive". And then Qiling Partition Master will run automatically.

Step 3. Rebuild MBR

• Right-click the disk whose MBR is damaged. Choose "Fix boot" to continue.
• Select the type of MBR with the current operating system.

• Click the "Proceed" to build the MBR. After that, your computer can boot normally again.

By rebuilding the corrupted or damaged MBR of the system hard drive, if by chance the error still occurs after booting up the computer, continue with the other doable methods to get rid of the error, including running diagnostics on your hard drive, check bad sectors and repair if found any, and replace the hard drive and reinstall Windows.

All those complementary solutions reply on the same essential tool Qiling Partition Master. A detailed tutorial on how to use the mentioned functions is given on the linked pages.

• Fix 8. How to run a surface test on a hard drive
• Fix 9. How to check and repair bad sectors on the hard drive
• Fix 10. How to replace the hard drive by disk clone

Related Articles

• Recover Data from Encrypted (EFS) Hard Drive Partition in Windows
• Fix Unreadable SD Card and Recover Data
• SD Card Won't Read or Open on My Computer
• Fixed: Seagate external hard drive not showing up in Windows 10/11