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I have a Toshiba laptop which is about five years old and it's started playing up. When I switch it on there is just a black screen which says "insert system disk then press any key".
It appears it's having trouble reading the hard drive which is odd as I don't really use it very much, mostly for my ipod. It may have something to with a horrendous virus which came free with the MSN messenger (now removed) that the missus put on it.

Anyone else encountered this problem and know how to solve it?

I had a problem which sounds a bit like this. I would turn it on and told me I need to take out a floppy disk but there was no floppy disk in the drive. So I put a floppy disk in and it came up with some other fault.

It was an old one seeing as it used to be my Dads so I just got rid of it in the end.

Probably no help to you though

No disk seems to work with it and it doesn't detect a hard drive.
I'm a complete nincompoop when it comes to technical things like but I suppose i'll have to take the bleeder apart and see if the hard drive has become loose or dusty.
I had this problem a year or so ago and managed to resolve iy but I can't remember how.

Five years does sound awfully old for a laptop; it's probably past its use by date. My previous laptop was nearly five years old when it died on me, and at the end it was literally falling apart. Bits were coming off the main housing and the screen was blacking out.

I'm sorry this reply is of no use to you whatsoever, but I am the biggest nincompoop when it comes to computer issues. Good luck if you do decide to take it apart and have a root around the innards - you're a braver soul than me.

I couldn't make it any worse!

It's not been used much which is why I'm suprised it could possibly have conked out on me. It's used mainly for my ipod so maybe there's some fiddling around to be done that would sort it out.

I'm so untechnical with things like this...

The reason its not working is because its five years old!

However you could try inserting you windows OS CD in the drive, ensuring that you have set the first boot priority as the CD-Drive in the BIOS, then when the CD boots up select repair windows, this will install a fresh operating system whilst retaining all of your files. However some viruses can still remain in your OS.

To ensure the virus is totally eradicated you should back up everything on your iPod, then re-formate your HDD and make a fresh installation off the Windows 3 which came pre-installed on it (or XP)

EDIT - Oh before you do any of the above make sure you have SATA enabled, if thats your HDD type. (Enable it in the BIOS.)

Where the 'Please insert systems disk' comes from is when for whatever reason your computer can not find a 'boot sector' (The part that tells it what to load when it starts) on the disk.

If there is defiantly no cd or disk in the drive, than more than likely your boot sector has become corrupt. This can happen in a number of ways. There are some virus that can effect the boot sector, but more typically in my experience, especially with a machine past four or five years old, it's just the fact that the hard disk has become corrupted. Due to degradation (Normally known as 'failing')

First step would be to try and reinstall windows, this will only help if it has become corrupted through a non hardware fault in most cases.

Second, and probably easiest with something that old, is just to bring it into some place that does repairs and try and get them to swap a new disk in.

Cheers, I'm not sure how to back my ipod up on another machine as it instantly makes the library on the ipod the same as the pc. I've found a chum who's going to look at it for us, thanks for your help fellas.
Hopefully I can get it sorted someway. I don't really want to shell out for a new one as I don't use it a great deal.

Simple solution here, Freddie... DON'T reinstall Windows just yet, and panic not about Viri until you've tried a manual BIOS tweak...

The boot disk is decided at the start by the 'bios'... that horrible black screen with white writing that comes up before Windows.

Simple solution... most machines have a 'change settings' button during the bios boot. You need to hit that button almost as soon as the machine boots.

What has happened is either your internal battery which holds clock/bios settings has died, or simply your bios is corrupt, and the machine doesn't know which disk to boot from.

When you get to the 'change settings' screen, you need to let the machine know that your hard drive exists... the 'auto' setting should work.

Messing with BIOS is scary... and I'm halfway through a second bottle of Chilean red (which is taking it's toll, nicely ) so some kind soul on here should be able to guide you...

But rest assured, almost EVERY time I've encountered the problem you describe, it's just a bad bios.

All you need to do is let the computer know (once) that the hard drive exists, and it should work again!

Thanks matey, F1 seems to be the button that opens the bios screen and I had a fiddle with it earlier on to no avail. I'll try it again in the morning and see if I can change the hard drive setting.

The weird thing is that this happened last year and somehow I managed to resolve it but can't remember how. I'm terrible with anything technical.

Oddly enough, I used it today for the first time in about 9 months and it booted up find at first though it was horrendously slow and even opened itunes. Then came the dreaded black screen....


Cheers for all your help, hopefully I'll get it sorted out.

If you can get it to boot up again try and do a system restore. Start>All Programs> Accessories> System Tools> System Restore.

if nothing else works - slowly start tapping F8, then restart the laptop from its last safe moment (you'll get options) - that will restore it from its last "safe" moment...

another thing worth doing is to run the battery down a few times each year and recharge, some hard disk problems have been cured by a good flow of current from the battery.