Invalid partition warning ?

[skrump]

So everytime I start my computer my bios spits out a warning stating I have an invalid partition however it doesn't state which partition and all my drives/partitions seem to be functioning normally.

Is there anyway to check the integrity of my partitions ? because all I can figure is it's a hidden system partition left over from a previous install of an older version of windows which is no longer on the system as I deleted all the files without doing an fdisk.

(edit) the computer management console shows all drives/partitions as healthy.

[Vermicious]

That sounds kinda scary, and not something to ignore. Depending on the make/model of your computer (or motherboard if custom made) there may be diagnostic utilities built into the BIOS>

1) Make sure you have a backup of all your important stuff!! DO IT NOW!!

2) if you know the brand of your hard drive, you can usually find a diagnostics utility on their website. Otherwise, do a full (long version) disk error check in windows on all partitions.

In any case, I'd look at getting a replacement hard drive soon. You can just image your current drive to it with free software (Macrium Reflect), or maybe a good time for an upgrade to SSD

[Denpepe]

While I agree with the above post, I have had the issue years ago and it was due to some crappy piece of software from apple, back then I changed both my HDD's by new ones and had the same error after 2 days, had something to do with a now obsolete pce of movie playback software, so if you recently added some new software might be worth having a look to see if it can cause false positives.

[Aurimas]

I agree with both assessments. It probably is a hidden system partition, especially if it was a factory built computer which you have since formatted... and it probably is a good idea to back up (with NOW in red letters).

Sometimes just going into BIOS can solve this stuff without even changing anything. Do something that makes it reenumerate your partitions (pretend to change your boot partition or something, but don't actually do anything). Then just get out without making any changes and the error might go away.

Otherwise it seems like a good time to do a clean install. If you've taken our advice to back up, and you're getting scary errors like that, I'd probably go ahead and start over. Actually "fdisk" this time to make sure you only have the partitions you want.

[Myth]

You can also download a program like Hard Disk Sentinel and it can provide you some details on the health of the drive and possible issues. Don't ignore this problem.