Desk top computer shuts down only to turn on and get invalid disk message

[Gumibears9014]

Hello, I am not as computer savvy as most. This is my problem I hope someone can help me out in 'English' 🙂

2 weeks ago my desktop shut down/turned off by self. Wouldn't turn on, I went in to the diagnostics and ran the basic tests and everything came back checked and good. I was ready to take it into my computer guy ( 2 days later) when I decided to try it one last time, it turned on and was great. I was able to back up everything I needed to.....

2 weeks later, same issue just turned off. This time when I turned it back on it said 'invalid system disk'. I called my computer guy he says sounds like hard drive is out. I went in again and ran more test just for my hard drive, everything came back ok. Computer still gets this message....

My question... This last time when I was in one of my menus I clicked on hard drive and hit enter and all of a sudden my computer started and loaded my windows and seems to work. What did I do? What could be my computers problem? Should I take into computer guy or is this something that I can fix?

I am not as savvy as most but with good direction I can do most anything. Thank you

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Windows doesn't include any utilities to actually test the hard drive's state of health (the error checker only tests the data on it).
You need to test it with the drive maker's diagnostic software which loads from a bootable CD. The links are here:
http://www.tacktech.com/display.cfm?ttid=287