Problem: Cannot load bios setup or past initial load screen.

Don't ask how to over-clock.
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TheRoyalIdiot
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2005 12:55 am

Hello, I'm new to this forum, but I am hoping that I am posting in the correct forum. I will try to explain the problem to the best of my knowledge without the specification of my motherboard or processing chip (which I do not have with me since I am in a computer lab). I will go through this step by step, and if nobody has an idea, I'll rustle up the ID #'s for the motherboard and chip.

Anyways, I basically had my computer running for a while in low-power mode, and I tried to switch between the separate screens that were running in the background. I heard a click from the sound of my hard drive arms recoiling, then the computer froze. I rebooted the system, and it was booting up, the hard drive recoiled again and mentioned something about a driver error. Unfortunately, I thought it was one of those files that was corrupted, and ran the repair function that windows xp had. It froxe there as well, so I rebooted the computer again, and it brought up the boot screen, and it froze there as well. I was able to get into the bios setup once to see if something was not being detected, but I found nothing. I then restarted, and was not able to boot or get into the setup. The thing is, it still detects the hard drives I have connected, as well as the ram, which it loads before it freezes. If I disconnect the drives, the autodetect notices that nothing is there, and acts accordingly on the initial boot-up screen.

Now come the questions: I was wondering if my bios is gone, and have to flash it (which I have yet to do, I have been using it as-is since I bought it); Is the problem motherboard related, and have to break down to get a new motherboard?; Is the problem boot related, and will I have to get a boot-disk off the net, since my computer never came with proper utilities (got it from a generic company that believes support software is only sent when neccesary); or is it something else all together?

I have already checked over two dozen posts hat had the potential of being related, and unfortunately, could only find one that was similiar and unanswered.Anybody who has the answer to this problem will be thanked accordingly to the best of my abilities through posting.

Thanks again.
jimjones
BIOS Rookie
Posts: 49
Joined: Wed May 11, 2005 8:42 am
Location: Belgium

Seems like a broken harddisk to me - disconnect it and try to boot from diskette or CD (should work) , then install XP on another harddisk.
If your harddisk is a Maxtor, they've got good diagnostic software, but to me it seems to be a mechanical failure (happened to me once too).

Hope this helps :wink:
if all else fails, try brute force :)
KachiWachi
The New Guy
Posts: 1451
Joined: Fri Mar 29, 2002 10:32 pm
Location: Pennsylvania, USA

I agree...sounds like trouble with the HDD. Download the Mfgr. test utility and see what it says.

Do you get a SMART error at all?
TheRoyalIdiot
New visitors - please read the rules.
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Apr 28, 2005 12:55 am

Sorry about that, I thought I had written a reply to this explaining why it was doing that.

Actually, The day it happened, the city had a large power surge a couple of hours beforehand. It turns out that when that happened, it caused the arm on my hard drive to skip. It was over an hour since the power surge happened, so I didn't think it was a problem. When I reboot, it was having problems with detecting the hard drive on the bios startup, and it was only after I had waited 3+ minutes that it actually got around to detecting the drive and loading windows.

Normally, it only takes about a minute or less to load, so I thought I had somehow fried my chip, since switching hard drives didn't fix my problem.

Additionally, even though the power surge did not fry my computer that just had a simple power bar, it did fry the one at work that had a UBS and was plugged into a power surge bar that was connected to a heavily grounded system.

Go figure.


Anyways, thanks for the responses, you were completely right that it was the hard drive. After I gave it some extra time to boot, it acted normally, not even acting if there was an error.

Thanks again.
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