First of all sorry about reposting on this issue. I did a search on it but the problem was I found TOO MUCH information and I couldn't make heads or tails of it so I was hoping someone could guide me through in steps. I also think its worth mentioning that most of the other people's problems seemed to occur after some kind of hardware change/upgrade, but mine just started suddenly this morning after working perfectly well yesterday! It says to hit ctrl+alt+dlt to reboot but it just comes up the same every time =( So far I've tried restetting CMOS by switching the jumper (taking out battery seemed redundant) and I ATTEMPTED to boot from my XP installation CD, but after "hit any key to boot from CD" it went to a blank screen. Also, I don't have a Floppy drive so making a boot diskette seems out. Although I did have a USB floppy drive at one point...not sure where it is or if it works, but I could look if it is useful. I know everybody loves their data but I desperately don't want to lose all my family pictures so if any suggestion is going to lead to a remformatted HD or some other form of data loss please let me know if there is a way to get my things off first. Thanks so much.
not sure it would work but there is a program, if you can find it, called Teckiez Toolkit. You would of course have to have a friend or family member download it and burn it to CD or DVD It is a fix program that is also a boot disc. So it boots in DOS and you have various actions you can perform for fixing problems. But with the way you describe it i am not certain you could even get far enough to boot the disc. If you have a friend who has windows and he is willing you could use his hard drive as the master, set yours up as the slave. Boot to windows from his and try to fix or at least save what you can on your.
Well, I do have a laptop (which I am working from now)so I'll look for that file. can I set up my laptop's HD as a master to my PC? If so, how?
UPDATE Tried Replacing the CMOS Battery because a friend had a similar experience, but I didn't have as much luck I've read in some other places that it sounds like a problem with the Master Boot Record and gave some info on how to fix it by downloading a program to floppy disk and booting from it. Since I don't have a floppy drive I was wondering if I could do the same from a USB drive. Guess I'll post in how my BIOS/CMOS is currenlty set to see if anything needs changing. Should I use either (or both) of the “LOAD OPTIMIZED DEFAULTS” or “UPGRADE BIOS” options? Phoenix - AwardBIOS CMOS Setup Utility(P4M800) STD CMOS FEAT: IDE Ch 0 Master: Maxtor 6B160P0 IDE Ch 0 Master - AUTO Access Mode - AUTO Capacity 136 GB Cylinder 65535 Head 16 Precomp 0 Landing Zone 65534 Sector 255 IDE Ch 1 Master: LITE-ON COMBO S0HC-5 IDE Ch 1 Master - AUTO Access Mode - AUTO Capacity 0GB Cylinder 0 Head 0 Precomp 0 Landing Zone 0 Sector 0 ALL OTHER IDE CH = EMPTY Drive A: (1.44M, 3.5 in) Video: EGA/VGA Halt on: All, but keyboard Base Mem 640k Ext Mem 1046528k Total Mem 1047552k ADV BIOS FEAT: CPU Feat: Delay Prior to Thermal 16 min Therm Mngmt = Therm Mnt 1 Lmt CPUID MaxVal DISABLED Shadow Setup: Video BIOS Shadow ENABLED Cache Setup CPU L1&L2 Cache Enabled CPU L2 Cache ECC Checking Enabled Boot Seq & Floppy Setup HD Boot Priority 1. Maxtor 6B160P0 2. Bootable Add-in Cards 1st Floppy 2nd HD 3rd LS120 Boot Other ENABLED Swap Floppy DISABLED Boot Up Floppy Seek ENABLED Virus Warning DISABLED Quick Power On Self Test ENABLED Boot Up NumLock Status ON Typematic Rate Setting DISABLED Rate Chars/Sec 6 Delay Msec 250 Security Opt SETUP MPS Ver Ctrl For OS 1.4 OS Select for DRAM>64MB Non-0S2 Delay for HDD(Secs) 0 Small Logo (EPA) Show ON Summary Screen Show DISABLED ADV CHIPSET FEAT DRAM Clock/Drive Ctrl Cur FSB Freq 133 MHz Cur DRAM Freq 200 MHz DRAM Clock By Spd DRAM Timing Auto by Spd xSDRAM CAS Latency 2.5 xBank Interleave DISABLED xPrecharge to ACtive(Trp) 4T xActive to Precharge(Tras) 07T xActive to CMD(Trcd) 4T xREF to ACT/REF(Trfc) 25T xACT(0) to ACT(1)(TRRD) 3T Read to Precharge(Trtp) 2T Write to Read CMD(Twtr) 1T Write Rcvry Time(Twr) 4T DRAM Command Rate 2T Command RDSAIT mode Auto xRDSAIT selection 03 AGP & P2P Bridge Ctrl AGP Aperture Size 128M AGP3.0 Mode 8x AGP Driving Ctrl AUTO xAGP Driving Valu DA AGP Fast Write DISABLED AGP Master 1 WS Write ENABLED AGP Master 1 WS Read ENABLED AGP 3.0 Calib Cycle ENABLED VGA Share Mem Size 64M Direct Frame Buffer ENABLED CPU & PCI Bus Ctrl PCI Master 0 WS Write ENABLED PCI Delay Transaction ENABLED Vlink mode selection By Auto Vlink 8x Support ENABLED DRDY_Timing DEFAULT Memory Hole DISABLED Sys BIOS Cacheable ENABLED Init Display 1st PCI Slot INTEGRATED PERIPHERALS VIA OnChip IDE Device OnChip SATA ENABLED SATA Mode IDE IDE DMA Transfer Access ENABLED OnChip IDE Channel0 ENABLED OnChip IDE Channel1 ENABLED IDE Prefetch Mode ENABLED Primary Master PIO AUTO Primary Slave PIO AUTO 2ndry Master PIO AUTO 2ndry Slave PIO AUTO Primary Master UDMA AUTO Primary Slave UDMA AUTO 2ndry Master UDMA AUTO 2ndry Slave UDMA AUTO IDE HDD Block Mode ENABLED VIA OnChip PCI Device VIA-3058 AC97 Audio AUTO VIA-3068 MC97 Modem AUTO VIA-3043 OnChip LAN ENABLED Onboard Lan Boot ROM DISABLED OnChip USB Controller ALL ENABLED OnChip EHCI Controller ENABLED USB Emulation ON xUSB Keyboard Support ENABLED xUSB Mouse Support ENABLED SuperIO Device OnBoard FDC Controller ENABLED Onboard Serial Port 1 3F8/IRQ4 Onboard Serial Port 2 DISABLED xUART Mode Select NORMAL x UR2 Duplex Mode HALF Onboard Parallel Port 378/IRQ7 Parallel Port Mode SPP x ECP Mode Use DMA 3 POWER MANAGEMENT SETUP ACPI Function ENABLED Power Management Option USER DEFINE HDD Power down DISABLE Suspend Mode DISABLE Video Off Option SUSPEND -> OFF Video Off Method V/H SYNC+BLANK MODEM Use IRQ 3 Soft-Off by PWRBTN Instant-Off Ac Loss Auto Restart Off IRQ/Event Activity Detect VGA Off LPT & COM LPT/COM HDD & FDD ON PCI Master OFF PowerOn by PCI Card DISABLED Modem Ring Resume DISABLED RTC Alarm Resume DISABLED x Date (of Month) 0 x Resume Time (hh:mm:ss) 0:0:0 IRQs Activity Monitoring Primary INTR ON IRQ3 (COM2) DISABLED IRQ4 (COM1) ENABLED IRQ5 (LPT2) ENABLED IRQ6 (Floppy Disk) ENABLED IRQ7 (LPT1) ENABLED IRQ8 (RTC Alarm) DISABLED IRQ9 (IRQ2 Redir) DISABLED IRQ10 (Reserved) DISABLED IRQ11 (Reserved) DISABLED IRQ12 (PS/2 Mouse) ENABLED IRQ13 (Coprocessor) ENABLED IRQ14 (Hard Disk) ENABLED IRQ15 (Reserved) DISABLED PnP/PCI CONFIGURATIONS PNP OS Installed NO Reset Config Data DISABLED Rescorces Ctrld By AUTO(ESCD) x IRQ Resources PRESS ENTER PCI/VGA Palette Snoop DISABLED Assign IRQ for VGA ENABLED Assign IRQ for USB ENABLED PC HEALTH STATUS Shutdown Temp DISABLED CPU Vcore 1.34V +3.3V 3.21V +5.0V 5.05V DRAM Voltage 2.60V Voltage Battery 3.20V Current CPU Temp 54C Current CPU Fan Speed 2766 RPM Current SYS Fan Speed 3068 RPM Show H/W Monitor in POST ENABLED Chassis Open Warning DISABLED FREQUENCY/VOLTAGE CONTROL CPU Voltage Regulator DEFAULT DDR Volt Reg 2.65V Auto Detect PCI/DIMM Clk ENABLED Spread Spectrum ENABLED CPU Clock 133 MHz
