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Geek Culture / What's up with my PC?

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Fallout
22
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Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 10:49
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So I went to turn my compo on yesterday, and it came up with some sort of bios error. It then asked me if I wanted to use the defaults, so I said yes. It carried on booting, then started trying to boot from the network. So obviously, it wasn't booting from the harddisk and was going to it's last boot device.

So I pissed around with my bios settings for a while, using these backup bios settings I have and reflashing, but still the same problem. So I decided I might not know what the hell I was doing, and just bunged in the windows CD to boot from. It boots to a setup screen, so I thought sod it, I'll just reinstall windows. So it repartions my C drive and apparently formats no problem, then starts copying key files, then goes to reboot. Upon reboot, it jumps back into setup again (because of the CD), but doesn't continue from where it left off. It detects the new partition and some sort of install, but doesn't continue it.

So I'm not too good at PC diagnostics. Is this a knackered harddisk with a knackered install, that windows can't install to and therefore boot from? (even though it doesnt report any errors), or is this actually an issue with the bios as it initially suggested? I dont know exactly how the booting system works - I always though it was rom on the mother board (bios), and then continued with the harddisk, and I'm guessing since it gets to the stage where it's selecting a boot device (Floppy,CD,Harddisk, and then finally network), it's simply not finding boot information on my HD.

Any suggestions?


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hessiess
17
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Joined: 30th Mar 2007
Location: pc!
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 11:30
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your bios battery could be flat if you are loosing settings, but it soiunds more like a bad hd. if you can try using a difarent cable, and download a linux live cd like knoppix to make sure that it will boot.

learn blender, you will never regret it.
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GatorHex
19
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Joined: 5th Apr 2005
Location: Gunchester, UK
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 12:23 Edited at: 17th Nov 2007 12:28
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Dead BIOS battery would lose settings and come up with an error to enter into BIOS. If so leave you computer plugged in at hte mains until you can replace it and make sure the correct drive is selected as the boot device in the startup options.

If it's not that you might have messed around with the boot partition and it doesn't know which drive partition to boot strap from. i.e. to instal Linux.

Could also be you messed up the master/slave cables on your hard drive if you been messing with installing a new drive.

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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Fallout
22
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Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 12:26
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No. Not messed around with it at all. Turned it on once, and it was knackered. I've messed around with it since, but it's still exhibiting the same symptoms as the first failure.


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Fallout
22
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Joined: 1st Sep 2002
Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 12:28
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Just checked again now, and it boots with "CMOS checksum error - defaults loaded"


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GatorHex
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Location: Gunchester, UK
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 12:30 Edited at: 17th Nov 2007 12:31
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How old is your motherboard? If it's over 2 years and you didn't mess around installing something new then it's probably the BIOS battery being too weak to hold it's memory. You can get a new button battery from a computer shop or a watch shop.

DinoHunter (still no nVidia compo voucher!), CPU/GPU Benchmark, DarkFish Encryption DLL, War MMOG (WIP), 3D Model Viewer
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Fallout
22
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Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 12:37
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Sounds feasible. I think it's gonna be a good 2.5 years old this xmas. Might be a good first port of call as it'll be a cheap fix if it's just that.


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David R
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Joined: 9th Sep 2003
Location: 3.14
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 13:13 Edited at: 17th Nov 2007 13:15
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It's called a CMOS battery by the way, and they cost about a quid because they're effectively watch batteries. Most BIOSes will explicitly tell you if it's flat though, so it seems a bit odd that it's doing it without warning. Good thing to try first though, since it's cheap.

EDIT: Checksum error usually means a virus, a faulty power supply (unlikely in your case) or a faulty/damaged motherboard


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CattleRustler
Retired Moderator
21
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Joined: 8th Aug 2003
Location: case modding at overclock.net
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 13:46 Edited at: 17th Nov 2007 13:48
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take the battery with you to a watch/jeweler shop, or electronics repair shop, and get a replacement. it doesnt sound like its an hdd issue per se, but the bios will affect the ability to know what hdd's are present etc. plus you said you could reinstall windows so the drive was at least working then. it could be an hdd failure but at this point I would be barking up the cmos battery tree. then theres always a corrupt bios possibility. a boot sector virus sounds unlikely atm from what you described so far.

step 1: replace cmos battery...
step 2: boot into setup (bios) and set all of the variou settings to what they were/should be
step 3: try and boot to windows

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Lucifer
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Posted: 17th Nov 2007 13:59 Edited at: 17th Nov 2007 13:59
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Quote: "CMOS checksum error - defaults loaded"


lol, i got nearly the same error a few days ago turns out the hdd wasnt plugged into the motherboard hard enough so i just pushed cable into the motherboard as good as i could, and problem fixed..

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Fallout
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Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 15:51
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Cheers for the advice guys. Just stuck in a new battery. It booted with the same checksum error msg, but if the battery has just been put in, it might sort itself out on the next boot. Since I've already repartitioned the disk, there is no windows install, so trying again. It's copying now and installing. Will report back with the outcup and what else I've tried...


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Fallout
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Location: Basingstoke, England
Posted: 17th Nov 2007 16:25
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Think it might be sorted guys. I think the battery did the job. Resetting the bios caused my RAID stuff to switch on (by default), and since they aren't configured in the raid utility, it wasn't detecting the drives as boot drives. I've switched it off now and it's looking like it might work.

Cheers for everyones help.


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