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.
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
