bios help!

a11ornuthin

hey guys (and gals!)

ok so i have this xp box i got from my uncle at christmas time and i was messing with the bios to boot from usb for unetbootin because it wouldn't boot it up...well i had ubuntu already installed to the usb drive and had forgot about it...so i booted up my pc and it loaded windows instead of the *nix i wanted...so i turned off the computer and turned it back on...it went to ubuntu again...i had to leave the pc so i turned it off again...the next and forever since wont boot up anything and all it does is run the fans...HELP!!!! <!-- / message --> <!-- attachments --> <!-- / attachments --> <!-- sig --> <!-- / sig --> <!-- ic-postbit-content -->

NullenVoyd

Well, first I'd try resetting your bios. You can usually disconnect power to the system and go in and remove the small flat battery on the mainboard for about a minute (usually less, but I try to err on the side of making sure it is definitely cleared) then pop it back in, plug in the system and see if that gets you back to booting, OR many boards have a jumper setting to do this, but if you're not sure, messing with jumpers on motherboards can sometimes cause trouble.

If it's still dead after that, you can either try disconnecting things one-by-one and try booting each time you remove something, or go the opposite way by disconnecting everything inside and out of the computer EXCEPT the power supply, memory, cpu, monitor, video card and faceplate cables (the one's going to the case front for the power button, power lights and whatnot, though it IS a good idea if you're stripping things down for troubleshooting purposes to disconnect usb headers).

The idea is, if your bios is back to default settings, and you are down to the bare minimum needed to see the post screen and/or get into the bios, and it's still dead, you know your issue is somewhere in those components.

I've seen it where the usb lines get shorted for whatever reason, and while the power supply will turn on when the system is turned on, nothing will happen because something is shorted as far as the mainboard is concerned, and you won't even see post, but that's just a relevant anecdote and not a diagnosis.

Good luck and let us know what you find out!

a11ornuthin

Thanks for the reply!

Well I've tryed clearing the CMOS and took out the battery and still hasn't done anything...no bios screen no nothing...oh and just to clear it up, when I was in the bios I changed the boot order but its been so long that I forgot what the order was...

I also have another problem pc v.v another windows XP box and this one randomly crashes. I'm lucky to check email for 5-10 mins without flat black screen to the windows splash saying loading....I think it could be one of 2 things, 1 when it boots it says INVALID BOOT.INI booting from C:/Windows and boot intows normally. Second I used a program called prime 95 for a torture test/ hardware check and it failed it in record time....the other xp pc ran perfectly XD anyways those are my 2 thoughts on that box any help is GREATLY appreciated.