Bios

After BIOS loads I get a blue screen saying to press F1 to restart. When checking the BIOS it shows no hard drive or CD drive. What happened and any suggestions on how to correct.

 

Whoa. That's not good (which I'm sure you know!)... Could be some of your board controllers are bad. Does it post? Do you have a different hard drive or CD/ROM drive to plug in?

Check first that your cables are all attached properly and nothing is loose (both on the drives and on the board). Reseat them, just to be thorough. If it posts and if all drives you plug in are not recognized, my best guess would be your IDE controllers have fried somehow.

As a last resort, you might try clearing your BIOS (or flashing it, if it's a Dell) to see if that helps. Good luck!

 

I would try setting the BIOS to factory defaults. Then make sure the HardDrive settings are set to auto. While in the BIOS look at the Date and Time. If they are off by a few years you may simply need a new Battery on the MB.

 

Sorry about the delay in replying but have problems at work. I try your suggestions tomorrow. Thanks so much.

 

Turned computer on and it started up with no problems. Ran chkdsk and after a short time it began listing bad sectors and then froze. It was the hard drive. Now I'll find out how good my backups are. Thanks.

 

There is a bootable CD you can download and burn that may help you recover your data. It's called Knoppix. You can download it at www.knoppix.net. Using it you can establish a network with another computer and copy you data accross. This puts less strain on your failing drive by not running the OS from it. I've used it many time to recover data.

 

Thanks. I'll use that. I was wondering how I could do that. Thanks so much.