Technical Forum

does anyone have any idea how this may have happened to me?

last night my computer started freaking out. i tried to restart it and before windows could even load i got a black screen and an error with a bunch of strange code and then something saying "no boot device detected".

i SOMEHOW went into system setup and SOMEHOW saw that my computer was set up to "hard drive priority" upon setup but then noticed that none of my components were set up to say hard drive. instead it listed:

drive 1 - floppy
drive 2 - cd-rom
drive 3 - cd-rom
drive 4 - lan

i SOMEHOW changed drive 2 to say 'hard drive' instead of cd-rom and suddently my computer could work again.

i say SOMEHOW because i am no computer technician and i am amazed that i even got as far as i did, nevermind was able to fix it all on my lonesome. but i am curious if anyone knows why this would suddenly happen? would a power-surge screw this up?

(and any comments about pcs vs macs are not necessary. i'll get a mac when i am out of the red and can afford it.)

Sometimes Virus attacks lead to such type of problem. Scondly, It may also happen that u had changed unknowingly some setting of any root level software.
Keep smiling
Vivek Dadu

thank you for such a quick reply!! i had a feeling it might be virus related but i didnt realize it could change such a setting.

i guess now is to try to find the virus and get rid of it. at least i am able to access windows now to do it though :) i am proud of myself for figuring that part out :)!

i am researching as to why this may have happened (i am at work now) and it appears that it could have been due to faulty power supply. two days ago my outlet was on the fritz and made the power to my computer shut down and back up about 4 times in a matter of 5 minutes. so perhaps it caused something to act up there.

what a pain. i thought i lost everything for a good few hours.

i should really learn to get in the habit of backing up my stuff - especially my travel photos :)

This may be considered to be a valid reason.....but u might be thinking why???

Let me try to explain the issue. Actually, all the computer houses a lithium battery which basically stores the minimum required information for next bootup and this is the reason that when u switch on ur PC next time ur date & time comes exactly perfect. THis is wut lithium battery does.

Power fluctuation may reset the settings...one thing...secondly it may also harm ur PC.....atleast u shud use a UPS with it.

good advice. i thank you very much. and at least for now i will plug into a less angry outlet! until i buy a UPS. thank you thank you.

Yes, a decent UPS will make a big difference. They aren't that expensive - have a look at http://www.apc.com/ where you can get a recommendation of what you capacity you need. (Go to Battery Backup -> Help me choose). For my computer it cost about 70 GBP, so you should be able to find something for under $70 given the usual price comparisons.

And well done for sorting that problem out !

thank you andrew! i hope i didn't harm my hard-drive too much, but the first thing i did (just in case) was to make sure i got backups of my photos.

i really have no idea how i figured that out. am flabbergasted really.

thank you for the link, i really appreciate it!

i will make sure to invest in one of these pronto.

This selection normally is a boot Prom setting.

I can only guess what might have corrupted the setting, but if you powerup your computer and hitting F2, it normally gets you into a menu, where you can set these items (and much more). [on some models it might be the F8 key].

The list gives a number of path names where the computer might find the boot info to start the rest of the programs. Normally you have the floppy drive and CD-player first (for resque disc startup possibility) and than your hard disc.

At power up the computer just goes through the list to start booting at whatever first result of finding boot info.

Normally I would expect the floppy drive to be adressed first (resulting in some rattling sound at that drive, indicating no disc found; than hop over to the CD player, trying the same; followed by the jump to the hard drive and startup from track 0 (where the boot info normally is located).


PJ

Renee, most of the advice here is pretty spot on. If you got this after you had several rapid power cycles, the most likely thing is that your computer reset to the default BIOS settings. This should not have happened with the battery installed that was previously mentioned. When your computer is plugged in, it does not need the battery. Well, when the power supply has power it doesn't need the battery.

There are also capacitors in the system that will protect the computer from losing it's mind due to milli second length outages in power. What it sounds like to me is a couple of things. A good UPS (look for one with automatic voltage regulation (AVR) or line conditioning (they are the same thing, but different manufacturers refer to them by different names). This will give you a constant 120/60Hz input to the computer. Voltage sags and spikes will be eliminated/minimized so that your computer has "clean" power. A good UPS will also let you properly shut down your computer if the power goes out so you don't have to worry about it dying in the middle of something or other things power related messing up your computer.

What has most likely happened is the battery in your computer (it's just like a standard watch battery, about the size of a quarter and about as thick) is probably dead and needs to be replaced. Losing the power several times rapidly caused your BIOS (basic input/output system) to reset to the default settings due to the loss of power. It could have just been the surges of power that reset it, but replacing the battery is only about $5-7 and can save much aggravation if it is truly dead.

Of course, for the technically challenged, it could cost about $20 to get it replaced.... $5 for the battery and $15 for the pizza and mountain dew to bribe the computer geek to fix it for you. <grin>

thank you chris! good thing i will have this thread to look back on should it fall apart again. luckily after i fixed the BIOS settings it has been fine. so it doesn't sound like the battery went dead. my computer just got reset. so...for now all is good with it again. thank you all for your help.