[capty99]

went to bed computer was running fine, woke up in the AM, came upstairs and the thing is stuck on the load-up screen for the mobo (the screen that says f10 for diagnostics, f9 for setup etc....)

it won't advance past this screen.

if i press f9 for setup it takes 3 or 4 minutes but then it says "entering setup" in the dialog area on the same screen - but nothing happens past that.

i don't even know how to troubleshoot this.

i went through and reseated everything in the computer, ram, vid card etc... but beyond that - did the mobo just die on me or what?

[Core]

Could be a CPU problem. Try disconnecting every peripheral and run it at an absoulte minimum (without hard drives, DVD-RW, additional cards), so it only can reach the BIOS loading stage. If it works fine, then the problem could be caused by a peripheral. If not - it is most likely the motherboard or the CPU.

[capty99]

gracias- your post helped.

found out it was my master drive that went bad. i'm not sure i really understand the whole issue though.

if that drive is plugged in, even if its the last boot device, and my dvd drive is my first, i can't boot into anything. the bios just freezes. does this tell me anything about the drive? i have a new hd in there now that i'm installing windows on, and would like to have the old one at least temporarily running so that i can get files off of it , but if its plugged in at all the computer won't boot.

i'll probably try an external enclosure but jw what the hell happened to it.

[Liontrue1]

Although I'm not expert at data recovering, I'd say your hard drive just died. It once happened to me a few months ago, the computer did not boot no matter where I put the drive (master, slave..) so I just threw it away (there was no important data on it)

[calvinthedestroyer]

This could be a Hard Ware Issue. try removing everything except Ram, Mother Board, CPU and power supply, and check that those main devices work correctly.

If there is still an issue then one of those devices is causing the problem.

If you do not have an On-Board video card then you'll have to use yours. If you have an extra "know good" video card try swapping yours out for the know good video card.

From there its just a process of elimination till you find the bad component.

You want to start with the basic components and reinstall all the components one by one until you find the one that's causing the errors.

[Dogstopper]

calvinthedestroyer, on 2 Jan, 2010 - 11:30 PM, said:

This could be a Hard Ware Issue. try removing everything except Ram, Mother Board, CPU and power supply, and check that those main devices work correctly.

If there is still an issue then one of those devices is causing the problem.

If you do not have an On-Board video card then you'll have to use yours. If you have an extra "know good" video card try swapping yours out for the know good video card.

From there its just a process of elimination till you find the bad component.

You want to start with the basic components and reinstall all the components one by one until you find the one that's causing the errors.

Hey, just a heads up; he had a hard drive crash.