[ls.alencar]

About a month ago my computer dind't start windows XP. It asked me to "press any key to reboot" then I pressed and the computer ran ok. Now I can't get pass the bios. When I power on the pc, one of my two cd drives keep blinking a light as if it was trying to read something. Both of them do this, but this one keeps doing that even inside the BIOS. And the BIOS Post-screen (I don't know if it's called like that) keeps there and the HDD keeps blinking, but that's it. The only thing I can do is to press the DEL key. And the BIOS can't find my HD!!!

So what can I possibly do now?...........

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Honestly, from your description it could be any number of things, but let's start by assuming a dead HDD.

To test for this open your case and (after grounding yourself) remove the power connector from the back of the hard drive, then try to boot the system using your OS installation CD. If it goes through to the point where it says that "no hard drive detected" then there's your problem.

If not, then try removing the CDROMs one at a time, it may seem strange but I've seen some dodgy BIOSes that if one IDE device is wrong, it can't detect any, even on a different channel.

[Kurt_Aust]

Honestly, from your description it could be any number of things, but let's start by assuming a dead HDD.

To test for this open your case and (after grounding yourself) remove the power connector from the back of the hard drive, then try to boot the system using your OS installation CD. If it goes through to the point where it says that "no hard drive detected" then there's your problem.

If not, then try removing the CDROMs one at a time, it may seem strange but I've seen some dodgy BIOSes that if one IDE device is wrong, it can't detect any, even on a different channel.

[dsenette]

this also sounds like a possible PSU problem...

[ls.alencar]

Thanks a lot.....

I removed both cd drives and then it managed to get pass the screen, but the computer still couldnt find my hd as I couldnt get to windows...it asked me to "press any key to reboot" as previously.... so I ran fdisk and formatted it to fat-32..... now I have the computer running OK again........ pretty strange but it's working...........

Thanks again for all you help.....

[Kurt_Aust]

Did you try each CDROM individually or did it only work when both were removed?

[ls.alencar]

I removed the one which kept blinking the light non-stop....... Then I ran fdisk and it found the hd, I formatted and did a low-level format (I think it's called like that).......