It's dead, Jim.

[Feud]

Crap, computer finally died.

It's stuck in some sort of weird loop: when it starts it doesn't recognize an OS as being on the drive, so it insists on booting from disk (and will freeze if you don't press a key within four seconds).

When booting from an XP disk it insists on formatting the drive first, once done it hangs going into the windows installation and then says the drive is not formatted and and insists that such must be done first. Reformatting starts the cycle over again, exiting results in the "boot from cd" issue coming up again and either freezing, or once again demanding to reformat.

All the bios are set to boot from drive first, but the computer isn't recognizing an OS so it immediately defaults to booting from cd.

It's about five years old so I wasn't expecting it to go much longer without seeing some issues, but it seems kinda weird to me that the problem is continuing after a reformat.

Any ideas?

[Ace Rimmer]

Reset the CMOS and try to take a look at the BIOS afterward?

[Feud]

Reset the CMOS and try to take a look at the BIOS afterward?

I've dug all through the BIOS and couldn't find anything, how do you reset the CMOS?

[MrBunsy]

CMOS? That's the type of transistors...?

Have you got any other hard discs you could test?

[bert_the_turtle]

Indeed, a broken HD could explain all the observed errors. If you don't have a replacement HD to test, booting a Live CD (such as many Linux distributions provide, plug for my favorite choice) can also serve as a test; if it works, it's very likely purely the HD's fault. You can even try to repair the HD's structure from the Live system; if some virus destroyed it, reinstalling the MBR and a partition table and fromatting it good would repair the damage. You'll have access to IRC from the live system, where friendly people will help you.

[Wasgood]

Yes, do that Bert said. You can reset the CMOS by opening the case and taking the little battery out for awhile. It's solved a couple of problems

[Feud]

Tried swapping out hard drives on it, it will boot to the Windows setup screen but once it gets there the system blue screens and says that an error has been detected.

[Ace Rimmer]

Could this be a memory (RAM) problem as opposed to a HDD issue?

[Feud]

Could this be a memory (RAM) problem as opposed to a HDD issue?

If it is then I'm just as screwed, none of the RAM I have around fits the motherboard.

[WaffleMaster]

I had a similar problem recently when my HD was fried by a faulty power supply. Luckily, it was still under warranty and the manufacturer sent me a new one. First, I would try to get the files off. Then, send it back for warranty replacement, if it is still under warranty. Even if the time for the warranty has elapsed, they will often take it anyway as long as it isn't obviously long past the warranty.

[Mackilla]

I had a neighbor, a trekky, who died a while ago.

My other neighbor (who's house is a rock) asked what happened. I responded simply, "He's dead, Jim."
Of course his name wasn't Jim. So I managed to get him hooked on Star Trek.

Rather funny story if you think about it...

[Ace Rimmer]

Speaking of bumps, any progress on the dead PC?

[Feud]

Took a few weeks but I finally managed to get it limping along again. It required trying several different HDs and some heavy handed "encouragement" but I finally got it to work again.

[Ace Rimmer]

So what was the issue?

[Feud]

Not sure, but after three HD's and some frustrated fisticuffs it seems to have been solved.