Need HELP ASAP!!!

[dixiedarlin]

I formatted my mother in law's hard drive on her computer, her computer kept freezing up and dragging so I decided to format it. I have done this a zillion times on other computers in the past, mainly Dell's and Gateway's. She had her computer rebuilt last summer because lightning got it, she had to have a new motherboard, processor and modem. Anyway, I wanted to reformat to try to see if it would help with her problems, when I went to run Setup after the format was done it wouldn't reboot correctly and continue setup it kept running Setup over and over again from the cd rom and wouldn't boot from the hard drive, so I went into BIOS and switched it to boot from CD rom to boot to hard drive, still nothing, it would just sit there. I rebooted went back to BIOS and swapped the floppy, I disabled it I thought, but I think it did the floppy swap from A to B like I have 2 floppy drives, but I don't. Now the thing won't boot, it will try to boot from floppy, and the hard drive light blinks and the screen is blank and it won't do a thing, any ideas on how I can fix this before my mother in law kills me??? She has a laptop she is using in the meantime but she hates it, she just got DSL, been using slow dial up for years, finally got her on DSL and now she can't even turn her computer on and use it, I really need some help. The motherboard is a Gigabyte, don't remember anything else, but if you need the details on it I can get them for you she lives about 400 yards from my house. I just need to figure out what happened and how I can fix it, or if it can be fixed. I hope I didn't screw her computer up completely, it was a complete accident, not intentional in anyway!!!! If you could offer me some help or ideas I would greatly appreciate it, when I turn comp off and back on the floppy tries to boot and the hard drive light just blinkes on and off and the monitor won't even come on. I turn the monitor on and it goes to orange on the button. Please help me, I am desperate!!!! :!:

 

[kategra84]

You must remove the power cord , remove the bios batery on the motherboard and short the two pins on the motherboard (the ones that you removed the batery from) for 2-3 seconds - that will reset your bios , then repower the sistem and it showld boot normaly .

 

[croc]

You might consider moving to a foreign country...

If the cmos reset doesn't work, then the lightening took out more than was originally thought. ESD sometimes takes months to show up.

Just as a further check (if your bios reset works) do you have a spare HDD you could test? And is the current one IDE or SATA....

 

[dixiedarlin]

not that familiar with the bios battery on the motherboard, and will this definitely work, don't want to fry the motherboard, done these formats in the past but never had to fool with the motherboard, by actually touching it, always worked fine before, dont know what happened, I just want to live to see tomorrow and maybe sleep a little better tonight!!! I appreciate your help so much!!!

 

[Newf]

Let me see if I got this right...
You used the CD to boot up and formatted the C: drive.
Now you can't boot from the C: drive.
Maybe there no longer is anything on the C: drive to boot from?
Am I close? What did I miss here?

 

[jamesgoddard]

I assume you are using a Windows XP CD to try to re-load Windows - (Setup over and over again from the cd rom)

If so I have 2 possible ideas:

firstly is the CD scratched / damaged in any way
secondly, it may be possible that the system needs a driver disk for the hard disk controller, it would help if you could tell us exactly what motherboard if in the system now

 

[g-paw]

If you haven't done so, download the diagnostic/repair/installation software from the hdd mfg site and run it off a floppy. Could have been, could be your mother in law

 

[babybudha]

Fixing the computer is a band-aid solution. You need to get to the root of the problem and move at least a city/town away from her .

 

[Tejasdmt]

If you know the HD is still good, the system you may be trying to install to may be newer than the OS version you are trying to install onto it. For example if you are installing MS XP SP1 or ealier it may not have the drivers needs to ramp system up. Would recommend you go home build a slipstrema version of MS XP with SP2 and updated drivers built in for system. If this system is a vendor specific system then download the vendors latest iso and create a new installation CD. If this fails, then try another HD or remove all PCI cards except for video or try an older video card until you can get the network interface working so you can download updated drivers to system. Install on minimum HW, MB, HD, Video card and memory. Have had this happen several times with systems users have added post market hardware upgrades to! Good luck and tell the mother in law to take a chill pill. Nothing is impossible!!!

 

[dixiedarlin]

The cmos reset worked like a charm!! Thanks a bunch, I now have her comp up and running again, but it freezes from time to time and I know it is not her internet because she also has a laptop that she uses and it doesn't freeze or hang up. I have removed alot of old junk off her comp wanted to do a format, but after what we just went through that is highly unlikely. Any ideas on how I can check her comp for junk, clutter, old installation files and get rid of all this junk without having to wipe the hd clean??? She had two spy programs on it and I took them both off and put Zone Alarm on, it is the same thing I use on mine. It has both spyware and virus protection. I have a registry mechanic program from PC tools that I run on it, it finds all kind of stuff everytime I run it. What else can I do??

 

[Tejasdmt]

Try sfc /scannow
Then use Pest patrol from CA

I would get rid of Zone Alarm, personnally... Too many incompatibilities with other applications.

If you reformatted and reinstalled the hard drive where did she get the spyware from?

DO NOT USE MS Defender, MS allows certain forms of adware/spyware to be installed...

 

[Newf]

The cmos reset worked like a charm!! Thanks a bunch, I now have her comp up and running again, but it freezes from time to time and I know it is not her internet because she also has a laptop that she uses and it doesn't freeze or hang up. I have removed alot of old junk off her comp wanted to do a format, but after what we just went through that is highly unlikely. Any ideas on how I can check her comp for junk, clutter, old installation files and get rid of all this junk without having to wipe the hd clean??? She had two spy programs on it and I took them both off and put Zone Alarm on, it is the same thing I use on mine. It has both spyware and virus protection. I have a registry mechanic program from PC tools that I run on it, it finds all kind of stuff everytime I run it. What else can I do??

I use this program daily to keep my OS clean:
CCleaner Free utility
http://www.ccleaner.com/
There is also a second scanner/cleaner in this program called "issues".
It works to identify and remove registry dead ends and conflicts. I run it whenever I install, upgrade or delete programs.
Defragment the hard drive when done and the system should speed up noticeably.

 

[g-paw]

The cmos reset worked like a charm!! Thanks a bunch, I now have her comp up and running again, but it freezes from time to time and I know it is not her internet because she also has a laptop that she uses and it doesn't freeze or hang up. I have removed alot of old junk off her comp wanted to do a format, but after what we just went through that is highly unlikely. Any ideas on how I can check her comp for junk, clutter, old installation files and get rid of all this junk without having to wipe the hd clean??? She had two spy programs on it and I took them both off and put Zone Alarm on, it is the same thing I use on mine. It has both spyware and virus protection. I have a registry mechanic program from PC tools that I run on it, it finds all kind of stuff everytime I run it. What else can I do??

Go into Windows Explorer, Tools, Folder Options, View. Make all hidden files visible. You'll get a warning about showing system files just click OK. Go into Safe Mode and log in as Administrator. Go into Documents Settings her user name and Delete Recent Documents, Internet Temp files, Temp Files, and Internet History files. Find any Temp Folders, e.g., C, Windows Temp and delete these files. Use CCcleaner and Microsoft Registry Cleaner. Right Click on the C Drive, Properties, and Clean. Do this for all drives/partitions. Then Defrag. If you have a program like Window Washer that overwrites files, that' even better.

 

[kategra84]

,... I now have her comp up and running again, but it freezes from time to time and I know it is not her internet because she also has a laptop that she uses and it doesn't freeze or hang up. I have removed alot of old junk off her comp wanted to do a format, but after what we just went through that is highly unlikely. ........ What else can I do??

How are the electrolyte capacitors around the CPU-(the tower like , round components) ?
If they aren't flat in the upper part like the otherones , the motherboard "will soon die " . This hapens usualy on rigs that ran more than one year (please excuse my english , I know its bad) .
The capacitors swalow and lose the electrolyte fluid and the system freezes to a point that it wan't boot no more , in this case you can chage the bad capacitors or the motherboar it self . This hapend on two PC , one was 3 year old and the other one was 4 .
In conclusion wach (around the cpu cooler for anormal capacitors- they look like little beer barrels )

 

[Newf]

Maybe every PC should come with a warning sticker:
"Caution, Screaming Mother-in-Laws can cause Swelling and Leakage!"

 

[kategra84]

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

 

[billdcat4]

YAY for CMOS, I wish the same fix would work on my Dead PC.