I was rebooting my computer since I had a frozen program, and now it has decided to die on me. All I get is the white ACER splash page (yea I know.. geting an Acerin the first place is asking for trouble.. but it's been playing nice so far - at least nice for an Acer)

Anyway... the thing is I can't even get into the BIOS - the splash page tells me to press F12 for the boot menu or Del for setupo. Neither does anyting. And I have the recovery CDs - but without access to the BIOS I can't tell the computer to boot from the CD, and thus... I'm stuffed.

Soooo I'm desperately hoping for a miracle... Someone with an idea although I can't see what it should be. 

CAN the actual BIOS just burn out like this? It gives one normal little beep when starting up, no odd beep-codes or anyting. But then again it doesn't really get started on the boot procedure so ...

I haven't taken it apart yet. So far I've just unplugged it and left it to cool down completely - in the vague hope that it might help enough for me to get it at least started.

And the real bugger her is.. Before my holidays i was contemplating buying a new computer. But decided in the end that it could wait (and I get me an OK used laptop - which is my lifeline to sanity now L) - and now I used that money on my vacation, so buying a new computer right now is not an option,

At least I have an almost fresh (less than a month old) backup of all the important stuff and Poser is on an external harddisk - so it's not QUITE the end of the world as we know it - but I just hate being confined to a laptop, even a laptop with more or less the same specs as the one that just died.. There are files and stuff, bookmarks ect that just aren't accessible here.... and which I need, one of them rather badly - by code for my homebanking without which I can't pay my bills - and they should be paid today >_<

Any idea of how to get into the bios when the usual buttons doesn't work? :(

Is your CD running when computer is starting up?

I'm asking because I had once a problem that nothing could start (incl. bios).
After about 10min I realized that CD's light was always on and that was a problem - CD blocked whole computer.

I would take out the battery on the motherboard for 10 seconds then re-install it.
Look up in your motherboard manual about resetting the cmos.
Good luck.

 Darkedge... That's an idea. I hope I can find that manual online. And that it says on the motherboard which mode it is.,., because I do not have any printed manuals... it's probably also on those restore CDs or something...

Adom, good idea, but no. nothing is running except the fan. No harddisk activity either.

It did do a chkdsk earlier today - the computer had been acting up earlier as well where a reboot helped, but where I had to actually turn it off on the button on the computer rather than doing a proper shutdown. And then it wanted to do a chkdsk - but the drive it was checking wasn't the boot drive, so that one ought to be ok.... And I'm not really afraid that the harddisk is fried either, it's just that without access to the bios, I can't boot from the restore cds :(

Oh and ADMINS?! can someone please delete the double post I made, I just noticed this thread is posted twice... must have doubleclicked on send >_<

If you are getting the BIOS prompt it sounds as if that may be alive. Have you tried a different keyboard, if you can? Nothing spinning up sounds bad, but eliminate the easy and cheap stuff first :) .

ok, fans means at least partial power supply as does the working video card .
a single beep at power on is significant to some bios but I dont remember the codes.

if you could get into bios you could do a manual reset but that seems not to be happening.

wiping the bios by removing the battery sounds like the way to go.

can you post make and model numbers ?

make sure you have tried a full cold start, power off the pc and unplug for a few minutes. That will cause a full cold start which a reboot from the power switch or restart from the menu does not do. 

on a dessktop I suggest removing the modem card  or other added boards to ensure its not a card failure. Not sure on a laptop if thats an option.

Single beep seems to be post test OK .

Pulling the cmos battery and putting back in was my first thought as well.

Laurie

Before you go for the BIOS battery, TG, give all the connectors a good checking. You can get this effect if the BIOS is set to halt on any errors; so a loose connector anywhere can stall the boot. And depending on the BIOS brand, it may or may not give a beep code, or pop up an error message. And that goes for checking the internal connectors, as well. A loose floppy or HDD connector can halt boot, just as a disconnected keyboard or mouse will. If that doesn't work, -then- go for the BIOS battery, or find the jumper to reset the BIOS to default state. If that fails, then disconnect all the internal drives save for the boot drive, and try again (this -should- force a device update in the bios table, getting you into the bios to work with the settings). If that fails, then pull the mouse and try it again; unless something is wrong, that will almost always force an error and bring up the bios. Worst case, pull the power lead on the boot drive. That =will= force the BIOS to choke out error and bring up the access screen......

Unless something is wrong with the motherboard.

 I
'll try leaving it unplugged overnight. It sometimes gets into a sort of loop when I reboot it, and just in case this is a prolonged version of that, I'm leaving it to thoroughly cool off (again, just in case it's the CPU fan that has gone bad - I had that happen once.. ages ago..)

And then I'll try to take it apart and look for that battery and see if I can get it out. Now that I come to think of it, there's probably most of a cat in there (hair wise... so a vacuuming of the interior might also help L)

Thanks for all the ideas, That gives me hope!!!

As for the keyboard.. it's only two weeks old so I hope it's not the problem :) I really think it's just the splash screen loading and then the whole thing is frozen so that's why neither DEL nor F12 does anything.

 Update.. Well. Whaddayaknow... The thing is up and running again.. and all I did was give it one last try (actually planning to take it apart here and now, but decided to just try ONCE more.. Then I got sidetracked on the other computer while the thing just STOOD there with that effin splash screen for a full 10 minutes! and after that, it suddenly booted properly. Windows took another 5 minutes to start (came up and told me that Windows had been shut down incorrectly - which is true because I pulled the plug when it froze earlier) and after some waiting and chewing and stuff.. it's now apparently back to normal...

I still plan to take it apart, come morning, because I'm pretty sure it's rather clogged up with cat hair... but.. it's WORKING! YAY!

Glad you got it started :)  You might want to look a little deeper into the book that came with it.  The last few computers I've had always had a way to force it to read the recovery disk.  There should be a key combination you have to hold down while starting it.

Of course you have to be able to get the disk in the drive.  Sounds like maybe yours wasn't getting far enough for this to work, but it's something to try if you have this trouble again.

John

 Happy to see that your computer is still alive!  Now, take that second chance and get stuff saved off that you don't want to be without, then give it a good cleaning.  :)

First thing to do, copy off any important files onto CD or some other external media ASAP, really before you do anything else (don't even turn it off until you get this done)

Sounds to me like it took so long to reboot because it was doing a system recovery....

Do you have a recovery partition on your hard drive? Have some programs disappeared on C:? Have you tried various programs to see if they are still working?

I would do what pjz99 says and start backing up everything you can...computers just don't shut down and not come back up for no reason ;o).

Laurie

The fact that it would not go into the bios routine sounds like a CPU problem, not a hard drive issue. Have you checked the cpu fan? If it's full of cat hair, it may be allowing the cpu to overheat. It may be at the point where it jams, stops a while, then unjams and runs a while. This would produce exactly the effects you are describing... random program lock-ups, unreliable boots, long boot times, etc.

Be sure to remove the screws holding the fan onto the heat sink and blow all of the dust out of the fins on the sink. When I was doing computer repair for a couple of years I fond that this was a quick fix to about 2/3 of the random issues customers would describe along these lines.

Hope this helps. 

Look at the event viewer to see what error's you got and you might be able to track down the issue.  Sharen

Failing on BIOS boot may mean faulty hardware- maybe trying to interrogate faulty item. Only way to find out is disconnect ALL hardware when PC is off  (KB mouse / FD HD and CD internally/ external USB etc) and try to boot. You will get an error with no keyboard but you can see if it boots quickly. Power off, connect KB and boot, check, off. Repeat with each item.

NB you will need to disconnect IDE/SATA cable and not just pull the power. Loose power connector into HD/CD might also be the problem

Make sure you earth yourself on case before touching internal bits

 Well.. I think I have an idea of what went wrong, not that it makes much sense, but..

Now it boots up instantly, and works fine. EXCEPT my Poser harddisk 8which is on an external USB drive) is now the one that is fried. It had been acting up a few times bewfore, so luckily I had an almost (like around 1 month old) backup of it all. So it's no catastrophe. Annoying, but not the end of the world 8as if it was hosed and I didn't have a backup)

I tried connecting that drive to the laptop and it won't work there either. So I think maybe it died and sent something that confuzzled Windoze into a sort of catatonic shock L

Running Poser now from my (likewise external) Backup drive, and tomorrow I'm going out to buy yet another drive so I can keep having backups of my backups :)

The old drive is odd btw. Windows recognizes it as an external drive, assigns the proper K: to it (when I plug it in the right USB jack at least) - but when I try to access it, it comes up with the "please insert disk"

So I think it's properly hosed :( 

Oh well, most of the new stuff I've bought in the last month wasn't installed yet, it was just waiting to be so. 

And now I can install it tot he new drive and feel relatively safe :) But I won't relax completely until I have yet another backup of all my Runtimes... O.o

If it's the controller that's failed rather than the drive you may be able to get the drive out of the case and connect it to your computer (or put it in a caddy) so that you can extract the missing files. I don't think the "please insert disc" necessarily means that it's the drive that's bad. Of course it may not be worth the risk (connecting inside the PC) or expense (caddy) for the files that you don't have copies of.

It could be a corrupted driver issue-is there another computer that you could try the USB drive out on?

If not, you could try booting from a knoppix CD and seeing if you can access it:

www.knoppix.org/

What does the event log viewer say, it should show some kind of error code that you can track down and know what happened?  Sharen

usb drive + corrupted driver = lockups at boot, stalling BIOS, odd insert disk messages.

windoze has an appetite for drivers it loves to eat them. I've had to put my franken-puter back together many times cuz of that.

next time you can't boot from a CD, unplug all the drives except the cd/dvd and try booting, then you might be able to access the BIOS.

A wealth of info here for us all in case of a similar event.  How great!  Thank you all! :)

Quote - It could be a corrupted driver issue-is there another computer that you could try the USB drive out on?

If not, you could try booting from a knoppix CD and seeing if you can access it:

www.knoppix.org/

What file or files do I need to download, from this page?

Attached Link: http://www.computerhope.com/issues/ch000192.htm

Quote - > Quote - It could be a corrupted driver issue-is there another computer that you could try the USB drive out on?

If not, you could try booting from a knoppix CD and seeing if you can access it:

www.knoppix.org/

What file or files do I need to download, from this page?

For English:

ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V6.2.1CD-2010-01-31-EN.iso

For German

ftp.uni-kl.de/pub/linux/knoppix/KNOPPIX_V6.2.1CD-2010-01-31-DE.iso

 I did try it from my laptop, and I tried in several USB ports on both computers.No luck. some times it told me there was a problem with the driver, other times it installed, but wouldn't let me access the disk anyway...

So I think it's the disk that is dead. Second one of those this happened to, hubby's identical disk died a long time ago. Too bad, coz it was cute - a LaCie shaped like a LEGO block :)

I now have a new one, called TrekStore. Well apart from the fact that it was the cheapest 1Tb disk I could find, it had a name where I HAD to get it, see? :)

Since I'll be at work all night I'll just start the backup when I leave and it can amuse itself all night L

As for the Linux thing... all of hubby's computers is running Linux.. I could try it on one of those... JUST as a last attempt. But again, my backup was very close to being Up to date (phew!) so... Not sure it's worth the bother. Except to verify if it was a driver- or disk issue :)

thanks all, so many great tips here!