dhammaguest

Hi,

I am wondering if I have a BIOS virus.

A couple of days ago, while booting, I got the message
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

I inserted my Windows XP Pro CD and rebooted and everything came up just fine. Before that I had put the PC in hibernate mode, and after it booted with the XP CD, everything came as it would when I power up.

So I thought the problem was solved.

I removed the CD and tried hibernating and powering up and it came up fine.
Then I did a restart and again it came up fine.

Then again the next day, I got the same message as above.
This time inserting the XP CD did nothing. I tried to use the Recovery Console, but it won't let me proceed because it is complaining about the password. As far as I remember, I don't have a password set for admin. But it won't accept no password (just hitting ENTER). So, I was not able to use the Recovery Console.

Then I booted with a CD containing Ultimate Boot Disk. And I used the Hard Drive Tools to do a diag on the Western Digital HD. I did the Quick Test and it came up without errors.

After this I removed the Ultimate Boot Disk CD and rebooted and to my surprise, it booted just fine!!

So, at this point, I did not know what to do to fix this seemingly intermittent problem. But I thought at least I have a work-around - i.e. either use the XP CD or the Ultimate BootDisk CD.

But today I am getting this same message and am just not able to boot with either of the above (XP CD or UBD). Once again I am unable to use the Recovery Console to fix if there is any MBR problem. I read somewhere that if there is NO password for admin, there is a bug that Recover Console does not allow you (to log on without a password). Apparently this is a known problem but I was unable to figure out exactly what I need to do from the Microsoft website.

The BIOS does not show the HD in the boot sequence!! The same thing had happened yesterday (it did not show the HD in the boot sequence). But after using one of the above methods (booting successfully with the XP CD, or booting after running the HD diag from UBD), I forgot to check how the BIOS looked after that. But it must have changed the boot sequence to include the HD otherwise how would I have been able to boot, right?

So, now I am left wondering if there is a BIOS virus here.

Any pointers or suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks