Westlander

Hello 1st timer here.
I had an odd thing happen with my comp yesterday and was hoping for some insight/info on what might have happened or is happening to it.
For a little background, it is a 2.8 dual core intel, nearing 4 years old. Has had power supply and fans replaced last fall. Vid card replaced a few years back. Using on board sound these days. Has had fairly regular cleanings. Runs like a champ mostly.

Yesterday morning I shutdown my PC, everything seemed to go fine. The proper XP info about settings being saved and all. A regular shutdown as far as I could tell.
That evening I hit the power button on it and went to get some coffee. Upon returning to the room all I saw was a blank screen and a flickering drive light. I waited a few minutes....nothing changed. Okay so I figure something went wrong on bootup so I did what I hate to do *cringe* and hit the reset button, aiming for when the drive light is off in the hopes I can lessen a HD fiasco.

During the bootup sequence I get a screen of text that tells me (paraphrasing) that I was seeing this screen due to Windows having a problem with the previous boot and that it might have been related to bad/changed hardware or software. Options for startup were given including safe mode, last known good startup point, regular startup, etc.
I went to scroll down to last known startup and then some of the text on the right side of the screen shifted down and around. Kind of like when I would check/uncheck Wordwrap in a text document. Now I was'nt sure exactly what option I would be picking so I decided to power down, wait a couple of minutes and restart.

On restart everything seemed to work as usual except - blank monitor!
The drive light was going and it seemed to be going through a regular startup but still nothing on the monitor from the very beginning, especially not the BIOS screen? I'm not sure what it's called exactly but is the screen that shows the Mobo mfg and serial number, drive ID's, etc, and a RAM test. Always had that show first before anything else but not now.

So with a blank screen and nothing happening but a flickering drive light for a couple of minutes I figure, okay, mobo is fried
I'm setting there just staring at it when all of a sudden the music that I hear when Windows starts, and would normally show the desktop, begins to play. But still a blank screen. The confusion deepens. I start thinking maybe what that windows startup error text was telling me was my monitor is fried. Huh!Could be, I reason. I do have a bad habit of forgetting and leaving it on after I shutdown the PC. Easy enough to test, I have an older model laying around. So....

I do the unthinkable. I power down the computer without knowing what winxp might be trying to show me onscreen. Turn off the monitor. Unplug power to both and wait about 15 minutes while I dig around for the old monitor. I swap the vid cables out of the back of the VC, plug in the monitor, plug in the PC, and power up both. Now....!

The computer proceeds to boot up and proceed to the WinXP welcome screen and then to the desktop, all show in vivid color. Just one hitch and it's got me bothered. There was no BIOS screen on the way to welcome screen and desktop. In it's place was a blueish splash screen with a picture of a desktop PC and words telling me I had an Intel computer. What the..? I say to myself. I've been using this comp for over 3 years and never once have I seen this screen before. *Really scratching head hard at this point*

I check out the various icons on the desktop. Internet explorer works, programs seem to be working fine, everything seems as usual except that splash screen in place of my BIOS info. At this point I start thinking that maybe the original monitor was'nt to fault afterall so.....I exit windows, power down and hook up the monitor I was using to begin with. Presto! it works like a champ. Works just fine like before all of this. So maybe I'll get some more use out of this monitor afterall. Just...1...niggling lil' problem. That splash screen still comes on in place of my regular BIOS screen.

I'm typing this out on that comp and am going to reboot and see if I still get that splash screen and if I can use the standard keys to get to CMOS as before. But first I wanted to ask around for some info on this just incase, before I hit the 'watch this' button. Any help would be deeply appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Westlander

**UPDATE** Was going to edit the above post but could'nt find that option so will post an update here. Have found out that when I mentioned not seeing the BIOS screen I should of instead said POST screen.

I rebooted and by holding F1 during restart I was able to access the 'actual' BIOS screen just fine. While hunting around the info and options I did discover that a few items had changed on my BIOS settings which would explain the different boot I experienced. 2 of them, [silent boot] and [intel rapid bios boot] were enabled. This would explain the (I found a name for it) OEM screen, lack of a POST screen, and no mem test.

One other thing I saw while in there is that BIOS was enabled to do all of my PnP setup when before it was set to allow the OS to do setup for PnP devices not needed for bootup. That would explain to me why I did'nt recieve a notice of changed hardware after Windows loaded, during those 2 times I swapped monitors.

Still, even though everything seems to be running okay, I'm a bit puzzled and worried. I know pretty much less-than-jack about computers. Did I experience a BIOS failure? I had read that comps have 2 BIOS with 1 acting as a backup. Am I now booting with the secondary instead of the primary? Is that why some of my previous settings in BIOS (as far as I remember) have changed? Should I expect to chuck this comp in trash soon?

Again, my thanks for any information that anyone can shed on this.

Doby

There is a outside chance that your motherboard battery is bad and lost the cmos settings, replace the battery, there cheap, after you replace expect the same behaivior and enter bios a apply the same settings