elvis35to05

Hi,
I am looking at a relatives computer,
amd athlon 64 3200+ 64 bit processer speed 2000, memory 2 gig.windows vista.

they said they shut it down wrong, but its more than that.
when i boot it up it says, select boot device or enter boot disc.
i tried all ways i know, using f1 f2 f8 f11 f12 delete tried windows vista disc,
but got no further, except in boot menu it says hard drive and cd drives are disabled, there is no option there to enable them.

any ideas thanks.

Houndog777

Hi,
Try clearing the CMOS, by jumper or by removing the motherboard battery for a minute.
Do you know the motherboard model we are dealing with here, or the name of the manufacturer & model of the system?

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elvis35to05

hi,
i took battery out, which gave me various options, but none worked, then it told me i had an error in cmos.
motherboard is asrock.
thanks again.

Houndog777

Hi Elvis,
What exactly do you mean when you say, taking the battery out gave you various options?
You should have taken the battery out for a minute, done nothing, then just put it back in. That would have cleared the cmos, and let you start the pc with it's default BIOS settings, or at least let you into BIOS to configure anything that needs adjusted.

And what is the model of this Asrock motherboard?

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elvis35to05

thanks for your time and trouble, houndog777.

only details i can see for motherboard are:-
asrock 939 dual sata2 bios p1.50, pci express, fs big,
amd athlon (tm) 64 3200+ (64 bit)
processor speed 2000 mhz
memory 2048.

i took battery out for 1 min, when it booted up it showed for few seconds - press ctrl-a for bios utility setup.
then it showed- auto detecting primary atapi cd rom ultra dma mode 2
f11 boot menu
cmos checksum bad
cmos date/time not setup
press f2 to run setup
press f1 to load default and continue

i ran f1 but it went to blank screen ,left it ages but nothing happened
i ran f2 it went to bios utility,
it shows in bios all drives in parenthsis and disabled, but i cant enable??
thanks again.

Houndog777

Hi Elvis,
Is it only the drives it's failing to detect? Does it recognise the processor and memory properly?

Enter the Date etc, in BIOS.
Have a browse through the bios pages, and see if anything else looks odd. If you have the option, select Optimal Defaults. Save & Exit.

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elvis35to05

hi houndog777,
i looked thru bios, and it shows processor and memory,
date was set at 12/06.2008, and i was able to alter that,
i selected optimum defaults for everything.

is it looking like hard drive is no good??
thanks again.

Houndog777

No......if it was just the hard drive, you would still be able to detect the CD/DVD drive.
Try unplugging all your drives from the motherboard and starting the computer. Let it run for a few minutes then shut it down.
Reinstall the drives and see if she boots up properly.

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elvis35to05

hi houndog 777,
i disconnected everything ran for few mins, then reconnected everything, still same,
i checked thru bios and found that its recognising dvd,
primary ide master [nec dvd rw nd 352 ]
but everything else
primary slave
secondary ide master
secondary ide slave
sata1
sata2
sata11
it says not detected,
thanks for your help.
elvis35to05

Houndog777

Hi,
Do you have an old hard drive, or one you could borrow and throw in there, just to see if bios picks it up?

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elvis35to05

Thanks houndog777.
i borrowed another hard drive, and it recognised it.
thanks again for all your invaluable help.
elvis35to05