Boot-up problem driving me mad

[wickedy]

HELP ME PLEASE......

I'm getting some serious grief with a problem on me 'puter when booting up. Despite daily attempts to boot my machine up, it hasn't worked since saturday.

My machine currently consists of an Asus P4C800E Deluxe mobo, 3GHz 800FSB P4, 2GB Ram, 1x 36 GB Raptor (OS & Apps), and 1 x 400GB SATA HD (files), Windows XP SP2. There are other HDs and soundcards etc, but that's not too relevant here i don't think. Anyway....

I power the machine up. Fans, drives and HDs whirr away as normal. The mobo screen pops up on the screen (i.e. the ASUS P4C800E Delux logo and such) along with the "Press delete to enter setup" message. And this is as far as it will go. Hitting 'delete' doesn't get me into setup and nothing I do will get me any further towards loading Windows.

I haven't had any boot problems up until now and, at the time of my last log in, Windows was clean (Norton and Ad-AWARE said it was clean at least). After the first time it failed, I tried turning off the PSU for a minute before re-booting, and it got me in okay. But now I completely stuck.

The strange thing is that the noises emitted by my PC after this "freeze" sound the same as if it were booting normally....

Is this all indicitive of a BIOS problem? Would removing and re-inserting the mobo battery help?

I can honestly say that I know jack about this sort of stuff and would welcome any and all suggestions going.

Cheers.

 

[Captain Fizz]

The strange thing is that the noises emitted by my PC after this "freeze" sound the same as if it were booting normally....

Sounds like there's something up with the GFX Card...

You tried re-seating it?

One way to test if it is actually booting...
Leave it until the HDD light stops then press the power button. (Once, don't hold it in)
If the PC shuts down - The OS is still loading up OK.

 

[IceShock]

ok, you say the bios setup button isnt working?,

what i personally would do is remove bios battery for 10 seconds (or clear cmos using a button on ** mobo if you have one)

then try pressing the setup button again when prompted, then re'setup the bios, aka set boot options to hdd etc, and setup anything else you need setting up.

if that doesnt work, hopefully you have everything backed up, then reinstall windows xp aka boot from XP Cd

 

[wickedy]

Sounds like there's something up with the GFX Card...

You tried re-seating it?

One way to test if it is actually booting...
Leave it until the HDD light stops then press the power button. (Once, don't hold it in)
If the PC shuts down - The OS is still loading up OK.

Depending on when hit the power button, it will either turn off straight away (as if i pulled the plug) or it will seem as though it is turning off as it would from Windows.

 

[wickedy]

ok, you say the bios setup button isnt working?,

what i personally would do is remove bios battery for 10 seconds (or clear cmos using a button on ** mobo if you have one)

then try pressing the setup button again when prompted, then re'setup the bios, aka set boot options to hdd etc, and setup anything else you need setting up.

if that doesnt work, hopefully you have everything backed up, then reinstall windows xp aka boot from XP Cd

Will try the battery option and see where that gets me.

Just really don't want to have to re-install!!!

 

[wickedy]

Check the gfx and tried removing the battery but now I get two quick beeps off from the motherboard indicating (in the manual) that this is a "parity error". Its been suggested that these are just indicating the number of USB devices connected to the machine. But I still get them wit hall USB devices unplugged.

Any ideas anyone