Is this a hardware or software problem?

[Peño]

My cousin's PC broke down recently so I went to check it out. Apparently her PC froze and she turned it off on the case and at the mains and when she turned it back on there was a black screen with "No operating system found" or something. I took the HDD out, tried to reformat it in my PC but my PC couldn't find the HDD. I bought a new HDD for her.

I fitted the new HDD in today, reset the jumpers for the CMOS settings on the motherboard, and it seemed to boot up fine. The exact message I got was:

PhoenixBIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
Copyright 1985-2001 Phoenix Technologies Ltd.
All Rights Reserved
Version 1.03

<then the specs of the system - confirms that it picks up the new HDD>

[b]WARNING
ERROR
0251: System CMOS: checksum bad - Default configuration used[/b]

Press <DEL> to setup, <F2> to resume

Now if I go into setup, everything is fine. I set the boot priority to CD-ROM first, then HDD. It's an emachines PC, so it came with a Restore CD. Having rebooted the system with that in, nothing happens. I assumed Windows is on the CD but I can't tell. If I hit F2 to resume, all I get is a black screen with a blinking cursor. Nothing happens when I try to type anything other than CTRL+ALT+DEL. Is this just because I don't have an OS CD inserted? I'm going to download a free version of Windows XP off my university's site now and test it again later this week, but I'd rather know if this is the problem now so that I don't waste my journey yet again and leaving having still not fixed it.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

[ns400r]

The WARNING ERROR message suggests that the BIOS needs configuring and then saving. If it continues to show that message try changing the motherboard battery.

As for booting, maybe the restore CD isn't actually bootable. Test with a known bootable CD (Windows XP CD maybe).

 

[Peño]

Okay I went back today and tried a legal downloaded .iso of Windows XP off my university's website. I burnt it through Nero as a bootable DVD. Put it in, booted the system - it didn't do anything. Now I can't tell if it's because of Nero, the method I burnt it (I renamed the .img file to .iso and burnt it through Nero, because apparently Nero has problems burning bootable discs), or if it needs to be on CD. The reason for this is because in setup, under Boot Priority it only lists CD-ROM and doesn't refer to a DVD-ROM. Does this sound right? Are DVD capabilities only enabled when you install an O/S? That would be very weird since this eMachines hasn't been modified and had the DVD drive as standard.

 

[ns400r]

Put the newly created CD into the PC your using to post messages on here. See if it bootable.

 

[mame]

right, now this probably isn't your problem but il tell you anyway with my PC if i plug in *ANY* USB storage device, that includes a mobile phone/data cable or USB flash drive, no matter what settings i have in the bios, all i get is "boot disk corrupt" or "boot disk is non bootable volume"