How Does BIOS Work? (Tech Question)

[Keebler Elf]

Are BIOS settings saved to the motherboard? I thought the BIOS settings were saved to a hard drive.

The reason I ask is b/c if a change in the BIOS settings is keeping WinXP on my old hard drive from working, then wiping the drive and reinstalling WinXP on it shouldn't do anything. Correct? (since the BIOS settings aren't on the drive to begin with)

And if it's not BIOS that's causing the problem, has anyone had the Windows XP flash screen slow to a crawl and eventually reboot the system in an endless loop on you? Maybe my WinXP is corrupted, but I dunno how since that drive was unplugged when I was doing everything to the other drive...

Ahh, computers!

 

[shawnbg]

Are BIOS settings saved to the motherboard?

Yep, in memory on the motherboard.

The reason I ask is b/c if a change in the BIOS settings is keeping WinXP on my old hard drive from working, then wiping the drive and reinstalling WinXP on it shouldn't do anything. Correct? (since the BIOS settings aren't on the drive to begin with)

Correct. Your problem has nothing to do with the BIOS.

And if it's not BIOS that's causing the problem, has anyone had the Windows XP flash screen slow to a crawl and eventually reboot the system in an endless loop on you? Maybe my WinXP is corrupted, but I dunno how since that drive was unplugged when I was doing everything to the other drive...

The computer's rebooting because it's set to automatically reboot whenever there's a problem. You can turn this setting off in Control Panel\System\ then Click Advanced Settings and then Startup\Recovery and uncheck the box to "automatically reboot"

To find more info about your problem, click Start\Settings\Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Event Viewer\ and then check the Application and System Logs. This will give you more info about whats causing the problem.

 

[cynalan]

And if it's not BIOS that's causing the problem, has anyone had the Windows XP flash screen slow to a crawl and eventually reboot the system in an endless loop on you? Maybe my WinXP is corrupted, but I dunno how since that drive was unplugged when I was doing everything to the other drive...

Ahh, computers!

Are you trying to install an "ahem" unofficial copy of Win XP? If you are and have updated it to release 1, you will have this problem as the software has not been activated and causes continual reboots.

 

[Esco!]

Are you trying to install an "ahem" unofficial copy of Win XP?

LOL....unofficial??????
You mean "shared" dont you????

 

[papasmerf]

The BIOS is on a PROM located on the motherboard. This controls your basic startup. You Hard drive has the OS on it and shows you what you see as the working computer.

 

[A-ROD]

Don't you have a 15 year old kid around to fix the problem??

 

[Keebler Elf]

LOL. I wish!

 

[Keebler Elf]

The computer's rebooting because it's set to automatically reboot whenever there's a problem. You can turn this setting off in Control Panel\System\ then Click Advanced Settings and then Startup\Recovery and uncheck the box to "automatically reboot"

To find more info about your problem, click Start\Settings\Control Panel\Administrative Tools\Event Viewer\ and then check the Application and System Logs. This will give you more info about whats causing the problem.

I can't do any of that b/c, with my old drive, WinXP never finishes loading. It never gets beyond the Windows page at the start.

It's weird that BIOS isn't the problem though. The drive was unplugged for the entire installation on my new drive so I dunno how my old Windows could have been corrupted. The only thing that I can think of changing was the BIOS.

 

[papasmerf]

I can't do any of that b/c, with my old drive, WinXP never finishes loading. It never gets beyond the Windows page at the start.

Start by pulling the new drive and set it to slave.

Set your boot to drive C

Once you have put the second drive in you can format it. no need to have XP on it.

 

[tboy]

It also sounds like you should have loaded your new version of windows in a dual (NOT duo lol) OS setup. This is an option you select when loading XP....

I bet the reason you are in a continuous boot loop is because it is reading files from both drives.

If your second drive wasn't attached/installed during the initial setup, I bet that was/is the problem....

Press F8 the next time you boot. This SHOULD take you into safe mode where you can see what's going on with the OS.....

 

[baci2004]

You were asking about installing windows etc. over a month ago. Did you just get around to doing it now, and are having problems? Or were you successful before and the problem has just started out of the blue?

 

[Keebler Elf]

My old drive (SATA II) worked just fine and I used the OS on it. Then I bought this new drive (EIDE) and installed windows xp on it as well (when I did this, the old drive was unplugged to prevent any kind of cross-contamination; or so I had hoped). But the full 250 GB of the new drive wasn't detected. That was the first problem. I tried uploading a new BIOS and I dunno if that worked or not. BIOS did detect the full 250 GB, but Windows only detected 137 GB with the remainder showing up as unallocated. I'm planning to create a second partition which will (hopefully allow me to recognize the full 250 GB). That was the first problem. But now I've got a MUCH bigger one.

I can no longer boot up from my old drive and I don't know why as it was unplugged for the installation of windows on the new one. Even if I boot up with just my old drive attached, it doesn't work. I always get to the Windows flash screen with the scrolling bar underneath and then it goes to a black screen with white text that says Windows failed to shut down properly last time and it gives me a bunch of options to restart (safe mode, last successful load, etc.,) but none of these work as it goes to the Windows splash page again and then loops back to the black screen. The scroll bar on the Windows flash page is very slow, like a crawl, and I've never had that happen before.

My old drive still works; when booting from my new drive it detects my old drive and I have been able to pull my data off it. I just can't boot from my old drive.

I'm at the point where I can format both my drives and start completely from scratch if need be. But I don't know if that will help since I'm not sure what's caused the problem on my old drive. Wiping my old drive and reinstalling windows on it (in isolation) might not even work since I don't understand how windows could have been corrupted since that drive wasn't plugged in when I installed my new drive.

 

[papasmerf]

I have found that format tends to work the best

 

[Keebler Elf]

That's what I'm going to try next. I'll plug in just my old drive, format it, reinstall windows on it, and see what happens.

The screwup seems related to Windows on my old drive (since BIOS detects the drive and so does Windows when booting from the other drive), so somehow it must have gotten corrupted. I dunno how, but that's the only thing I can think of right now.

 

[papasmerf]

That's what I'm going to try next. I'll plug in just my old drive, format it, reinstall windows on it, and see what happens.

The screwup seems related to Windows on my old drive (since BIOS detects the drive and so does Windows when booting from the other drive), so somehow it must have gotten corrupted. I dunno how, but that's the only thing I can think of right now.

I have never considered 2 boot drives. One is always slaved

 

[baci2004]

It's possible that the bios upgrade is the reason that you old drive won't boot. If you were to go back to the old bios things may work out fine. However a general user like yourself should avoid farking around with the bios unless it is absolutely neccesary because you run the risk of pooching the MB.

It's difficult to give tech support without being able to examine the machine in person because as you know there are so many variables. If you have made some manual changes to the bios one thing you could try before starting over is simpley applying the default settings and see how that goes; Check your boot order in the bios; remove as many perifrials (sp?) as possible to weed out problems (cards, camera, rom drives etc.); Someone else mentioned trying to get into safe mode (F8), which is what you should probably do first. If you are able to do this go into your device manager and see if you can find any issues there.

Lastly go to www.techsupportforum.com it's a Msg board just like terb and the info on there is endless. Just make sure you do a search first before asking a question that may be regarded as stupid. lol