I Still need help!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Zach Hauan
  • Start date Start date
Z

Zach Hauan

i still have problems, here's a reply to a person that
replied to me.

Actually i can't get into the bios at all. I've tried
f1, del, and f8 only brings me to a screen where i can
enter safe mode...of course. I just looked into the
computer last night, and I had to void my contract with
emachines :(, and it appears everything is fine. I
originaly thought that it got unplugged, but i was
wrong. I have also done all the updates, and have avg
7.0 pro. on my computer, but still didn't find
anything. Could i pull the battry on the bios, and try
to get into them then, or will that make the matter worse?
-----Original Message-----
Does the BIOS find the CD on post? Is the BIOS setup looking at the
device (i.e. slave on first for master or slave on second set to auto
usually)? If the CD is the second drive on a controller is it set to
slave and the master set to master with slave present if this is
different than master or single? If it is the master on the second IDE
controller is it jumpered to master?



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Don't pull your CMOS battery, that won't help and could
make things worse as it may clear any CMOS settings that
have been modified, and usually if you pull the battery
it could take several hours to several days for the CMOS
settings to clear anyway.

I checked on the E-machines website on how to enter the
BIOS and this is what I found there:

Q: How can I enter BIOS set-up? top

A: To enter the system BIOS setup, press the <DEL>
key when the eMachines logo screen appears.

http://www.emachines.com/support/view_faq.html?
faq=1004998907#4

You mentioned pressing <DEL> won't let you into the BIOS;
you may be missing the window of oppurtunity to get into
it. Possibly try pressing <DEL> repeatedly as soon as
you turn the power on, or if you have lights on the
keyboard for caps lock, num lock, etc when you see them
blink press the <PAUSE/BREAK> key as this will pause the
system and post where it is possibly giving the monitor
more time to come on so you can see what is happening and
then press the <DEL> key to enter the BIOS. (pressing
any key after pressing <PAUSE/BREAK> will let the system
resume)

As for the Master/Slave status on the cables and
positions: If you have your boot hard disk on the
primary controller with another hard disk then make sure
the boot hard disk's jumper is set to Master and the
second disk is set to slave. The cable position doesn't
matter with the Master/Slave settings. If your boot hard
disk is the only device on your cable then make sure the
jumper is set to Single(or Master depending upon the
manufacturer of the drive, i.e. western digital's drive
setting for single drive is no jumper) Pretty much the
same goes with a CDROM device, if it is the only device
the jumper will be set to Master, and an additional
device on that cable will be set to Slave with cable
position not significant.

Try to do a clean boot and stop anything that starts up
with windows and stopping any uneeded services by using
computer management or the administrative tools. Then
see if you are able to access the cdrom at all.

Looking at the post below the other suggestions I can
offer which you probably tried, but I will mention incase
they may be helpful would be to uninstall your CDROM from
the system using the device manager and then restart and
let Windows reinstall it. Check your EIDE cable in case
it may be bad, simply swap the cables from the hard disk
and cdrom, if the hard disk doesn't work then it may be a
bad cable or possibly the secondary controller which you
can check by placing the cdrom onto the same cable on the
primary controller with the hard disk but be sure to set
the hard disk as Master and cdrom as Slave.

The cdrom could have possibly failed, it is pretty common
to be able to open and close the cdrom although it will
not be working or show up in windows if it has gone bad.
Try placing that cdrom into another computer if available
to see if it will work, or placing a Known working cdrom
into your computer in place of that to see if it works
properly.

----------
"I have tried switching IDE cables, but it said a message
while loading windows, i can't remember what."
----------
Just a guess but since you changed cables the computer
may have said that there was not an 80-conductor cable on
the hard drive if the cable used for the cdrom isn't an
80-conductor. This won't harm anything with the hard
disk, it just doesn't allow you to take full advantage of
newer hard drives. You can tell the difference between
an 80-conductor and 40-conductor cables by looking at the
ridges or feeling them. An 80-conductor will feel almost
smooth; however, a 40-conductor will feel rough like
corduroys.

I wouldn't format the hard drive because the cdrom isn't
working because you may just end up with the same problem
if it is hardware related. If your system is set to be
able to boot from a CD have you tried booting with a cd
to see if it will work then? I would definitely say you
need to get into the BIOS to see if it is recognizing the
cdrom at all.

I hope some of this information is helpful and useful.

-Andrew
 
Now that computers have gotten faster in boot-up, that window of opportunity
to hit the key to get into the bios is pretty short. Best bet, if you've
figured out which key it is, is to repeatedly keep hitting that key.
Pressing down and holding doesn't do it.

Another trick it to create a bios error, which will then halt things and
usually give you the choice of hitting f1 to continue, or some other key to
enter setup. You can try forcing a bios error by hitting multiple keyboard
keys multiple times. A whole hand at a time will do fine. It doesn't always
work, but often enough, it will give you a keyboard error along with the
message to enter setup.

good luck.
 
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