Phantom Floppy Drive !

[smokincola]

Hi all, I'm hoping the community can throw some light on a problem I'm having with my significant other's computer. So here's the list of issues................

 

1) If left without power overnight (not plugged) the bios resets itself to 14/09/2007

 

2) If powered up normally (push the power button and go), the computer gets past the POST screen but then just sits with a blinking prompt

 

Now here's where stuff gets a bit weird...... So I tried using Hiren's Boot CD and booting into Mini-XP from the CD just to see if I could see the HDDs from there. That worked, I managed to get to a desktop from the live cd and could see everything fine. At this point I'm thinking "Hmmmm glitch" so I unplugged the PC from the wall waited a few secs and fired up again. Same problem the computer sits at the blinking prompt. So I grabbed Hiren's again and I noticed an option that I just hadn't noticed before (yeah I wasn't paying attention), the option to 'boot from HDD' so I clicked it thinking it would just return me to the blinking prompt but no ! It booted the computer into Windows 7 (32bit) from the main HDD. However, here's where the title of the post comes in, Windows starts installing a driver for something. I was interested because I hadn't added any new hardware so I wonder what it was trying to install. Turned out to be a floppy disk drive. Which is weird because there is no floppy drive in the machine and it's not like there's some sort of virtual drive software on there either that would be emulating that either.

 

So slight update.... I disabled the floppy drive in device manager and I still get stuck at the blinking prompt... unless I use the boot CD in which case I can get into Windows 7 just fine.

 

Any ideas anyone ?

 

My thoughts are either the bios battery is going (about to die), or there's some other fault on the motherboard and it's about to die.

 

Specs:

 

cpu: Intel Core2Duo E6600 (stock speed)

ram: 4GB (2 x 2GB don't ask me what brand I think it's either corsair or kingston value)

motherboard: AsRock ConRoe 1333-D667

2 x HDDs

DVD writer

[Aniallation]

CMOS battery is pretty much dead, and something's up with the bootloader on your Windows 7 install that requires Hiren's bootloader for it to load up.

 

P.S. hello fellow Vietnamese forum goer

 

P.P.S that mobo has some extremely retarded 24 pin placement

[smokincola]

Oh don't get me started on that motherboard ( I didn't buy it). It won't take a modern PSU without an adapter.

 

Thanks for the swift reply.

[Aniallation]

Oh don't get me started on that motherboard ( I didn't buy it). It won't take a modern PSU without an adapter.

 

Thanks for the swift reply.

No problem, I'd definitely replace the CMOS battery, and if you can then try a re-install of Windows 7 unless you have the patience to boot using the Hiren CD every time.

 

How is HCMC these days? Should go say to my family there some time haha

[smokincola]

HCMC, we're officially in rainy season. Bring the biggest, strongest umbrella you have

 

Good cheap food though as always.

 

Yeah, CMOS battery and Win 7 re-install are now on my official to do list. I might try repair console first but I don't think the missus has anything vital on that C: drive so I might just go for the full NUKE option.

[Pony080905]

CMOS battery is pretty much dead, and something's up with the bootloader on your Windows 7 install that requires Hiren's bootloader for it to load up.

 

P.S. hello fellow Vietnamese forum goer

 

P.P.S that mobo has some extremely retarded 24 pin placement

like this

[smokincola]

So yeah the bios battery was dead and replacing that fixed a bunch of issues..............however the bootloader thing wasn't quite what I thought it was. Turns out the bios had decided that my wife's second 'storage' HDD should be the boot device and not her OS drive . I couldn't tell this from just lookin at the id of the drive, wasn't until I looked in Windows with the help my trusty Hiren CD that I realised the way the drives would be ID-ed. So a quick trip to BIOS later and change the order of the HDDs and force the bios to put the other HDD in its boot device list and voila ! Functioning PC again.

 

Do I feel kinda dumb ? YES !

 

Am I laughing about this ? TOTALLY !