Computer busted

[Sharky]

Not sure if anyone here knows anything about this.

My computer recently had a weird hiccup.

>

What happened was this. Before it was working perfectly fine.

Rebooted.

Got this weird message in the bootup. It says bios updating or something like that. Then you get . . . . . . . . . . coming up.

After that it automatically reboots.

It will continue to do this in a loop so i turned off the computer. (Note, when i did, the . . . . was like halfway.)

After turning the computer on again it doesn't boot up.


Any ideas??

 

[X-Cel]

That's a hard one. Try looking at [url]www.komando.com[/url] . She's a computer wizard, you might find something helpful there.

 

[trunks2k]

(sorry for all the edits, I keep changing my advice).

Bad news for ya. .. You have likely fried your motherboard. The computer automatically rebooting is a sign of serious hardware issues, most likely a failing motherboard. It mentioned something about the BIOS, so that is most likely what was lost (either through a nasty virus or just hardware failure). IF you get power (everything is spinning) but nothing is loading, you definately lost the BIOS. I'm 99% sure at least the BIOS is destroyed on your system.
You have a couple options here.

1.) Look for information on your mother board regarding flashing the BIOS. There may be a program that you can put onto a floppy that will allow you to do this.

2.) If the BIOS is gone to the point that you would not be able to boot a floppy, as what seems to be the case, you can attempt to replace the BIOS chip. This option is available for some motherboards, and replacement BIOS chips are inexpensive, but they tend to be hard to come by and it would be good for a professional to install it.

3.) Buy a new motherboard.

The rebooting could be caused by the motherboard trying to do something with the BIOS and failing at it, so it reboots and tries again; or it could be something more serious. If it is something more serious, replacing the motherboard is the way to go. Depending on exactly what went wrong, you may possibly need to replace the CPU too. Everything else; case, harddrive, any PCI devices, AGP video card, and RAM should be salvagable.

The power supply should be salvagable too. But there is a chance that the powersupply is the root cause of the motherboard failure. You may want to have a local computer shop check it.

All in all, you're looking at $100-$200 to replace the motherboard and CPU at the cheapest. If you're not comfortable with rebuiding your system, bring it to a local computer shop, they'll put it back together for you for around $20-$40.

Out of curiosity, was the error you were getting something like "BIOS sumcheck error..."?

 

[Sharky]

Doh. Looks like that motherboard fried itself dead.

Hopefully warranty will change that. We'll see how it goes.

BTW the puter was reading something like Bios reloading or updating or something like that. I can't remember.

 

[marduke]

now this is one reason why i like dual bios motherboards..

 

[trunks2k]

now this is one reason why i like dual bios motherboards..

Those don't always work either. I had a gigabyte board with dual bios. They both broke at the same time. But I think that might have been due to a larger problem on the board. I never got a chance to find out exactly what went wrong. I just replaced the board and reinstalled the OS and everything was peachy-keen.

 

[marduke]

i love them, one of the bios's on my mums gigabyte board crashed, and the other one took over and allowed me to re-flash the corrupt bios.. but yeah as with almost everything, there will be some that wont work as they should..

 

[godscreation8888]

Of course, u could just get a new computer.

 

[WeakButHopeful]

Keep in mind that WinXP has an option in Advanced off of My Computer that will automatically reboot if there's system problems. Might not be hardware. OP didn't say what OS they were using (which is always a good idea).

 

[Stryper]

Of course, u could just get a new computer.

why get a new computer when only 1 part is broken?

 

[leathersmt]

there is also a virus out there that corrupts the bios and that is maybe another reason of what happened.

 

[marduke]

there are afew viruses out there that corrupt the bios.
my aunty's computer had its bios corrupted by a virus.. so it was bye bye motherboard..

 

[theartist87]

I had a problem like that once... I just replaced the battery........