Computer boots up to a blinking curor

[BlakkIce]

this is my Gf system it was on yesterday then i saw a blinking cursor so i turned it off and turned it back on and same thing, im hoping the hard drive didnt fail cause she had a lot of important data on there she has a Gateway 2000 Pentium 2 400mhz. in the bios it still sees the hd

 

[jfall]

Usually related to a harddrive problem. What OS do you have on it? If its XP, run the repair console and try chkdsk /R. Double check over your partition(s) with fdisk.

 

[MadRat]

Its an OS/BIOS timing problem. The OS calls for a return signal from the CPU before the system BIOS is ready to relinquish control to the OS.

 

[BlakkIce]

well i am running XP but it doesnt get to the xp screen im going to try and take the drive out and install it in my pc and grab the info off of there

 

[MadRat]

If you have poor contact with the cpu to the heatsink you may be overheating.

Does this occur after sustained activity or all the time?