computer says "No boot for you!"

[jo1]

When I turn on the computer the bios text comes up... now usually it will just show some information including how much ram etc and boot to windows... but now it will pause and it shows the ram count increasing then it will go to the next text screen and say boot failed...

any ideas on what component may be bad?

thanks

 

[mechBgon]

Easy thing first: if there's a floppy in the floppy drive, take it out in case it's just trying to boot from floppy.

 

[jo1]

no floppy drive, I built this computer for my mom

 

[mechBgon]

How about a list of the components, including the brand and models of stuff: motherboard, CPU, hard drive, memory and power supply.

 

[jo1]

and to be clearer, it wouldnt "count" the ram before it would just display it

 

[jo1]

ok this is a

intel d815epfv mobo
intel celeron 800mhz
pny 256mb ram stick
western digital 20gb hard drive
aopen case and power supply
computer is a few years old

 

[mechBgon]

You might start with these steps:

• Open up the system and confirm that all the ribbon cables, cards and power plugs are still firmly seated
• See if the hard drive is still getting listed at the screen where you would see the different drives and the RAM count listed, like this pic would be about to do next.
• If the hard drive is listed, run Western Digital's Data Lifeguard and see if the drive is healthy.
• If the hard drive is not listed at the BIOS screen, go into the BIOS menu and see if you can get it recognized again. Maybe it's failed, or maybe the motherboard is just .
• You might want to reset the motherboard's CMOS (unplug system, take out CMOS battery, move clear-CMOS jumper for 15 seconds, reverse procedure) if there's some doubt about what's wrong.
• If you can't get any headway on that system, then consider putting the hard drive into a different computer to 1) see if it is now recognized, and 2) if it is recognized, rescue any important stuff off it as a safety precaution.

Hope that helps

edit: as I think about it... if you don't have a floppy, then you can't use Data Lifeguard 11's self-booting floppy. ~ hmmm You could put the drive into a different computer and run the Data Lifeguard for Windows, I suppose...