Whats wrong with this computer...

[o0OBruceLeeO0o]

My friend brought his old 500mhz over to my house today thinking together we could figure it out. I turn it on and it starts to load up like normal, but then it goes and starts looking for a bootdisk, its in there but its not finding the floppy. Everything was fine til someone tried to iunstall a cd-rw and now this happens. I can get into bios but thats all, i tried fooling around with bios settings but no luck, i reput all the plugs and stuff intoall the hardware and no changes, anyone know whats wrong?


P.S. sorry not sure where i'm supposed to post this.

[Yodums]

At least you didn't post in General :D

So what are you trying to do exactly, getting it to boot from the hard disk or? If it's hard disk, look in the bios for a boot sequence and set HDD-0 to the first HDD to boot and it'll boot first into your HDD. Since your friend may not be too knowledgeable about CPUs you can set the sequence like:

Floppy
HDD

If he has a bootable CD-ROM

CD-ROM
HDD

Just notify him what you've changed.

[rogerdugans]

Another setting to look for is BOOT OTHER DEVICES or something similar- if that is disabled it will only try to boot from the first device you have selected.

Also check that IDE controllers are enabled- if they aren't then your hard drive is not being seen at all.

[o0OBruceLeeO0o]

thanks guys, but i already tried both your ideas hehehe. What component could be dead for this to happen?

[jboy]

Your floppy drive, floppy drive cable, or defective FD circuitry on your mobo. Try swapping out a FD and cable know to work with the one currently in there. Make sure the power plug is firmly seated..