Jeremy Uejio's Blog

Corrupted BIOS on laptop

As a computer geek, I often get calls from friends or relatives for help with their PC issues. I'm no PC expert, but knowing about Solaris and Sun hardware seems to transfer well to other computer systems and especially how to search the Internet goes a long way.

This evening, my nephew who goes to UCB  (you know who you are...), called with a "simple" computer problem.  His Compaq Presario laptop shutoff several times because it was out of power and now it doesn't boot.  It just hangs at the Windows logo.  So, the first thing we tried is to boot in Safe Mode.  Well, that also didn't work.  Infact, all the Safe Mode options hung.  Next, is try the Window XP CD.  That also hung.

A quick search of the internet yielded several suggestions and one site said to take the battery out and boot with only the AC adapter plugged in.  That worked!  I guess his laptop BIOS got corrupted somehow and removing the battery allows it to get reset.

Well, that was easy.

Posted at 11:04PM Dec 05, 2007 by uejio in General  |  Comments[1]