Posted 17 September 2010 - 12:07 PM
thanks for the replies....unfortunately no, I do not have any usb drives hooked up to the system when booting.... so that's not it.
I apologize for the confusion with my original post. The bios boot sequence is set properly, i.e. cd rom first, then hard disk. When I try to boot, the computer doesn't seem to recognize the hard disk because it just sits at a black screen.....I reversed the order and made the hard disk first, then the cd, thinking that perhaps the cd was causing the issue but that made no difference. Still get a black screen.
HP, as do most computers, provides options when booting, hit Esc to enter boot optinos, F10 for Setup etc.... on every boot, I must enter boot options which then loads a boot menu whereby I can choose to boot from available bootable devices.....in my case there are only two options, boot from CD or boot from hard disk. Each time I restart the computer I have to go into this menu and explicitly select my hard disk from the "HD Group list" (my hard disk is the only item in the list btw). Once I do this, the computer boots up properly....
I'm trying to get my system back to the good old days when I can simply restart the computer and it boots up but I am completely confused as to why the hard disk seems to be ignored during the normal boot up process.....the only odd thing I can find is that the hard disk shows up in the system tray under the "safely remove hardware" icon where devices can stopped and "safely removed". It's as if my system recognizes the hard disk as a usb mas storage device instead of an internal hard disk??.....I hope this is a clearer description of what I'm experiencing.
thanks in advance.
Jon