Member Avatar for mystxx

Hi

Ok, so I was working on my laptop yesterday (Lenovo SL500) when suddenly it restarted.

Now I have the following problem:
When I restart the computer it POSTs fine (counts the memory, displays "the" table... etc).
When It's about to start Windows it starts beeping - it doesn't even show Windows logo. Continuous short beeps. The cursor just blinks on the screen and it beeps.

One more strange thing:
When I press F8 to get to the boot menu, nothing happens. No boot menu appears.

One more strange thing:
I did a repair install from my XP install CD - same thing happens, nothing has changed.

I tried to restore MBR record through recovery console but again same thing, no change.

I tried Linux live CD and I was able to browse all my files (indicating the hard drive is ok).

Has anyone seen anything like this?

I would appreciate any kind of help with this.

thanx.

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by mechbas
Member Avatar for mechbas

Assuming there's nothing wrong with the HD this appears to be an old virus trick.
The MBR is only a few bytes long. The boot area is small but large enough to park a virus that causes a skip of the MBR file. F8 only works if you actually have normal HD access which apparently you don't.
Most decent AV apps. look for and remove this pest. I would suggest that you make a clean boot from a CD or a write protected floppy.

Edited by mechbas because: n/a
Member Avatar for BlackFetus

..just reformat your laptop!..don't forget to back up all your datas..^_^..

Member Avatar for mechbas

Unless the boot area is cleaned a format is a waste of time.

Member Avatar for WASDted

can you describe the "beeps" a little better? it sounds to me like you might have a bad hard drive, the area that is bad could be where the Windows start-up files are written. short beeps can also point to a memory or video driver problem. once again, when Windows start-up reaches that part it may stop and beep.

Member Avatar for mechbas

Windows software drivers generate error codes, if anything at all, not beeps. Beeps come from the system board which means that there hasn't been ANY kind of drive access up to that point. Defective, non-functional system board RAM will most likely generate a error beep of some kind. However, unless the graphics adapter has no (default) function at all there'll be no beep.

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