I've been having problems with my PC freezing on boot-up and in the process of trying to figure out the problem I lost my POST screen. Luckily, Windows seems to be fairly stable right now except for the POST screen. There is none. All I see is a black screen, then the next thing I see is the white progress bar on the bottom of the screen on black background saying "Windows is starting up ..." (or something to that effect) and then it goes into Windows ok. I read some other posts and someone suggested unplugging all cards, memory, HD, etc to see which is at fault. Well, I disconnected my HD (that was the only thing I disconnected) and I got the POST screen. Does this mean my HD is about to die or what does this mean? If I do a PAUSE during the time when the POST screen should be showing I can see it but not otherwise. Any thoughts are welcome.

Before I unplugged the HD, I reinstalled the video card drivers, I re-seated the video card and all my other stuff in there - memory, modem, wireless network card. I still didn't get the POST screan. I only got it when I disconnected the HD.

I don't know how, but you may have enabled fast boot in the BIOS. Try disabling fast bootup (startup).

control of the post (whether or not you see it) is setup in the bios, you must have it set to skip it/quick boot.