I'm using Hewlett Packard, running Windows ME, 1GHz with 512 ram. The first problem starts when I switches on my computer, it goes past the blue "HP INVENT" screen, then it displays the Awards bios screen, checking my master/slaves etc, right after it finishes checking my secondary slave, it goes on a new line, with a blinking underscore and hangs. Either this happens or it finishes the checks, then a new black screen appears with a underscore blinking on the top left hand corner, hanging again. I have been told to try accessing the bios, only then I realise I can't.. I tried pressing F1 both singlely and repeatedly at the blue "HP INVENT" screen.. and a black text appears "Entering Setup ..." then it either hangs there, or moves on to a blackscreen and hangs. I tried F2, nothing special happens. Trying Del, either by pressing it repeatedly or just pressing it once, it either hangs or results in problem 1. A friends said maybe my hard disk's eaten by a virus, and to boot from Windows ME cd, but i can't edit the boot sequence if i cannot access the bios. Any help will be GREATLY appreciated. Thank you for your time.

Define "secondary slave." Do you mean a slave h/d? If so, have you checked the jumper settings to make sure it is set to slave? There may be more than one position for slave. If this is the case you should be able to find it on the h/d's OEM webpage just a guess, good luck.

It isn't your hard drive because you can enter the BIOS Setup even with no hard drive installed. I do know that if you have your hard drives wrongly configured as master and slave (for example both set as master etc) it can greatly slow down the POST because if confuses it, but I;ve never seen it STOP the POST entirely. Very possibly the flash ROM is corrupt on your BIOS. To fix this you'd have to flash a new BIOS. Not hard to do but eliminate all other possibilities first and get more feedback before you do this because if you do it wrong it's not easy to recover(an understatement).

I failed to mention the obvious, which is that some piece of hardware on your system is failing the POST test, but I don't see why that should keep you from entering Setup. Sounds like a problem with the BIOS itself.

Thank you so much for the replies. Can this problem be caused by a virus? It was fine the night before, and I seriously doubt anyone will give my CPU a kick, and pardon my ignorance, what is "Flash Bios"?

Yes, there are viruses that can infect the BIOS. For a discussion of one see: http://www.virusbtn.com/VirusInformation/cih.html. Not sure how to run a scan for such a thing, whether regular virus scans scan the BIOS. Might was to post in Security and Virus forum. Flash BIOS is a technology that allows the BIOS chip in your PC to be programmed or reprogrammed electronically. The advantage of this over older technologies is that it's much easier to upgrade a flash BIOS (which can be upgraded by a simple software program) than it was with the old chips (which often required the entire chip to be replaced, the settings having been "hardwired" into them at the factory). Most reasonably modern machines have flash BIOSes (within say 4 yrs or so). The manufacturer of your pc should have a BIOS upgrade in the Drivers section of their website for your model. You download it, unzip it to a floppy disk, then reboot your pc with the floppy disk in, then follow the prompts. But please don't attempt this until you know what you're doing and have exhausted all other possibilities because if the flashing fails or you flash the wrong BIOS (though most flashers are "intelligent" now and won't allow you to flash a wrong version) your PC will be totally unbootable. This is about as disastrous a situation as you can find yourself in with a PC, though there are usually ways to recover. You may have a BIOS virus, but I believe they're relatively rare. BIOSes do become corrupt from time to time though for no apparent reason.

I also have an HP computer and I can no longer access the BIOS screen. There is no apparent problem with my operating systems (dual boot) but I would like to be able to get to the BIOS setup. Flashing the BIOS would be an answer but HP has a unique BIOS that Phoenix does not show on their web site. HP does not offer it either.