Hello, My brother took pride in destroying my computer, so I decided to reformat it.. again. So, the reformat was going fine until it decided that it was unable to copy some files over. The disk is not scratched at all, I have never had this problem. So I gave up and put it off for awhile. Now, I have come back to attempt again, and now as soon as the computer turns on, it freezes right after completing the memory check. I cannot go into bios, it just sits there. Any ideas? Via PT800 Motherboard P4 3.2ghz CPU ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128mb 1.5gb PC32000 Maxtor 80gb hardrive CD-Rom Simplicity.

If it won't even boot up into BIOS then do the following. Disconnect power. Open the case. Take Anti-static precautions. Disconnect the harddrive data & power cables. Take out the Ram and re-insert it ( Several times to ensure clean contacts) Re-seat all other power & data cables. Remove & re-seat any/all PCI & AGP cards. Now re-connect power and see if you can boot into BIOS. If not then remove power again, disconnect everything except Power connectors to motherboard, CPU, 1 stick of Ram and graphics. ( revert to onboard if available or leave AGP card with monitor connected. Leave only PS2 keyboard plugged in. Remove any/all other plug-in devices such as USB printers etc. If it still will not POST then you have either a failed powersupply, motherboard, CPU or Graphics card. Goin' Fishin' (Some day)

After memory check the bios checks the primary and secondary devices. If freezeing at that point disconnect the eide or sata ribbons from devices and then reconnect to reseat them.

Or leave them disconnected and see if you can get to the bios.

Thanks for the all the help. Here is what I did: I disconnected my hard drive from IDE 1 and my cd rom from IDE 2. Then I booted it up and it said that CMOS had been reset to defaults, so I went through and changed them to the correct settings. After that, I plugged in my CD ROM and it worked fine, recognized it as the IDE 2 master and asked for me to put a disk in to boot. After that, I hooked up my hard drive to IDE 1 and the same problem occured, after the mem test it froze. So, I am assuming my hard drive is busted?

I am puzzled by your second sentence: you would not be copying files over during a format. Have I got it wrong? Terry@nz

Sure sounds like the drive is toast. Goin' Fishin' (Some day)