I'm working on a computer for a friend, and it's giving a "system has recovered from a serious error" now and then, and when they boot, the S.M.A.R.T. HDD monitor is reporting a bad hard drive. It then says hit f1 to continue, backup then replace disk, then it boots to xp fine. I tried scandisk, windows and norton's but that did nothing. I tried booting to a floopy, but it won't, and then I try going into the bios, it won't allow me to now, I repetedly hit del, with no effect, it's almost like it's not allowing me to now. How can I get into the bios? Anyone have an idea about what this it? The computer is about 2 months old. It's a 30G maxtor.

BIOS (and accessing it) has nothing to do with the hard drive (or any other drive) since the BIOS chip is accessed immediately when the computer is first powered up. (That's where the instructions on how the computer is to boot are stored.) So if you can't access BIOS, you either have a cpu or a motherboard (possibly the BIOS itself) problem. If your PC is under warrantee I would contact whoever you bought it from.

It has everything to do with the hard drive... it checks all IDE controllers, and if SMART monitor is selected in the bios, it checks the HDD right then and there. They are all set to AUTO, therefore when the bios ckecks all the IDE controllers, it reports the error right then and there, and I can't access anything else until I hit F1 to confirm what I have found. That is the problem. SMART is reporting a bad disk, which is initiated in the bios, and not letting me go into the bios.

Mine kept doing that. I finally ended up with a re-boot cycle going. It would not come up to windows. Come to find out, it was my processor gone bad. Replaced it, re-formated and re-installed, now it works great.