'Error Loading OS'? Possible virus?

[JustinP1]

Hi Guys.

Bit of a strange one this, not something I have seen in the 20 or so PC I have owned over the last 15 years!

I have a PC running Windows 2000 and it was left on overnight running an external CD duplicator.

This morning the screen is black apart from the 'DOS' type font telling me 'Error Loading OS'.

It seems that when I restart the same happens again - it finds the drives then hangs to this message. What must have happened is the PC must have randomly restarted.

Checking the PC thouroughly I find the cause of the problem is that in the BIOS the PC is now set to boot from the my data only drive, not the root drive with the OS on!?

I swop this over and now the PC works fine!


Has anyone seen this before, or have any idea what it is? This is a PC which is not connected to a network or the internet in any way, and although it does not have virus protection installed, I thought somehow this was a possibility and run a scan on Norton from the disc, and it is clean.

I'm stumped!

[arcturus]

I see that you are running W2K. Does this imply that the machine is a more than 4 years old? If so, it could be a sign that your bios battery is failing. Perfectly normal on a 4+ yr old PC and easy to replace. Normally it's a CR2032 battery and is about £2 from your local small independent electrical store.

[JustinP1]

arcturus said:

I see that you are running W2K. Does this imply that the machine is a more than 4 years old? If so, it could be a sign that your bios battery is failing. Perfectly normal on a 4+ yr old PC and easy to replace. Normally it's a CR2032 battery and is about £2 from your local small independent electrical store.

I did think of that, but the PC is no more than 2 years old tops. It just has W2000 on it as that is on the rest of my office machines and is stable running the driving software for the duplicator.

The clock and everything seems OK.

Perhaps it is just weird randomness! I thought of a power surge too with the rain and wind last night, but it is on an expensive surge protected power strip. It is also on the same socket as another identical PC which was fine...

[GreenV8S]

I think a dead BIOS battery is the most likely explanation for it booting from the wrong device, but that doesn't explain why it's rebooting in the first place. I had vaguely similar symptoms from a system that had a memory failure which would randomly overwrite the master boot record during the boot sequence, causing the *next* boot to fail. If you rule out the more obvious explanations it would be worth running a hardware diagnostic on the disk and RAM to be on the safe side.

[bigdods]

Change the battery anyway

My Dads 2 year old PC wouldnt boot, its BIOS clock was ok but the disk settings had changed. I fixed it, worked for a few days then did same again.

Turns out he was turning the mains plug off at the wall every night forcing it to run on battery for 2 years. Replaced battery and told him to leave it turned on at the wall. Problem solved

[JustinP1]

bigdods said:

...Turns out he was turning the mains plug off at the wall every night forcing it to run on battery for 2 years. Replaced battery and told him to leave it turned on at the wall. Problem solved

I think you have hit the nail on the head there!

All the rest of our PCs are still plugged into the wall whereas these two are switched off each night!

Cheers guys, problem solved!