Bob Eisenman Posted October 4, 2017 Share Posted October 4, 2017 So...recently I was asking myself why I was suddenly interested in doing VR, etc and it came down to a recent Windows boot gone wrong. Solving the boot dilemma forced me to recall from unused brain space, all of my computer expertise which lay dormant and unused and refocus on computing. VR (virtual reality) was project I put off thinking about at least a year ago prior to solving this booting dilemma and reawakening my creative PC self. The boot dilemma story goes something like this. It's bad enough not being online (updates, downloads, etc.) with the internet but when your desktop is Windows Vista and Microsoft no longer supports the OS it can become a panic situation when something unexpected causes your PC to go awry. I had built a desktop PC several years ago from parts and chose Windows Vista for an OS. Later , I bought a USB TV Dongle which I modified with a heatsink. In summer the part gets hot and dysfunctional without a heatsink. My 150 GB hard drive was down to less the 15 GB if free space and it's recommended that at least 10% of the boot drive be free space. MicroCenter in Cambridge Mass. was selling a 500 GB drive for about $43 and more than once I wondered if upgrading the HD would be a good idea. Maybe even try an SSD to speed up the boot sequence after cloning the HD with Acronis. I put off the idea saying to myself..if it works don't fix it. Then it happened.... one morning I booted my custom pc desktop and launched the TV software to watch the news. After watching the news I went to shut down the TV software and the system. The TV audio started to make a 60 cycle noise kind of sound as it shut down and the software would not close. I long pressed the power button to shut down the desktop. When I rebooted to double check my boot sequence to desktop the computer asked if I wanted to boot into 'safe mode'. I was in a rush to do something else and told the computer to just boot as usual. Then the PC gave me a BLUE SCREEN which I never get with Vista. I long pressed the power button again to shut down . Powering up again declined to show the BIOS logo, nor the drive identification sequence that precedes the Microsoft Windows log on. I had no apparent 'posting' of the HD from its boot sector, nor any sign of BIOS....I was stuck! Everything about my desktop creation flashed through my head....did my drive crash? I pulled all the assorted stuff plugged into the motherboard out except for a mouse and a keyboard. The PC would not post to BIOS nor to the Microsoft logon. Then it occurred to me that some time long ago I needed to clear the CMOS (to get my hard drives to post and boot) by shorting two pins on the motherboard with a jumper connector. I pulled the video card next to the CMOS pins out to gain access, shorted the CMOS pins and reinserted the video card. My desktop PC creation started it's familiar hard drive post, BIOS logo display and subsequent Microsoft login to Vista sequence. Problem solved by clearing the CMOS !!!? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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