Dell Changed Bios...Dead

Well I tried to modify the bios a bit in my dell running windows xp, and it kind of died. It can only boot up into the main windows screen or advanced features, and then it goes straight to a blue screen with an unmountable_boot error or something. I searched around and believe that what I had done killed my software, I can not even get into command prompt, and I can not get into anything. Do I need a special cd to stop this mess? Is my computer dead, can it be fixed? Can I just install a new operating system and somehow wipe the harddrive?

 

So, you didnt flash or anything? Just playing around in bios? It sounds like the master boot record is bad or the hard drive went bad. Can bios still see the hard drive? If so, take your XP installation cd, boot from it, and choose Recovery Mode(F8). When you get to the command prompt, type fixmbr or fixboot (specifics, type help>enter). I had to do the same for a friend's 600m last week, because when he installed Debian on his external hard drive, he decided to put grub on the hard drive that is in his computer instead of the external hard drive.

 

it would help if you laid out specifically what you did. you're kind of vague in your original post. it will be hard to provide help without specifics.

 

It all started when I got an Ubuntu livecd. I tried it out and then realized I have to change the bios to recognize the cd drive first. So I went into the bios under mycomputer properties and advanced I believe and I noticed that the reason I had to always choose which OS I wanted to use was because I had a windows 2000 attempted startup (my old OS). So I deleted that from the bios, and I believe that is all that I did. Next time I started the computer...WHAM...bluescreen.

 

Whoa, what did you do? To access the bios, you have to push F2 at the Dell screen when you power on, or push F12 to go into the boot options. Try to explain more of what you did. To me, I don't know what your condition is.

 

I think you killed your boot.ini...

And yes, ccbr01 is right, you can't access the bios unless you're booting.
Do as he says, press F2 at the very second you see the dell logo when booting, change the boot order to cd first, pop in your windows cd, turn off with the power button and turn on again, the do the recovery routine.

 

Yep...you never entered your BIOS. You messed up Windows is all. A reinstall might fix it...but if I were you, I'd wipe it anyways just to be safe.

 

At the moment I am just downloading a livecd for ubuntu so that I may try out the computer just by itself.

 

Ok, but you still need to change your boot order in BIOS.

 

This time I actually changed my bios to order cd first and have an ubuntu livecd running well. Can I change my settings from there? Or at least access my hard drive?

 

Yes, if you have cd/dvd drive selected first, you can keep it like that. Just don't have a bootable disk when you start the computer though. Then it would boot the disk.

 

This already happened to me but with a diff scenario.
I reinstalled windows and all fixed.

 

Reinstalling windows might help, but if the bios is screwed then you can make a boot disk and add an autoexec.bat with a few commands to automatically flash your bios.

I did this on my desktop once when I was constantly messing with the bios of my videocard to overclock it.

Give it a try works wonders. No fear of corrupting bios if you have a disk like this. I had it on a floppy, but I can't find it.

Sorry.

Cheers,
Mike

 

His BIOS is fine...we determined earlier he never got into it...his problem was with deleting some important system files on a less than ideal installation of windows.