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hi all,just turned my pc on, (working on laptop now),and its gone on to a system configurations screen with cpu type and list of drives and thats it.its stuck there.keyboard/mouse doesnt work.if i reset it just reboots back to the same screen.can anyone help?thanks,keith....

i've managed to get into the advanced bios menu which i can navigate around ok.don't know what to change though...

think my motherboard battery is dead.....

Hello Keith,

I believe what is happening is a piece of your hardware is causing the computer to stop booting.

I don't know how comfortable you are with it, but the process to take at this point is to unplug each device that's connected to your motherboard one by one until you find the device that's causing the computer to freeze.

I would do it in this order (assuming it's your desktop having the problem):

1. Unplug hard drive, boot up
2. Reseat all memory, boot up
3. Unplug CMOS battery for 30 seconds, plug back in and boot up
4. Unplug peripherals one by one and boot up(modem, network card, sound card, etc.)
5. Reseat video card, boot up
6. Unplug video card and boot up, if you have on-board video
7. Try each stick of memory one by one in each slot and boot up each time

Basically at whatever step your computer gets past the screen that it's frozen at, that is the device having the problem. Try plugging that back in and see if it freezes at the screen again.

Make sure you clear yourself of built up static charge by touching a piece of your computer case before you start touching components. If you have any other questions about doing this stuff, do not hesitate to ask.

If your motherboard battery was bad, the only thing that would happen is your time and BIOS settings wouldn't save. The BIOS settings would just stay default, and every time your computer boots up it would be like January 1st, 1900 12:00am It "shouldn't" cause that problem.

Hope that helps!