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My p.c has been good for over a year now but suddenly this morning it won't boot up windows xp. My p.c starts as usual with the showing of my system information on a black screen, then it goes to the Asus motherboard page and then when it would usually go to boot up windows xp it just goes to a empty black screen with an _flickering in the top left corner.

I have tried going into my bios and resetting to default config but that hasn't helped and i have tried f8 but it doesnt give me a option for last known configuration so i'm stuck there. Problem is i bought this p.c off a friend and he forgot to give me the xp disc so i'm a bit stuck there too...

So anyone know of a miracle solution?

Hello and welcome to PC Help Forum.

On the ASUS screen do you see your hard drive listed?Does your hard drive showup in BIOS?Could you check your boot order in BIOS setting hard drive as first,CD/DVD rom as second,etc.

Could you check internal cables are fully connected inside your computer.

Thankyou for your reply.

My Hard Disk Drives in bios are as follows :-
1. 1st master: ST380012ACE
2. 1stslave: Maxtor 6y120l0
3. sata 2: ST3320620AS
4. sata 1: WDC WD2500JD-00HBB0

The boot device priority are in the order you listed and all cables are firmly in place inside the computer.

Now instead of the asus screen loitering for a good 10 seconds it now flickers and goes within 1 second meaning i had to spam delete just to get into the bios.

Bios post is working by the way.

Disconnect all hard drives except master and reboot see if it picks up the master drive.

Are you able to restart the computer and repeatedly tap F8 and choose safe mode or last known good config?

I've disonnected the other 3 drives and now in the bios only the 1st master is left.

Try rebooting with only the one drive connected?See if it boots properly.

Or try restarting the computer and repeatedly tapping F8 for safe mode or last known good config.

There was no difference made by only having the one drive and when tapping f8 it only brings up a boot menu, choices being floppy disc, my master harddrive and my 2 cd roms.